Catalog Merchandising: Five Valuable Square Inch Analysis Metrics (Part 2 of 2)

In addition to pagination decisions, squinch analysis by category provides valuable merchandise information. Categories with high sales per inch are customer favorites, providing justification for adding more SKUs to that category.

Page rankings: Page rank is the final critical element to examine. The ultimate reason for squinch is to provide hard data on which you can develop a catalog pagination that appeals to your customers and improves sales.

To do this, determine an average sales target per page, then build each page to meet that target. Pages should be built with differing product densities determined by the strength of the individual products on the page. Best sellers generate more sales per item so they cost-justify fewer products per page, but weaker sellers require more products per page to generate the same sales.

Incidently, this variation in page density, also known as pacing, is aesthetically a good thing. It keeps your catalog fresh and interesting as the shopper flips from spread to spread. The page ranking lets you know how well your pagination worked page by page.

Part 1 of this discussion appeared in the Dec. 12 edition of Catalog Success Idea Factory, accessible by clicking here.

Bill Licata is president of LCH Direct Inc, a direct marketing agency specializing in catalogs and e-commerce. He can be reached at (505) 989-9451 or via email at bill@lchdirect.com.