PATIENT: Doc, I hope to keep my catalog healthy during this economic epidemic. I've slimmed down by cutting overhead. Now I need to focus on marketing. But it's got to be low or no risk. Any sure things that I can count on to deliver results?
CATALOG DOCTOR: There are no "sure things." But like fruits and vegetables can help keep your body in shape, here are two prescriptions to help your catalog health.
1: Make Your Catalog Layout ?Fast and Easy to View
Many catalogs are pretty, but hard to use. They're great when a photo grabs your customers' attention, but bad when they go searching for the copy. It's not that your customers can't figure out where to find the copy, but is that how you want them to spend their time? No, you want them focused on how great your products are and how much they want to buy them.
Ideally, once a photo catches users' eyes, their eyes should go to the right copy so instantly, so intuitively, that no one notices the process. Look at the illustrations here, for example.
In Figure 1, the images are massed together in two spaces, and the copy is massed together in its own space. Say viewers like the big image at the top right, where will they intuitively look for its copy? Immediately below the image. But they won't find it because there are three images on that page but only two copy blocks.
Counting copy blocks backward, the last block on the left page must go with the big image at the top of the right page. Since it's impossible to find this copy unconsciously, the designer had to add an "E" to both the image and copy. Adding letters is very common and understood by readers, but it's never intuitive, and it's never fast. It adds time and work for your already harried customers. Why do that when you could make their lives easier ?and pleasant?
Figure 2 has a less graceful design and makes a stab at getting each copy block directly adjacent to its image. But several of the copy blocks are adjacent to more than one image, so your customers have to slow down and figure out which image the copy matches.
For example, the second copy block on the left page is positioned so it could belong to the images above, to its left or to its right. This is best solved with arrowheads pointing to the correct images, which is a clear and fairly fast-viewing solution. But the clearest copy-to-image connection on this spread is the block in the screen tint with the circle image.
Enclosing copy and its image in a single graphic unit is one of the clearest and most intuitive ways to link them for your readers.
Figure 3 masses six products on the left page. This can look beautiful with color-coordinated gifts, decor, dishes and more, and it makes an instantly clear connection between copy and image. Viewers will automatically look above the top row for copy, and below the bottom row. This means they'll never lose focus on your great products.
The right page, on the other hand, has potential for confusion — which the designer has overcome by adding rules (aka key lines) that keep copy blocks with their images in a single space.
The figure 3 layout makes your customers' shopping experiences easy and pleasant by removing clearness and speed barriers.
Where do viewers intuitively look for copy? To the right of the image or just below it, inside a box where copy and image are shown together, or where the copy is wrapped around a product image. Using these techniques to increase speed and clarity for your customers helps increase sales.
2: Use Customer Testimonials
Customer testimonials help shoppers reach buying decisions by giving them insights into your products and company. Testimonials also can be very interesting or entertaining. What's more, they take very little room in your catalog. But keep in mind, they do require some work. Where can you ?find recommendations?
- In complimentary customer letters;
- by asking your customer service reps to write down nice comments they hear with customers' names;
- from any product reviews on your website; or
- by asking for comments and suggestions on your catalog order form, website checkout and enclosures in outgoing orders.
Getting Permission
First, have a copywriter or sharp marketing person select and edit the testimonials. They should ask, "Does this testimonial help our customers choose a product and choose to do business with us, or is it fluff?" Print the former; dump the latter.
Then send a letter to those testifying customers with your edited version of their words and your thanks. Say, "Here's what we plan to print," signed with just the customers' initials and city/state. Be sure to say that the reason for the short ID is to protect their privacy — they'll appreciate that. Ask them to sign your OK sheet, and say that when you get the OK sheet back, you'll send them a gift certificate. You'll not only get good testimonials, you'll get happy customers.
Printing Them in Your Catalog
Be sure testimonials look different from product copy, but don't let them compete with products. If product copy uses a serif font, for example, switch to a lower-readability sans for testimonials. Or, try a screen tint with lower contrast, which reduces readability a bit vs. your product copy. Susan J. McIntyre is founder and chief strategist of catalog marketing and consulting firm McIntyre Direct (susan@mcintyredirect.com).
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- McIntyre Direct
Susan J. McIntyre is Founder and Chief Strategist of McIntyre Direct, a catalog agency and consultancy in Portland, Oregon offering complete creative, strategic, circulation and production services since 1991. Susan's broad experience with cataloging in multi-channel environments, plus her common-sense, bottom-line approach, have won clients from Vermont Country Store to Nautilus to C.C. Filson. A three-time ECHO award winner, McIntyre has addressed marketers in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, has written and been quoted in publications worldwide, and is a regular columnist for Retail Online Integration magazine and ACMA. She can be reached at 503-286-1400 or susan@mcintyredirect.com.