subject: Designing Catalogs The Way Your Customers Read Them [print this page] If there is one thing you should know about print catalogs, it is that customers do not usually read it like that of a normal book. In fact, 30% of the readers of catalog printing start somewhere else than the beginning. Catalog readers look at these collaterals by flipping through the pages. If they happen to see something interesting between the flicks then the customers spend more time looking and reading that page.
So how do we translate this interesting fact to our catalog printing?
Many marketers and business owners seem to design their print catalogs layout the way they do with books write the story from the beginning until the last page of the print catalogs. When we design the catalog, we often explain and introduce who we are and stuff about our company at the start of the catalog. Of course, this is the logical thing to do. However, if we consider the way customers read the pages randomly, then this kind of order in the pages would lessen the impact of the catalog.
What if we try to scatter our information throughout the pages of our catalog printing? Things such as who we are and what we do, as well as our benefits would be viewed and remembered more often if we keep reminding our readers the reason why they should hook up with us. If we scatter them all over the pages, no matter where our readers start their browsing, they would not be able to overlook and discount the fact why we are better than our competition.
The personal stuff we usually put at the starting pages of our catalog, we should try to design them in a way that our target readers will read them throughout the rest of the pages. The Letter from the CEO, Company Profile, pictures of the people providing the service, the guarantees and benefits all these things should be scattered that your target customers would not be able to miss them no matter where they are in your catalog printing pages.
Especially when we are able to drive our guarantees to our readers, we will be more likely to convince them of the value of our offer. The returns are limitless if we can really increase the response of our readers with our catalog marketing.
Having designed our catalogs this way makes for a better and more effective print catalog where every page can make a sale. It does not matter where our target customers start to read, they will always have a reminder of why we are better than the rest of the competitors in the market.
So let us start selling in our catalogs by designing them the way our customers read, and see a big difference in our profits and ROIs.
