Why 12 Million Australians prefer Catalogues to the Internet….and quick tips on designing YOUR Business Catalogue.
Would your customers prefer to browse your website or your catalogue?
Ah, no contest, the internet wins at everything in the digital age, right?
Online shopping, online banking, online dating…
I’m pretty sure that if somebody out there developed an online tool which claimed to brush your teeth in the morning, we would all have thrown our real toothbrushes away by the end of the week.
But hang on a minute.
When it comes to certain categories of products, it turns out that the majority of Australian consumers still find the Catalogue to be the most useful media of all, with the poor old internet having to make do with second place.
And 12 million Aussies surely can’t be wrong…
A recent survey from Roy Morgan Research reveals that over 12 million Australians still find Catalogues to be the number one go-to media when shopping for a range of product categories including groceries, alcoholic beverages, children’s wear, toys, cosmetics and toiletries, and clothes and fashion.
The most popular product category for catalogue-browsers is Groceries, with 49% of the surveyed consumers declaring that catalogues are the most useful medium for grocery shopping.
Only 20% claimed to prefer the internet for this category.
Alcoholic Beverage shoppers also showed a surprisingly high preference for the catalogue (42% of consumers chose catalogues, 22% chose the internet), as did Children’s Wear shoppers (40% catalogues vs 25% internet) and Toy shoppers (39% catalogues vs 31% internet.)
Nowadays, we may sometimes assume that the internet is perceived as the one-stop solution to everything, but it’s interesting to see that so many Australians still prefer a physical and reassuringly traditional form of printed marketing.
It appears that a big chunk of your consumers would still rather sit in comfort and flick through the glossy pages of a real catalogue instead of having to navigate their way through the menus and buttons and pop-up windows and error messages of a website.
So, what do you need to consider when planning out the design of your own Business Catalogue?
Here are some quick tips and pointers to help you get started…
What’s your objective?
Firstly, you need to have a serious think about the ultimate purpose of your catalogue and what exactly you hope to achieve with it.
Will your catalogue be a balanced showcase of each and every one of your products?
Do you need to be focusing largely on your most popular products?
Or do you need to be putting the emphasis on less well-known products, or perhaps even brand new products?
Will you be aiming your catalogue at a very specific section of your audience?
Do you intend to provide extensive details and specifications, or will your catalogue be almost completely visual with just a few key notes?
Perhaps the scale of the information you provide will vary from product to product?
It’s always a good idea to answer these questions and have a very clear objective in mind before you even begin to think too seriously about the design.
Do you even need a Catalogue?
A huge professionally-produced Catalogue can be one of the more expensive types of printing project, and is only really worth considering if you have a lot of products to showcase.
It’s a smart plan to weigh up your budget during these early stages and consider how many pages you really need.
Do you need to show off every single one of your products in extensive detail or do you just need to put the spotlight on a few choice products?
In many cases, a heavy and comprehensive catalogue will always be the ideal option.
But it’s possible that a smaller page-count could be a better move for a smaller business.
You may simply need something which is perhaps better described as a leaflet or a booklet rather than a mighty shelf-creakingly big catalogue!
Going Visual
Your product photographs are naturally going to be one of the most fundamentally important elements of your catalogue.
The whole process of taking and selecting the perfect photographs should be taken very seriously, as you can’t afford to get this wrong.
You could pay for the most luxuriously printed catalogue that your customers have ever seen, but it’s going to be let down badly if your photographs are poor.
Make sure that your photographs are of the highest possible quality.
They should be 300 DPI or more, and you should be using CMYK colours which are best suited to printing (as opposed to RGB colours best suited to a monitor screen.)
Design and Layout
Eventually you’ll reach the point when it’s time to start scribbling down a few ideas and concepts for the ultimate look of the Catalogue.
Of course, you can always call in the professionals at Martin Print to help you shape the winning design!
But here are a few quick final tips to consider when putting together your own blueprint;
Your most important products should be placed on the outside edges of your pages.
Most readers instinctively look to the top right corner first and then sweep casually across the page to the other side.
If nothing really grabs their attention, your readers are quite likely to flip the page and potentially miss out on something of value.
So, your biggest and most attention-grabbing products should always be placed on your page corners, not buried elsewhere in the mix.
Be consistent!
Don’t try and include too many wildly differing approaches in one catalogue.
Your fonts, style, layout, spacing and even the tone of your copy should be largely consistent from the first page to the very last.
A smaller brochure or booklet may have a need to group certain products together in the interests of keeping down the page count and your budget.
But if you’re planning a full and extensive catalogue, try to keep ‘product grouping’ down to a bare minimum.
It’s usually a far more effective approach to let each and every product breathe and enjoy its own space in the spotlight.
Finally, ensure that your business branding and contact details are featured prominently throughout the pages of the catalogue.
Your readers need to be reminded how easy it is to contact your business and place an order, no matter which page they happen to be looking at!
So, would you agree that Catalogues are the most useful media for your customers?
If not, what would you consider to be the number one marketing tool?
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