From Concept to Creation: Building a Professional Product Catalog
Product catalogs are an indispensable marketing and sales tool for businesses. Oftentimes, product catalogs are printed and distributed in that format. While many users are familiar with flipping through the pages of catalogs, these are static documents that don’t allow for the customer to have an immersive and engaging experience.
The process of creating a digital catalog has evolved over the years. Now you can provide an online catalog experience that entice customers, but still give them the familiarity of print catalogs. Designing a professional product catalog from a PDF provides many benefits. A digital product catalog is available across all devices (smartphones, tablets, and computers); you are able to track data and analytics; add interactive elements; and make the content easy for your users to access it.
In this article, we will discuss how to build a professional digital product catalog, from its concept to its creation and distribution.
Conceptualize the Product Catalog
The first step when you create product catalog content is to have a concept in mind of what your product catalog will look like. This means you want to consider what the layout of your catalog will be, the information you want to include, and how the images and wording will fit on the page.
Here are a few design tips to keep in mind when you convert your static PDF into a digital catalog:
Determine the purpose of your product catalog: This is an important step when considering the concept. The purpose of your product catalog will help you decide on your design choices, content selection, and layout.
Go over the basics of design: As you begin to create a concept of the digital product catalog, it is important to keep basic principles of design in mind. These key principles are concepts such as layout, visual elements, interactivity, and user experience. The layout and visual elements will create a publication that attracts the eye of the viewer. The interactive features will engage your audience. You also want to consider how your users will interact with and navigate through your digital product catalog and design it accordingly.
Choose the right tool: Finally, once you have decided on the purpose of your digital catalog and thought carefully about the design elements, you need to find and choose the right digital publication tool. You want one that offers the features that most appeal to you for your project. For example, you want to look for one that includes page flip animations, zoom functionality, video and audio integration, customization options, and more.
Create the Product Catalog
When you decide on the concept, layout, and the tool to use, it is now time to design your digital product catalog. Design and layout play a necessary role in immersing your readers and enhancing the overall browsing experience. If you are curious as to how to make an online catalog that engages and enhances, there are several ways.
Include the following in the design:
- Amazing, high quality images
- Intuitive shopping windows
- Engaging and interactive multimedia elements
- Personalized content
These points seem obvious, but the key is to structure the digital product catalog in such a way that it largely appeals to your target audience. Include catalogs with functionality, interactivity, and automated features. The catalogs are accessible so customers can easily shop and browse through them.
Digital publishing software enables you add intuitive, customized shopping windows so that customers can make purchases from the catalog itself. Customers can easily search for the items they are interested in, read product descriptions, compare and contrast products and prices, and filter the catalog based on the product attributes they most need.
In the field, sales reps can use digital product catalogs to crate curated custom catalogs that are easy to download, publish, or share with their customers. Sales reps can also assemble price quotes and create purchase orders to generate sales. Because the digital product catalog is also mobile-friendly, sales reps can display the products and prices in real time.
Personalize and Customize the Product Catalog
Easily create and design personalized and customized digital product catalogs that are true to your brand and aesthetic. The digital publishing software enables you to add custom fonts, colors, and other elements that match your website aesthetic. Keep brand consistency from your digital catalog, to your website, to your marketing materials with a visually appealing digital product catalog.
Harness your brand identity by adding your logo that links to your site. Customize the background colors in your digital catalog viewer so it matches to your brand standards. Typically, within digital publishing software, the ability to create tailored templates is available. Use the tools and features within to design a stunning product catalog template that matches your company’s aesthetic.
Also read: How to Choose Right Typography?
Add Depth to the Product Catalog
Add depth and layers to the product catalog by incorporating interactive rich media elements to help your digital product catalog content shine. Digital product catalogs allow for interactive enhancements that greatly benefit how users interact with your content. Increase user engagements, improve the buyer’s journey, and generate sales with elements such as plug and play navigation, tabs, links, and more. Empower your users to feel like they are participatory members of your content, rather than passively consuming it.
Incorporate layered content to each digital product catalog. Design an expandable table of contents for easy navigation. Add tabs on the side of the catalog to highlight each section or specific product groups. Make the content colorful to entice the customer to click through when browsing.
Add an introduction page that greets the customer as soon as the open the product catalog. Include an explanation of what they can expect and make the page interactive by incorporating audio clips, video clips, GIF animations, clickable links, and more. Use automated linking to save time and link all of your product skus, which saves you significant hours of linking products.
When you add rich-media elements to your digital product catalog, you create a whole universe of immersive and engaging content.
Conclusion: Build a Professional Product Catalog
From concept to creation, building a professional product catalog is an undertaking that is both simple and complex. Digital product catalogs enable you to let your customers browse, shop, and purchase directly from the catalog itself. The bonus is that their attention stays on the catalog, on the products, items, and prices within.
A digital product catalog is available across all devices (smartphones, tablets, and computers); you are able to track data and analytics; add interactive elements; and make the content easy for your users to access it. Integrate the digital product catalog to your existing ecommerce platform to deliver a easy shopping experience for your customers.
Use the principles of design to create your product catalog. Match colors, the company logo, create custom fonts, and add clickable links that enhance your content. Add multimedia elements to make the content interactive, which makes it more engaging and draws in the user. GIF animations, pop up images, image carousels, and other rich-media elements to help tell your company’s story. Making your company more relatable will help create a bond between yourself and the client that helps you seem more personable.
Following these concepts to create the online catalog helps you to build a professional product catalog that stands out.
