How To Create A Catalog Website

An online catalog can be an excellent way to showcase your products to your target market, regardless of your industry.

If you've been putting off creating an online catalog because you think the process might be too hard or too technical, here's the good news:

An online catalog maker can make creating your digital catalog simple and straightforward.

There's a small learning curve that you need to master but the whole process is designed to make it as easy as possible to get started.

There are just 6 steps involved so let's get to it, shall we?

#1 Establish Goals

#2 Consider Using A Preloader

#3 Get Familiar With The Viewer

#4 Build Your Online Catalog

#5 Get Your Catalog Online

#6 Analyze Reader Behavior

#1 Establish goals

The first thing you need to do is figure out what you want to do with an online catalog in the first place. What business goals do you want to you achieve?

Should it persuade customers to make a purchase immediately?
Or do you just want to educate your readers about your brand?
Are you aiming to creating something that people will want to share on social media?
Do you want your audience to spend more time in catalog?
Do you want to convert more readers into leads or actual customers?
Or are you simply looking for a smarter way to communicate internally?

Once you understand what you want to achieve you can ask yourself who you want to reach and create content to appeal specifically to that target group.

Ask yourself, is your audience into graphs, infographics, videos or in-depth and detailed articles? You also need to decide how you will determine the success of your catalogs.

For example, will you regard it as a success if a certain number of customers open and read your catalogs?

Eksportfokus acheived a 50% increase in readers, which was a high success rate for their goals.

Eksportfokus Increase in readers

For Toyota the number of page views determines their success goals:

Pageviews Toyota Yves Rocher Italia measures their success by the social media shares of their digital catalog:

Social media engagement Yves Rocher

Amazing numbers right?

If you're curious about how Yves Rocher Italia made their digital catalog the number 1 brand communication tool within a few weeks, read the case here.

As with every aspect of marketing, you need to start by asking yourself why you are exploring this method and define your goals.

#2 Consider Using A Preloader

Take a look at the Power catalog below.

Before the catalog appears, you can see Power's logo displayed for two seconds. This briefly displayed logo is called a preloader.

Showing your logo in this way can be helpful for increasing brand recognition and recall among your audience. Brand recall, along with brand perception and awareness, is key to the success of any marketing strategy.

power preloader

Obviously, your visitors came to read your catalog and not stare at your logo.

Showing your logo for a couple of seconds ensures that readers are familiar with what they're about to see and what they came for.H

Consider the preloader an option to fix your readers' eyes on your brand while they wait the few seconds it takes for the online publication to load.

#3 Get Familiar With The Viewer

The viewer is everything that appears in the window that opens up the catalog, except for the catalog itself.

The viewer includes the top bar, the menu, the logo, and all other controls.

Take the time to get familiar with these controls, so you know what your readers will see and how they will interact with the catalog, moving from page to page, and using the options to print or download your creation.

You can add additional lead generation tools, such as forms and pop-ups, to your catalog viewer. As an example, take a look at this catalog from Suzuki.

suzuki popups

See those messages popping up below the catalog? These pop-ups are valuable lead generation tools for the business, as customers can click on them to book test drives or find a distributor close to their home location.

#4 Build Your Online Catalog

Now that you're familiar with the viewer, it's time to start focusing on the catalog itself.

This is perhaps the most important step in this guide, so let's take some time going through all the options.

When you use iPaper to build your online catalog, you can choose to add automated enrichments, such as links to product IDs.

These enrichments can direct customers to your online store, or invite them to find out more about the products you offer.

A wide range of enrichments are available to enhance your online catalogs and make them more interesting for your readers.

Check out this catalog by Skanska which features many of the benefits you get by using iPaper as your digital publication platform.

skanskaanimation The animation is a type of enrichment feature that many businesses choose to add to their online catalogs.

Animations can show products from all angles or pull them apart to show their components. Or in this case, just as a playful detail.

Forms are another useful feature to include in your catalog. By giving viewers the chance to fill out a form with their contact information in exchange for offers or more valuable content, you can turn your catalog into a powerful tool for lead generation.

xindao gif resize

Finally, inserting video and image galleries into your catalog will make it much more appealing to online consumers.

Studies show that modern customers love watching videos, with 93% of shoppers saying that visuals are the key deciding factor for purchase.

#5 Get Your Catalog Online

Once you've designed your catalog, you need to publish it online and find a way of getting it in front of your target audience.

First, publish the catalog on your website and test it on a range of devices to ensure it's accessible to desktop, tablet and mobile phone users.

Next, you need to share your catalog on social media and send it out to your email subscribers to increase your readership as much as possible.

Search engine optimization is another way to bring more traffic to your site, which ultimately means more eyeballs are browsing your online catalog.

This involves filling your website with valuable, keyword-rich content.

When you surround your catalog with informative articles, blog posts, and other content that online consumers want to read, you increase your chance of ranking highly in the search engine results pages.

#6 Analyze Reader Behavior

Creating your first online catalog is a great achievement.

However, you need to take a long-term attitude to your marketing strategy.

Meaning that you want your future catalogs to be even more engaging.

Collecting data about how your readers interact with your online catalog can be extremely valuable.

You can analyze this data to find out which parts of your catalog your customers find most engaging.

Heat maps show which features users is clicking on while integrating Google Analytics with your iPaper catalogs can let you know how many readers are viewing your catalog for the first time and how many are returning for a second look.

Data from Google Analytics can also let you know where in the world your catalog readers come from, which can be useful if you are trying to decide where to focus your upcoming marketing campaigns.

When you understand how your readers interact with your online catalogs, you can use this information to influence your future design or targeting decisions.

For example, if you find that your readers love explainer videos, you might like to include more of them in the catalogs you make in the future.