Creative

You’ve hired a terrific agency to design your Web site. You have competent programmers putting it together so it’s fast, clean and bug-free. You’ve registered your site into every search engine known to mankind (to date). But nobody’s finding you, and visits are light and non-productive. What could be wrong? You may be suffering from the “My creative’s all wrong for my search engine” blues. And you’re not alone. If your site was developed more than two years ago, it’s probably not up to speed on how to be attractive to today’s crawlers. In this, my first column for Catalog Success, I won’t cover

Copy on your site shouldn’t be written by a programmer, designer or an assistant — it should be written by a direct marketing-oriented copywriter. You need great selling copy as well as content. But effective use of copy isn’t limited to who writes it. Consider some other key points: • Avoid Flash intros. They can chase potential customers away so fast it will make your head spin. Use language to woo customers to your site. Once they’re already engaged with you, you can offer them the option of viewing streaming video to impress them further. But never force them to do it. • Use keyword analysis

When I picked up this catalog, I was immediately impressed by the clean and consistent design. It has structure without seeming stuffy, and features tons of information that’s easy to read and understand. Oh, and did I mention the gorgeous, rich products? Yes, this is a good catalog — handsome and well put together. It’s instructional without being cold. It’s full of information and products, without real clutter. I concluded rather quickly that this fine catalog could be used in design schools as an example of a hard-working catalog that doesn’t lose its beauty. Positives, Improvements Of course, there’s always room for improvement. Starting with the cover:

Copy on your site shouldn’t be written by a programmer, designer or an assistant — it should be written by a direct marketing-oriented copywriter. You need great selling copy as well as content. But effective use of copy isn’t limited to who writes it. Consider some other key points: • Avoid Flash intros. They can chase potential customers away so fast it will make your head spin. Use language to woo customers to your site. Once they’re already engaged with you, you can offer them the option of viewing streaming video to impress them further. But never force them to do it. • Use keyword analysis

Like other insert media programs, such as package stuffers and blow-ins, miniature catalogs have been around a long time. But in recent times, their popularity among catalogers appears to be on the rise. Catalogers as diverse in nature as nursing mother products marketer Motherwear International and B-to-B uniforms mailer UniFirst Corp. have been successful marketing through mini-format catalogs. What’s more, multi-title apparel and food cataloger Crosstown Traders plans to test its first miniature later this year. Defined primarily as having no more than 24 pages at various dimensions, miniatures can be a more efficient way to get your product offerings in front of

When clients come to me with questions about starting a catalog, invariably the subject of creative development comes up. Should it be their internal creative department despite its limited knowledge of catalog development; their agency, which really knows the business; or someone else entirely?

My answer to those questions always is this: Choose designers who specifically know the mail order catalog market. Why? Consider the following:

A catalog used to generate sales via mail/Internet ordering is a very different animal from a branding vehicle. It may look similar, but companies that create mail order catalogs know exactly how to build a catalog that not only builds

More than 90 percent of catalogers and online retailers plan to use rich media on their sites in the coming year, according to a recently released report from rich media platform provider Scene 7. Rich media refers to the set of Web applications that allow consumers to flip pages in online catalogs, zoom in on products or otherwise engage in an interactive way with a Web site. The survey revealed the percentage of online merchants that have deployed or plan to deploy specific rich media applications in the coming year. * Dynamic cross selling - 73 percent; * Alternate product views - 68

The past decade hasn’t been good to small booksellers — catalog or retail. Soundly beaten in price, selection and convenience by volume-driven big box retailers like Barnes & Noble and Borders, as well as online retailers such as Amazon.com, many of today’s smaller booksellers are barely hanging on. But at least one small cataloger has found a way to reinvent itself and thrive. Chinaberry, a two-title cataloger of children’s books, educational toys, and spiritual and inspirational gifts, has found its own path to modest growth over the past couple of years. The company mails a namesake catalog that offers children’s books and toys, and

They say “don’t judge a book by its cover,” but with a catalog, you must. A catalog has about three seconds to inspire someone to open it — or toss it. My first impression of the Botanic Choice catalog is chaos. This catalog, which sells nutraceuticals, vitamins and supplements, features no fewer than nine fonts and 12 point sizes, a free shipping offer call-out, a free shipping coupon, and seven products — and that’s just on the cover! Perhaps people who shop this category respond to this type of visual onslaught. But my initial impression is that shopping from this catalog would be like

In last week’s feature, I discussed the basic process for square inch (squinch) analysis and how the sales per inch metric can determine which products in your catalog deserve more space and which can be eliminated from the catalog entirely. This week, I’ll discuss other squinch metrics that can be tracked and those worth pursuing. Five additional metrics you can add into your squinch analysis spreadsheet are: * Profit per inch by item; * Sales per inch by category; * Profit per inch by category; * Sales per inch by page; and * Profit per inch by page. Profit per inch: Although it’s available in many software packages, especially