View this newsletter in browser
|
||
| Chief Editor Anuraag S | Editor Swati Bhalla | Powered by GigaSoft™ | ||
|
||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|||||
| By Glenda Shasho Jones A cataloger's job of presenting merchandise is second in importance only to selecting the right merchandise. Readers decide in seconds whether they're going to continue to read about a product or move on. The amount of information readers comprehend “at a glance” isn't limited by their brains; it's only limited by what we put in front of them. Even those interested in a product will skip over it if they don't understand it or they're not “sold” on it. What and how you show product in your catalog makes all the difference in the world. The following list contains the most frequent mistakes made by catalog merchandisers. Mistake No. 1: Mediocre or Poor Photography There's no excuse for low quality photography. Your shots should be technically excellent, whether still life or on-figure. This quality affects everything down the line, including color quality and print photo reproduction. Lighting is a critical factor in making your photos top quality. It can romance a shot, but it can also kill a sale if it's so dramatic that you can't see the product. Lighting for dramatic colors (e.g. black and white being a common challenge) is an art. Aesthetics make a big difference too. Merchandise can come to life when shot at the right angle. Mistake No. 2: Busy Backgrounds and Surfaces Sometimes, in the effort to warm up a shot, create a sense of place or simply add drama, creative talent on the set (art directors, photographers and stylists) set up shots that backfire. Why? Complicated backgrounds actually take readers' eyes away from the product, the very place you want readers to focus. In some cases, art directors are so excited about a great location (or simply want to justify the expense of traveling) that they make the background as important as the merchandise, when they should be directing the photographer to blur out a background. Still life shots quickly can get complicated with busy backgrounds and too many props. When busy backgrounds are used too often, they create spreads where eyeflow goes out the window and readers are encouraged to just turn the page or abandon the book, since their eyes don't know where to go. Backgrounds can be very important. But when in doubt, leave it out: Simple is almost always better. Mistake No. 3: Disorganized Presentations Customers respond best when you give them an organized presentation. This doesn't mean that every spread has to be in a grid format, but it does mean that there should be a flow to pages that naturally takes readers' eyes to features, sub-features and less important products, in that order. Copy should be secondary and easy to match to products. Elements that pull the eyes away from the product can also be a problem, whether they be type treatment, color, icons or other less important elements. Mistake No. 4: Weak Selling Efforts Catalogers must use a variety of elements to be their salespeople. Work hard to show customers why they should be buying something. This is especially true for complicated, performance-oriented or expensive products. Frontgate, for example, realizes that an expensive barbecue grill needs a lot of romancing, in terms of call-outs, bullets and microscopic shots. Staples does the same hard work when selling office chairs. And while fashion apparel is sometimes “just a great shot,” many apparel catalogers have learned that they need to show inset and magnified shots of product details to enhance sales. Mistake No. 5: Lack of Product Detail Ask yourself the following: If you think you can get away with avoiding these and other details, think again. People don't read. They have to see it in the art. Use copy for reinforcement and supporting additional information, but not as a replacement for product detail that's integral to a purchase. Customers take in a huge amount of information in a split second, and if there's a piece of critical data missing such as a skirt or pant length, important waist detail or fabric close-up, you're upping the odds that customers will turn past a garment in which they otherwise might have been interested. Even if customers aren't conscious of why they're not stopping, the decision to stop or continue on is made in seconds. |
|
|||
 |
|||||
|
||||
|
|||
|
