A well-designed digital catalogue that captivates readers and drives engagement can be one of your most valuable sales tools. When creating a digital catalogue, driving engagement must be a central consideration. The importance of driving engagement lies in its direct correlation with increased conversion rates and customer satisfaction.
By developing an engaging catalogue you not only captivate the attention of potential buyers but also facilitate a seamless and enjoyable browsing experience. To help you in this process, we have put together 25 ideas designed to help you increase engagement in your digital catalogue.
1. Interactive product demos
Create interactive demonstrations for key products that allow prospective customers to engage with your products in a unique and memorable way. Embed these directly into your digital publication or have them accessible using an interactive pop-up.
2. 360-degree product views
Give your customer a comprehensive look at products with an interactive demo. A subset of interactive product demos, 360-degree product views give customers a comprehensive look at your products, enabling them to rotate and zoom in on items.
3. Include customer reviews and ratings
Having customer reviews included in your digital catalogue builds trust and encourages customers to engage further. Go one step further and add hyperlinks direct to product reviews on your website, blog, or third-party review sites like TrustPilot.
4. Limited-time offers
Changes to your digital catalogue appear instantly, allowing you to introduce time-sensitive discounts or promotions. Used effectively they create a sense of urgency and drive immediate action from your customers.
5. Embed video content
Studies show that video has higher engagement rates than text. Put your product videos to work in enticing prospective buyers and embed them directly into your digital catalogue.
6. Use mobile push notifications
If you have created an app for your digital catalogue, you can take advantage of mobile push notifications. These offer a timely and effective way to alert customers to the latest catalogue releases, discounts, or price changes to drive engagement.
7. Implement remarketing
With an HTML catalogue, you can take advantage of remarketing campaigns. All major search and social providers - Google, Microsoft, Facebook, X, LinkedIn - allow you to build and remarket to customers through their platforms and display networks.
Simply drop their pixel into the HTML of your digital catalogue, and then you can begin building audiences and showing remarketing advertising to past visitors. Offering a new and effective method for re-engaging prospective customers with your catalogue.
8. In-App Chat Support
Provide real-time chat support within your catalogue app. This creates a channel where customers can engage with you directly to have their queries or concerns promptly addressed.
9. Add search
Including search functionality in your digital catalogue gives customers the power to search your catalogues quickly and find our navigate to the products they are looking for.
10. Create personalised catalogues
Personalisation doesn't need to be challenging. Digital catalogues are easy to edit, so you can quickly create a personalised catalogue for defined audiences like prospects, existing customers, and lapsed customers. These personalised catalogues can then be sent to pre-segmented emailing lists. This allows you to adjust pricing or messaging to each audience to influence engagement.
11. Use analytics to identify problem pages
Analytics in your digital catalogue allow you to collect data and shine a light on your problem pages. Run reports to identify pages with high bounce rates or low engagement rates, then you can begin improving them to overcome any issues.
12. Support user annotations
Supporting user-generated content is a great way to engage your catalogue readers. Allowing the reader to add annotations creates a sense of ownership where they can personalise the catalogue to meet their own needs.
13. In-Depth Product Descriptions
Creating highly detailed and informative product descriptions pulls your customers into the content of the catalogue. Including detailed product specifications, use cases and care instructions are all great additions that can entice the reader to find out more.
14. Add social sharing buttons
Social sharing buttons are another great way to connect customers with your catalogue. It gives them a quick and easy way to share the products they are interested in with friends, colleagues, or their followers. You can embed social sharing buttons directly into your online catalogue content as clickable hyperlinks, or include them within the toolbar used to navigate your digital edition.
15. Link products directly to your e-commerce website
Add hyperlinks to products in your digital catalogue so customers can navigate to the equivalent product on your e-commerce website. This is a powerful way to deliver additional product information to customers and also allows them to make a quick purchase directly from your website. Don't forget to add tracking to these links so you know when your online catalogue has driven a purchase.
16. Embed a countdown timer
Having a deadline is a powerful way to create urgency and drive action from customers. When running a discount campaign, embed a dynamic countdown timer directly into your online catalogue so customers know exactly how long they have left to secure a discount.
17. Embed surveys to collect customer feedback
User surveys are a great way to engage customers and collect invaluable feedback on your products and catalogue. With a digital catalogue, you can include a direct link to customer surveys within the content, or even embed them with an iframe.
18. Integrate web-push notifications into your online catalogue
The browser equivalent of mobile push notifications, web push notifications create a unique mechanism to instantly re-engage visitors with an alert direct to any device.
Once configured, readers can subscribe to receive web push notifications from your digital catalogue. These are clickable messages sent by your website directly to the reader's web browser, which they can click to navigate directly to the catalogue.
19. Add a subscription form to receive the latest discounts and updates
Add an email subscription form to your catalogue so customers can sign up to receive emails about product discounts, stock releases and new catalogue releases. This gives you a list of engaged readers you can target with relevant messaging to drive them back to your digital catalogue.
20. Include a shopping cart built into your catalogue
Leading publishing platforms - like YUDU Publisher - deliver in-built functionality allowing you to add a shopping cart to your digital catalogue. Customers can then browse, add products to a digital basket with the click of a button and complete their purchase all within the confines of your e-catalogue.
21. Shareable product collections
Allow users to create and share collections of their favourite products, this will foster a sense of community around product curation. With YUDU Publisher, readers can do this by creating a customised version of your catalogue by choosing select pages which they can then email or share directly to social media platforms.
22. Dynamic content updates
Updates to a digital catalogue are instantly available upon publishing. This means you can deliver dynamic content like updated product information, stock availability, and price changes that give customers a reason to re-engage. Combined with mobile and web push notifications you can alert users to new arrivals and changes within your online catalogue.
23. Let users bookmark content
Another facet of user-generated content, bookmarks are another way that readers can personalise their digital catalogue experience and navigate quickly back to the products or sections that interest them the most.
24. Integrate live chat
Adding live chat to your digital catalogue allows customers to directly engage with your customer service and sales team. Allowing you to support them with any product queries, provide recommendations and overcome any concerns they might have before purchase.
A well-executed live chat strategy delivers unrivalled levels of engagement in your online catalogue.
25. Sneak peeks for subscribers
Utilise your mailing lists to increase engagement with your catalogue. Run campaigns that offer exclusive sneak peeks of upcoming products to drive interest and bring customers back to your online catalogue. You might even consider offering early access to the catalogue prior to release for your most valued customers.