10 steps to a successful redesign

Featured in Catalog Success Magazine May 2008
Sarah Fletcher Creative Director Catalog Design Studios Inc.

When Catalog Success asked me to write an article about 10 steps to a successful catalog redesign I realized that a redesign had lot in common with a mid-life crisis makeover. There comes a time in every catalog’s life (if it is lucky to survive long enough) that it looks around at the competition and feels ugly, frumpy and over the hill. And though there is no single redesign shape-up solution for everyone, we all need to travel the same path. So come on all you Cosmo Girls (and Boys) lets walk through 10 steps to a “new you”.

1. Do you really need a whole new you or just a haircut?
Before you start looking at new fonts and cover treatments you need to decide if you are redesigning for the customer you have, who likes you just the way you are but could use a little something to return to the passion you once shared; or a new customer who (we need to be honest with ourselves here) would never be attracted to the old you. If you are designing for the customer you have, then some tweaking is going to get you where you want to be and you should be guided by the old saying “Less is more.”
If you want to appeal to a different customer, you will want to make more radical changes. Letting go is hard and you should talk to marketing because they may not be ready to give up your old customers even if you are. Keep in mind that evolution is often more successful than revolution.
Here are a few customer attributes to think about when you are designing your new look.

Male or female
Age range
Educational level
Interests (sports, movies, reading, travel, crafts etc.)
Ethnic background
Trendy or traditional
Cheap or chic
Early adopters vs. mainstream users

The more you know about your customer the better. B2B companies need to focus more on the attributes of the companies they are selling to and less on the personal attributes of the person making the purchase.

2. Don’t try to be something that you aren’t
Every catalog has things it does better than the competition a.k.a. key brand attributes. It is important to define your key brand attributes so you can make sure they are what is being showcased. Hey, if you got it—flaunt it! If your key brand attribute is having the lowest price then you are appealing to a frugal customer and you will want to avoid things that make you look like a spendthrift. If your key brand attribute is the largest assortment in the industry, you are appealing to a customer who appreciates lots of choices and/or the convenience of one stop shopping so you will need to focus on helping them make the best choice.

3. Put yourself in the eye of the beholder
In order to really turn your customer’s head, you need to look at your catalog from their perspective. Take time to go through your catalog the way your customers do. For instance if your ideal customer is female, 35-55, educated, likes reading and travel, is latino, trendy, more chic than cheap, and a mainstream user. Pretend to be her and go through your catalog and actually shop for something. Develop an information hierarchy of what you need to make a purchase. So if this is a catalog of gifts the first information hurdle is who is she buying for? Therefor you need to make sure it is easy to find gifts by recipient type.
If her next information hurdle is price, you need to help her find products in appropriate price ranges.
Once she has narrowed her search what product information does she need to make a purchase? Are the benefits, features, and product specs fully explained?
How easy is it to place an order? Are the SKU, prices, sizes and colors easy to understand?
How easy is it to contact you? Are the web address, phone and other contact info easy to find?

4. Does this photo make my page look big?
Standing in front of the mirror can be revealing. By determining what you like and don’t like about your existing creative you can give your design team better direction on what, and how much, change should take place. Going over the following list as a team is a good place to start.

Logos
Icons
Catalog size
Photography
Typography
Colors
Structure/Pagination
Product Density
Headlines
Body Copy
Callouts
Editorial
Testimonials
Table of Contents

Resist the urge to throw up you hands and say “I hate everything! I just want to look like [insert competitor’s name here]” You don’t want to look like your competition, you want to be the “Dazzling You” that best reflects your key brand attributes.

5. Showcase your best features and downplay your flaws
Identify your 10 best and 10 worst products. These products will tell you a lot about what your customers are buying and what they just don’t care about. Make sure that you focus the majority of your time and effort on showcasing the top 10. Increasing sales of these items by five or ten percent will greatly outperform increasing the sales of the worst products by 20 or 30 percent and it is much easier to do.

6. Get your creative juices flowing
Put together a file of things you think your customer would like, could be cocktail napkins or a painting by Degas or clippings from a magazine. Don’t get caught up in a catalog only mentality. Great ideas come from all sorts of places. Our company logo was sparked by a 1950’s parking sign. Use competitors catalogs as idea starters, remember—you don’t want to look like them and they probably don’t have the same key brand attributes that you do.

7. Have a little fun before you settle down with one look
It is easy to fall in love with the first design you produce but don’t stop there. Go at it from several angles and produce at least 3 versions of a new design. We usually do three versions of a new design, each including a cover, high density spread and a low density spread.

8. Model your new looks
Half the fun of doing a redesign is showing off all the exciting possibilities. If you are lucky enough to have the budget for focus groups it is a wonderful way to get feedback from customers. If you don’t have that luxury then reach out to the people around you for feedback. Larger companies usually have a pool of decision makers who need to weigh in. Try to keep everyone focused on the target customer rather than their own personal taste. Be sure to ask people to pretend to shop the page. Pretty is nice but ease of shopping is what rings the cash register.

9. Weed out your closet
Once you have had your fun with all the new creative possibilities and you have gotten lots of feedback, it's time to roll up you sleeves to keep the good stuff while weeding out the bad. It is important to get the details right and make the final version the best it can be, but no matter how good you are there will still be rolling changes. My mother is fond of saying “It takes two to be a genius, one to do it and one to tell the other when to stop.”

10. Become the “new You”
It takes time for customers to recognize the “new you” and the more radical the changes the more time they will need to fully embrace you. Brand power is created by long term customer recognition. In other words you need to give customers time to get used to your new look. Inevitably some day they will begin taking the “new you” for granted. And not much further down the road you need to start thinking about another makeover. As a good rule of thumb you should not be doing major overhauls more than once every three to five years. If you keep the look of your book up to date you can stretch it out even longer.