What is a Product Catalog & How to Create One

 Want to create a product catalog? Good call. 

Product catalogs are tremendously useful marketing and sales assets that organize all your product information in one place. Since its main objective is to categorize product information, a product catalog is useful to not just buyers but decision-makers, retailers, marketers and sales reps. 

The best part? With everything that you learn today, you’ll be only a template away from creating a visually engaging product catalog. 

So without further delay, let’s dig into this soup-to-nuts guide on product catalogs covering why you need one and steps to create it. We’ve also got customizable product catalog templates to help you create one in minutes.

But, first, let’s start with a quick refresh.

 

Table of Contents

What Is a Product Catalog?

Why Do You Need a Product Catalog?

What Goes Into a Product Catalog?

How to Create a Product Catalog

 

What Is a Product Catalog?

A product catalog is a document enlisting essential product information such as product dimensions, pricing, material and more.  Both B2B and B2C industries leverage product catalogs. And, they aren’t limited to the eCommerce space. Service-based businesses and offline shops use product catalogs too.

The aim? Well, that depends on who the audience is.

So if a buyer were browsing through your product catalog, the goal would be to convert them. Similarly, if a sales rep were using it, the aim would be to provide them with product information to encourage contextual conversations that convert prospects into buyers.  Note that product catalogs come in various shapes and sizes. 

Meaning: you can design physical, magazine-like product catalogs and online documents such as interactive PDFs or upload them on your site. 

In fact, with online shopping on the rise (2.14 billion or 27.6% across the globe shop online), online product catalogs are a lot more useful than paperback product catalogs. That said, the choice is yours considering you’re the best judge of who your audience is and what their shopping preferences are. 

Why Do You Need a Product Catalog?

Chiefly, you need a product catalog to categorize products in an easy-to-understand manner so its reader can either source information easily or make their buying decision based on the info. 

Here’s a rundown of other reasons why you need a product catalog: 

Helps with decision-making

A product catalog helps buyers decide the products they want to buy from you based on the product information. 

Shortens buyer’s journey and improves user experience

A well-designed catalog puts you forward as a professional business that offers value every step of the way. 

Since most shoppers are buying online — or, at least, starting their search online — a product catalog (improves and) shortens their buyer’s journey by providing them the information they need to make their decisions. 

What’s more, by creating interactive catalogs, you can also improve their user experience, making it easy for them to learn more about you, read case studies, customer reviews and so on. 

Assists with planning new product offering

By giving an overview of all commercial product information, a product catalog also helps product marketing managers outline and map new product offerings. 

Improves the sales process 

A product catalog makes it easy for sales reps to source product information from one place. This allows them to have meaningful sales conversations, which better engages prospects and improves conversion rates. 

Provides useful reference materials for marketers 

Marketers can easily refer to the product details such as colors available and discounts to share enticing product details in the content they create and ads they run. 

Reduces employee onboarding and training work 

With a solid product catalog, new hires such as salespeople get a referenceable document that gives them all the product details they need.  Not only does this reduce the work that goes into training employees but also reduces the back and forth involved in getting product information from specific departments. 

Serves as a reference guide for external partners and field marketers 

Finally, external partners such as agencies and value-added sellers can refer to your catalog for product details to share with their buyers. In the same vein, field marketers use the catalog to provide accurate product and pricing details to customers they give product demos to.

Bonus: Use your product catalog to generate leads. This one’s a hat tip to Volvo that displays all its product catalogs on their site like a library. When a user selects the document they want to view though, they ask for their email address and whether they’d like to receive a personalized quote too.

What Goes Into a Product Catalog?

Since a product catalog offers full details of your product pool, it needs to include the following details about each of your products: 

Pictures

Short description 

Features 

Dimensions such as the size 

Material such as copper 

Care instructions

Safety precautions 

Certifications like ISO 9001

Customer credentials (such as reviews)

Price including any discount 

Call to action such as ‘buy now’ or ‘book a demo call’

Let’s look at Nestle’s catalog for a simple yet effective example of a product catalog. 

Two things worth noting: first, the company has chosen to keep its product catalog design clutter-free. It also makes organization simple by choosing to create catalogs for various products they sell. This is useful for anyone who sells multiple products as Nestle does.  And, second: the company has created an on-brand product catalog so it feels part of the business family — not foreign to it. 

This is evident from the Nestle logo on the front page. Plus, they’ve chosen KitKat's signature red for the page. 

The second page dives straight into their products — sharing all essential details that we listed above. 

Each chocolate (product) has the following details: picture, price, weight and product barcode. 

On selected products, there’s also a star (look at the first chocolate). It indicates the product is a top-ranking one — bringing customer credentials into the picture. 

 As for organization, the catalog mentions the category “medium bars,” “share bars,” “blocks,” “bulk,” and “chocolate bags” among others on the page’s side. 

How to Create a Product Catalog

Now for how to put all these theoretical details into a product catalog. Creating a well-organized, visually appealing catalog isn’t rocket science, honestly. 

By investing time in prior planning and using an online document creator to design your catalog, you can get the job done quickly and efficiently. To speed things up, you can also pick from any product catalog templates, customize the best-fit based on your brand guidelines and your catalog will be ready in less than an hour. 

Let’s walk you through each step you’ll need to take to make a product catalog. 

Step 1: Gather all your product data.

Start with gathering product information such as composition, dimensions, customer testimonials, pricing and so on. Compile them all into a spreadsheet so that you can source data easily as you design your catalog. Make sure you source product pictures too. In most product catalogs, pictures play a key role in converting buyers. So make sure all your pictures are high-quality. 

One last thing to gather before you get to work: guidelines on your visual brand identity. This way, you’ll have notes on your brand colors, fonts to use, brand personality and related details that’ll help you create a consistent, on-brand catalog.  

Step 2: Plan catalog structure and layout.

The next thing you need to do is draft a layout for your product catalog. The goal is to visualize the product-featuring document so you know what it is that you want to create. 

To this end, creating a mockup helps. If you’re short on time, consider a simple mockup in the form of a pencil sketch. Otherwise, create a free skeletal structure using Visme. Taking the time to put together a mockup helps you save time down the line by providing a clear, defined direction for the design work. Without it, you’ll find yourself changing directions one too many times, unsure of the layout and, ultimately, wasting time with all the redesigning and editing. 

Pro tip: Plan a visual-first layout for your product catalog while using minimal text. This works because the overall design is less wordy and more product pictures-oriented which makes it engaging and easy to understand. 

Not sure what structure will best suit your product catalog? 

It’s based on bold visuals that take up entire pages with the aim of showing products to the audience to convert them. 

On the flip side, this template for a service-based business relies on words to communicate the offer. 

Step 3: Design your product catalog.

Here, you can start from scratch or with a template. 

Either way, know that you’ll need to start with an on-brand front page that reflects your brand personality and a table of contents (TOC) page to help users navigate the document. 

Begin by clicking Create New is your Visme dashboard, then New Project. Now, choose Documents. 

From there, select Catalog in the horizontal bar and you’ll have a template gallery open up below alongside an option to work from a blank page. 

Pick whatever you like. 

If you select Blank Template by clicking Edit, you’ll get a plain canvas. 

Click anywhere on it and you’ll see two options pop up on the left-hand side: Background and Canvas Size. 

By selecting Background, you can start working on the front page. Pick a plain colored background, a patterned one, a picture — even an animated front, whatever you like. 

On the other hand, by selecting Canvas Size, you can change the document’s size. You also have the option to pick a custom size if needed. 

With that done, add your cover page text. 

For this, click on Blank Template on the center of the canvas and a rectangle text box will show up. Erase the dummy text and enter yours. 

Want to add more text? Select Header & Text from the left side of the dashboard and pick a style. 

It’s also on this same panel that you’ll find the rest of the design elements. From diagrams to call-to-action buttons and graphics — you’ll find everything that you need through the catalog design work here. 

Moreover, on the extreme left side, you’ll see the options to select Graphics, Photos, Data and more. Switch between these as you add lines, icons, product pictures, 3D graphics and whatever else you want in the catalog. 

Remember these are the design tools you’ll need for all the document pages that you create in Visme — not just the front page. 

Once you’ve designed the cover though, add another page from the right side, clicking the + New page option. 

Here again, you can pick from a blank page or select a template. 

Keep adding pages, customizing or designing them until your product catalog is ready. 

If you’ve started with the template from the get-go, you can speed things up. 

All you’ve to do is select whatever icon, text and design element you want to personalize and hit Edit. Then change the font, design, color, etc. 

As in the blank canvas, you’ve the option to add and remove pages from template too. 

When adding a new page, again, you’ve the option to add a blank one, one from another template, and one from the same template too. 

Step 4: Publish or download the catalog.

Once done, click on Download on the top right side of your Visme dashboard. 

Choose Document (PDF) here to download your file. 

But if you’d like to create an online product catalog that you can share using a link, click Share beside the Download option. 

Now you can get the sharing link or distribute the document privately if it’s an internal use product catalog only. Or, you can embed it on your site.

Plus, by selecting Advanced Option, you can use this catalog as a lead magnet. 

Simply, tap on Privacy then toggle on Require Registration so site visitors can only access the document after sharing their email address with you. Bullseye!