I hate entering into something I thought was going to be simple, only to realize I have all of these twists and turns ahead of me. The less I care about the end results, the more likely I am to give up have way through and continue on my way without bothering to look back.



Consider this for when you print catalogs, and even before you print them. Think about all of the different administrative parts of your catalog printing push. The first step is signing up for the catalog to begin with.

How easy is it to find information on how to get your catalog? How simple is the process for actually getting your catalogs delivered to a person's home? Is a person able to accomplish this in a matter of minutes, and can they find out how to do in just as quickly? The harder it is for them to get on your mailing list the greater the odds that they won't ever bother to.

Once you do print catalogs to send out to people, how easy is it for them to order your products? Is the information simple and easy to find in the catalog itself? Do they have to search somewhere near the back of the catalog to find anything of value, or do you mention below every single product what they can do to order it? Do you have a lot of product codes they have to remember in order to remember them?

I've seen catalogs before where I swear you have to recite a combination of ten letters and numbers in order to order anything, and sometimes I just get sick and tired of having to keep track of all of that.

Also, how easy is it to remove yourself from the mailing list. Yes, this can be just as important, because a person might be removing themselves now, but that does not mean they will not come back. Furthermore, if they have a bad experience trying to get off they may tell others, harming your business further.

The products descriptions, images, and general layout of your catalog are going to be very important, but you have to consider how difficult the administrative stuff is as well. Too often when a companies decides to print catalogs they worry so much about the design aspect that they do not create an easy to use system for even getting the catalog or getting the products.

If things are not easy people are not going to be as likely to bother trying. What can I say, I like things to be easy, and if you cannot make it easy for me, I am sure there is another company out there perfectly capable of making it as easy as possible.