Many digital catalogs still prioritize visual design over shopper behavior, limiting their ability to drive conversions.
Digital product catalogs have evolved far beyond static online brochures. Once mirrored print layouts can now support interactive shopping, analytics and even catalog shopping. Yet many brands still approach catalogs with access to print and publishing, leaving them almost unchanged throughout the season.
If a product extension fails to convert or a featured item sells out quickly, many retailers struggle to adjust their catalogs in real time by replacing underperforming products or redirecting shoppers to available inventory.
Janina Moza, CMO at Flipsnack, said many marketers still think of digital catalogs as brochures rather than shopping tools. They focus heavily on photography, typography and page flipping.
“The real path to purchase is, ‘Okay, now find it on the web yourself.’ That’s a lot to ask of a shopper,” she told the E-Commerce Times.
From static PDFs to interactive shopping
According to digital analytics firm Kissmetrics, mobile devices account for nearly 70% of global online shopping traffic, but conversion rates are significantly lower than on desktops. Many visually dense catalogs still perform poorly on smaller screens and slower mobile connections. Impatient shoppers bounce before even seeing the products.
Digital catalogs increasingly support embedded shopping and in-catalog checkouts, eliminating the need to redirect shoppers to separate product pages.
Moza argues that catalogs designed primarily as digital magazines can drive brand awareness, but often fail to drive effective shopping. Newer catalog platforms increasingly focus on shopper engagement and conversion performance rather than static presentation.
“The way we think about it is that the catalog needs to be designed backwards from the click. Start where you want the customer to end up, which is something they’re buying, and work backwards through the experience from there. This single reframe changes almost everything about how the catalog is created,” she said.
When marketers analyze their catalog success, they often rely on total views. These metrics can be misleading. Instead, marketers should look at the average time spent in the catalog, where viewers leave, and which shoppable elements they click on.
Moza sees catalogs with 50,000 views and 12 clicks and others with 3,000 views and 400 clicks. A catalog with fewer views can ultimately bring in more revenue.
“Views are the beginning of a story, not the proof of it,” she noted. “All the views really tell you is that someone opened the file. It doesn’t tell you if they read it, liked it, or bought something.”
Catalog metrics are often misleading
Traditional digital publishing tools often provide little insight into actual shopper behavior. A PDF or basic flipbook registers opens and maybe a summary time on the page, but nothing else, Moza explained. Marketers can’t tell which spreads caught their eye, which ones were skipped, if someone procrastinated on the news or turned to the sales section.
“A shopper who tapped three products and almost completed a purchase and a shopper who didn’t engage at all look the same on your dashboard. It’s a really tough place to make a decision,” she said.
These limitations are one of the reasons newer catalog platforms put more emphasis on engagement analytics. Retailers cannot optimize the shopping experience with limited brochure download analysis.
Moza said retailers need to treat catalogs as adaptable business tools and make changes during campaigns based on shopper engagement and sales performance.
“Interactive catalogs are not locked and are not sent to the printer. You can change them. If the spread doesn’t work, change it. Change the image, rewrite the headline, move it to a different position in the flow, or replace the whole thing with content that is already being tested well somewhere else,” she urged.
Designing catalogs based on shopper behavior
According to Moz, many retail teams avoid making design changes mid-season because traditional tools make adjustments feel like a project. If the landing page didn’t convert, it would have a new version available almost immediately.
“The same mindset applies here, and the brands that really embrace it tend to see three to five times the conversion rate of their peers. Same product, same audience, just a willingness to keep tweaking,” she said.
Moza said engagement data can reveal which products and layouts appeal to different groups of customers. Once retailers understand how shoppers interact with specific pages and products, campaign designers can begin creating variations of the catalog for different audiences.
These variations can make catalogs more relevant to different types of shoppers. One version can rely on news for loyal customers. Another can target bestsellers and first-time visitor discounts. Retailers can also tailor catalogs to specific product categories or shopper interests.
“The same source content, just cleverly combined, and you end up with five catalogs, each of which outperforms the generic one,” she added.
Convert engagement data into sales
Moza said the technology behind interactive catalogs has been around for years. The bigger challenge for retailers is to respond to engagement data quickly enough to improve campaign performance while the catalog is still active.
She noted that many retailers already collect data on shopper behavior but continue to treat catalogs as fixed seasonal assets rather than adaptable business tools.
Moza pointed to one example of a retailer:
The home goods brand was initially excited when its 60-page holiday catalog set a company record for total views. Flipsnack analyzed engagement data and found that the average reader bounces around the ninth page. They built their entire Q4 campaign on the “hero spread” on page 22, which hardly anyone saw, while the overlooked accessories section at the front quietly brought in the most clicks.
The brand restructured in the middle of the campaign. Marketers have pushed high-performance accessories forward. They pulled invisible hero items into targeted email for re-engagement and trimmed the overall catalog. As a result, their conversion rate tripled in the second half of the season using the same audience.
The strong view count initially seemed successful, but engagement data revealed that most shoppers never made it to the campaign’s featured products.
The disconnect showed how traditional catalog metrics can create a false sense of success when retailers prioritize views over real shopper engagement.
