How to Integrate Your Digital Catalog - Top Examples

Having a digital catalog alone is not enough. You need to integrate it in an appealing way that makes people open it and engage with it.

Based on our extensive experience integrating digital catalogs for major retailers like Coop, Salling Group, Media Markt etc. we have some best practices.

Time it Automatically

Too often we see retailers manually update the links to their digital catalogs every single week. Besides being tedious, it's also error prone and waste of your time. Make sure the timing of your digital catalogs is completely automatic using an API.

Make It Prominent on Your Frontpage

A lot of your visitors don't know what they want to buy yet. The digital catalog excels in inspiring people so make sure people get that option. And if your digital catalog has a lot of great deals, you want to make sure that the part of your visitors are deal hunters can easily find it.

Make It Load Instantly

This part is key. It's common knowledge that slow loading times affect bounce rate and page views so make sure you don't fall into that pitfall.

All of your available digital catalogs should be displayed immediately and as soon as your click it, it should open.

If you want to take it one step further, we recommend you preload the digital catalog when people hover your mouse over the thumbnail, before they click.

It Should Be White-labeled

Make sure that whatever provider you select it's completely white-label. You don't want to show other logos, other style of icons, different fonts on your own website.

This often times happens when the 3rd party provider offers an iframe solution you can embed on your website. This is usually slower and not white-label.

So make sure there's no iframes and it blends into your website so it looks like your own solution. You should even be able to customize things here and there using CSS.

Connect It to Your Webshop

Make sure your digital catalog stays in your app or website. Don't open a new tab to a 3rd party domain!. It should open right in your webshop and each product should be connected to your basket. There's two options for what happens when you click a product: 1) either show a modal on top of the catalog or 2) open a new tab with a dedicated page for the product.

Whether you select 1 or 2 depends on your own use-case. If you are in groceries, you most likely want to open a modal. If you're in electronics, perhaps opening a dedicated page with more context makes more sense.

Provide Navigational Overview

If you have a long digital catalog, a menu/table of contents is the way to go. Otherwise, it's simply too large for people to go through. You should also provide a search option if you can.

Since digital catalogs should be finite it's also very important you tell people where they are. If you have a PDF, you can say which page number. If you have a 100 % digital catalog that's responsive, you can show a progress bar from 0 % to 100 %.

See it All Together

This particular video shows how our software can help you make a 100 % digital catalog with our technology, Incito, that's embedded right on your website.

Now that you have your digital catalog created and integrated on your website and/or in your apps, you need to make some noise.