Build a product catalog: Old Version

[OUTDATED] Learn how to create a product catalog using designer, templates and layouts.

Updated over a week ago

 This help is for the old designer version. Read how to use New Catalog Builder.

Watch this short video on how to create a catalog :

Before you start

Do you need products for your catalogs or can you simply make a catalog with text and images?

Using products for building catalogs has several advantages

  • convenient management of product data and images

  • reuse same products in different catalogs and Showroom

  • automatic update of catalogs when products change

And the biggest benefit - you can import products from the following:

Learn more about 

Create a new catalog

Once you have signed up with Catalog Machine you can select
What catalog type you want to create (defines templates and you can change it on  the later design stage) 

  • A standard catalog type is a set of generic product templates from full page to smaller grids (3x3, 4x4, etc.)

  • Line sheet - targets templates with product information for retail and wholesale purposes

  • Price List - provides layouts for product and price listings in addition to standard templates

  • Lookbook - templates with larger images and less product information

How do you want to add products - uploading images, importing from CSV, Shopify, Etsy, etc.

Later, you can start creating a catalog from the dashboard, menu or top bar

Click on “Create a catalog” and get started…

1. Upload or import your products

Depending on your selection you will be redirect to add product or other import pages (read more here). Default upload products screen allow you to upload images to create products, add new products and enter basic information.

You can switch between product import sources and management pages from My Products menu

2. Select products for the catalog

Add products to your catalog from the list of available products, edit and reorder this list:
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3. Design your catalog

Choose your product templates, cover layout, page size and decide on your theme - colors and fonts.

4. Preview and create a catalog

  1. Enter basic catalog information

  2. Preview and edit your catalog pages before creation. Try different covers and templates. You can go back to the design step to adjust

  3. Manual product selection will display how products look like. Automated pages (like Table of Contents or Collection pages) will be generated later in online or PDF preview.

  4. You can click on page elements and edit them or upload images.

Catalog Designer

When you are ready, click “Create a catalog” to move to the Catalog Designer.

Within the Catalog Designer pages you can:

1. Save, Publish, Share your catalog, view it online or Download as a PDF or change your catalog properties

2. Add a new page or predefined layout

You can add pages that will generate automatically:

  1. Pages from other catalogs (ToC pages from included sub catalog will be skipped and main catalog ToC will be updated)

3. Use the Design Board to edit, drag & drop, move or resize elements

You can drag & drop to board basic elements, images, products and templates.

Keyboard shortcuts

You can use keyboard shortcuts for some operations: move (arrow keys), resize (Shift + arrow keys), delete (Del key).

Product Price List element

Catalog pages can include Product Price Lists elements. Read more about product list configuration.

Catalog Advanced and Design Settings

Configure catalog theme, headers, footers in properties popup:

Configure:

You can override header / footer and background properties for each individual page in page settings tab

Publish & Share

Once you are finished, Publish your catalog online. You can share your catalog in social media or you can download / attach to email as link or PDF. Alternatively you can keep your catalog private and share without public access.

Order Requests

You can enable order / quote requests for your catalog products.

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