Boston has been good to us this week. The people, energy, lessons, and inspiration at INBOUND 2018 have been nothing short of amazing.

We’ve learned more about content, data, segmentation, growth models, and KPIs than we possibly could have imagined. It’s been exhilarating—and exhausting—and there’s more to come in the weeks ahead about what we learned.

But for now, one presentation from HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah unveiling The Customer Code stands out and, in my opinion, should change the way many of us think about our businesses.

There are a lot of claims floating around the internet about an 8-second attention span. While many studies have been legitimate, BBC News reports it’s a bit more complicated than establishing a hard and fast “average attention span”—and it’s actually task-dependent.

That said, we do know this: Our attention spans are relatively short.

And, they’re extremely short when it comes to digital. If we don’t see what we want, we close windows and choose another result until we find exactly what we’re looking for. So how can you grab your audience’s attention?

The release of the annual IKEA catalog is a mini-event, if only for the fact that it's rare for a retailer to release and mail out 288 pages of anything these days.

As retail marketers, it’s a book we refer back to throughout the year for insights. As shoppers, it’s one we keep around to spark ideas for our own spaces.

With the 2019 catalog's release in August, we wanted to take a closer look and see how IKEA translates the catalog experience for in-store shoppers. We found five simple, interesting, and thoughtful ways the catalog comes to life in-store—tactics you also may want to take note of and refer back to this year.