Three merchants offer their insights on establishing virtual catalogs.

By Noelle Buoncristiano

The online catalog allows customers to flip the pages and stop where they want to shop. We believe we’re seeing a higher average order value when they shop using the online catalog.

CS: Are there disadvantages or challenges?

Friedman: The actual execution of getting the catalogs online is a challenge. Our internal process needed to change to make that happen. For example, we needed to send the PDF files to our provider, and we needed to create some Web capability to allow for the feature on the site.