Use Virtual Catalogs to Leverage Your Web Marketing, Part 1

How have the features evolved? Virtual catalogs have finally caught up to their potential as web applications that shoppers can embrace. Consider the following:

• Virtual catalogs link seamlessly back to online shopping carts.
• Virtual catalogs can be included as links on emails, allowing your catalog to reach your email file.
• Loading time for virtual catalogs is almost instantaneous.
• Virtual catalog features are intuitive, so you can either flip the pages, scan the thumbnails of the pages or scroll through the table of contents and get to the products you want to see quickly.
• A big change has been the ability to convert Flash to HTML search-enabled text so spiders and bots can search your catalog, as well as users via keywords.
• The ability to access catalogs anywhere or anytime — whether on your mobile device, at home or the office — without having to search for the actual printed copies.
• Marketers can capture email addresses as a first step for viewing virtual catalogs.
• Thumbnail previews and easy-to-use toolbars allow for effortless page navigation; bookmarks; post-it notes; sharing through email and social networks; and razor sharp text, zoom and digital rights management.

Jim Coogan is president of Catalog Marketing Economics, a Santa Fe, N.M.-based consulting firm focused on catalog circulation planning. Reach Jim at (505) 986-9902 or jcoogan@earthlink.net.