Time to turn the page on e-catalogues?
The value of e-catalogues is debated in this month’s issue of Multi-channel Marketing magazine. Dan Croxen-John of gardening supplies firm Bradshaw Direct argues that their value is questionable.
He explains how they introduced an e-catalogue, believing that it would present their products in a different way and boost conversion rates. The result, though, was that it created more questions than it answered - does my paper catalogue translate well to the electronic format, is it fast enough, would I have got the sale anyway, and so on. He argues that retailers should look at other rich media opportunities, such as reviews and podcasts. Loretta Bridge of maternity retailer Crave, however, takes the opposite view.
This interested me because although I have met people that rave about e-catalogues, Snow Valley’s experience echoes that of Bradshaws Direct. A few years ago we implemented an e-catalogue for a client. Within a few months they had withdrawn it. Although it served a purpose, in helping them to encourage mail order customers to try out the website, once those customers were using the online store they stopped using the e-catalogue. It became a ‘nice to have’ extra that didn’t seem to help conversion and was taking up time and resource to maintain and to measure. It would be very interesting to hear what other people think.
Article: The Turning Page Debate (you'll need to turn to page 31)