Shoppers will do more of their holiday buying online this year

News from the E-tailing Group last week … “55% of frequent web shoppers plan to shop online this holiday season, up from 49% last year, and e-commerce will account for a 26% share of holiday spending, up from 21% last year.”

How about giving your customers something that’ll make their lives a little easier during the holidays? Create a digital edition of your Christmas catalog so your customers can shop from cover to cover online!

Long Live the Catalog

Advertising Specialty Institute®, the largest media and marketing organization serving the advertising specialty industry, just recently announced results of an end buyer study that shows paper catalogs drive 93% of purchasing decisions. Also mentioned is that paper and online catalogs are not only effective sales tools, but also assist buyers in sparking creativity, discovering new products and realizing the importance of customization.

We at Dirxion think that the components of a printed publication cannot be beat: the attractive layout, the vibrant images and the aesthetics neatly blended with content. And well, buyers agree. While everyone may appear to be going online to purchase, it’s still the look and feel of print that gets them there.

Special Magazine Issues Made Even More Special

The New York Times has just published a good article about magazine publishers making some waves with special issues – ESPN’s Body Issue for example, where athletes are featured in mostly nude poses.

Gary Belsky, editor in chief of ESPN The Magazine brings up a great point in the article: “These days, people are skeptical enough about print, or at least wary enough about print, that they’re looking for executions that differentiate print.”

This couldn’t be closer to the truth.

Belsky goes on to say, “Print can’t deliver music, video, but what print can deliver is beautiful, in-depth visuals and journalism that explores subjects in a particular kind of way.”

That’s a HUGE misconception with print. Print can actually deliver more now than ever. By distributing your “print” on paper and online in the same form, like a special issue, it can differentiate your publication and attract more advertisers.

Digital editions not only cost less to publish and distribute, they also allow publishers to up-sell really exciting features to advertisers like music, video, animated ads, rollover windows and hyperlinks. All of these things add an element of “cool” among audiences and allow advertisers to offer more dimensions and in turn, value, to their ad.

“Magazines need to offer these creative alternatives to standard pages,” said Charlie Zakin, vice president for corporate media at Hasbro in response to Hasbro running an ad on the November cover of FamilyFun magazine, the first time FamilyFun would do such an ad. (The cover would be a pocket and contain a pull-out sheet promoting Hasbro’s family-game-night initiative.)

Imagine a digital edition of FamilyFun, where an animated section of the cover would promote and link to a pop-up window, which would contain all of the information found in this fun pull-out sheet, complete with animation, audio or video about the family-game-night initiative. Cool, eh?

I’ll end with this quote from Deborah Mignucci, publisher of Disney FamilyFun:
“Print is not the medium that is in vogue right now, and so we have extra pressure to overdeliver to our advertisers.”

Magazine Publishers, use a digital edition to spring up some new advertising sales. With animated, interactive ad pages you can start overdelivering now.

Walking the Talk

Dirxion customer and lifestyle footwear leader, SKECHERS, has a new product initiative called Shape-ups. How out of the loop I feel after having learned a little bit more about these so called Shape-ups …

As of September 21, the Skechers Shape-up shoes had hit #4 on the list of best-selling shoes on Amazon.com, having spent 79 days in the top 100. Shape-ups are also featured in the October issues of both Shape Magazine and SELF Magazine and even celebrities like Charlie Sheen and Melissa Rivers are checking them out! And just recently, Bonnie Hunt gave away pairs of Shape-ups on her show!
What are these Shape-ups you ask?

Shape-ups from SKECHERS are designed to get you fit while you walk, work, shop, and more. Used regularly.  Shape-ups will enhance the way you feel and look; muscles get toned, calories are burned and your posture improves.

A pretty neat idea if you ask me. Way to go SKECHERS.

If you feel out of the loop like I did, why don’t you take a peek (here) at these best selling shoes using SKECHERS’ interactive catalogs. Here, you can view all of their catalogs online, browse their pages for the hottest SKECHERS footwear, and buy your favorite styles… all in just one click.

Skechers Shape-Ups Digital Catalog

If you’re not quite sold yet, do a little research on Shape-Ups. Praise for these shoes is widespread in the blogrolls. Here are a few opinions.

Mom Logic
“Comfort? Less stress? Compliments about thinness…? What’s not to love?”

Bargainist
“…it’s really hard to find time to work out these days, what with the kids back in school, work, errands… We get exhausted just thinking about it! That’s why we were so excited to see the new line of Skechers Women’s Shape-Ups at Finish Line Sports.”

Fitbottomedgirls
“…they are super cushy and fun, and I loved wearing them. They spice up a walk just by making it feel different. And yes, I really do think they work your muscles in a slightly different way than your usual shoes….”

Some comments from blog readers about Shape-Ups:

“I was unsure of these as well until I bought a pair for my wife. She wears them on her normal three mile walk and she has fallen in love with them.  She definitely feels it in her legs and rump and has put her other walking shoes on the shelf.” - Larry

“I’ve used the shape ups for a month and I love them. I feel results already. It is perfect for my busy schedule. Me and co-workers go on Shape-Up walks for 30 minutes and wear them as we do our normal walking also. Try them before you knock them. Be consistent with it too. Just like any other work out, of course.” - Donna

A Better Way to Search

Imagine being able to offer your customers the power to search across all of your digital editions from one simple little search box. With Dirxion’s Catalog Library Search, the days of searching through individual  publications are gone.

By giving your customers the ability to search all of your online publications simultaneously, not only will you provide better search results, you’ll also boost the end-user experience to a new level of satisfaction. Your customers will now be exposed to products/articles/ads that they might not have otherwise seen.

One customer that recently took advantage of Dirxion’s Catalog Library Search is TED Magazine, the voice of top electrical distributors in North America. Try it for yourself.

The Catalog Library Search feature packs a lot of potential, are you ready to take advantage of it?

Revamping Your Print Brand through Digital Publications

In the wake of an unstable economy and dramatically changing consumer trends, many publishers are finding that now may be the best time strategically to re-evaluate their branding strategies. Being seen to evolve your brand and expand or concentrate your market offering is a sign of an active, focused and thriving business. By showing this strength of brand character, you will not only promote confidence externally in your customer base but also internally in your staff.

In an article entitled “8 Tips for Using Digital to Beat the Recession,” author Jeff Maling writes that the digital divide can now, more than ever, be used as an opportunity to market and that those who can crack the digital code during the recession will be winners when the economy improves.

But what does this mean for you, Publishers? It means that now may just be the time to update your message and medium for the digital frontier. While it may seem like a difficult challenge to keep your print brand exciting and relevant without sacrificing the value and familiarity that your customers have come to know and trust, it’s not. Digital publications fully support your brand identity (the vibrant images, alluring layouts and aesthetics neatly blended with content), while offering you extraordinary opportunities to enhance and refresh your print through e-media. With digital publications, you can create an exciting new way for your customers to experience your print!

One way to get creative your digital publication is to add multimedia, such as audio, video and animation. With multimedia, you can elevate a product or service beyond a static picture and text, swaying consumers when it matters most – in the act of shopping for a product or service. It’s an excellent way to add simple yet effective impact to your digital publication and it also serves as an excellent revenue generation tool for those publishers in the business of selling ad space.

Another way that digital publications can revamp your print is through the use of hyperlinks. By adding hotlinks to either an advertisers’ website or a retailers’ ecommerce site, you lead customers/shoppers/readers directly to the pages they want to see, enabling them to take action immediately.

Other interactive features that give your print brand a fresh new feel include sticky notes, web thumbnails, product information rollovers, mapping, integrated order forms, banner ads and search. Combined with your print content, these interactive features make the product easy and fun to use and encourage the user to return to the product.

While revamping your brand with the state-of-the-art features mentioned above, you can simultaneously expand your brand presence, drive your marketing and circulation-building with our “share” tool. The share tool not only allows users to share the publication by email but also via a number of different social networking sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Digg, etc.

Other viral programs to consider are RSS, email and blogging, which all allow you to notify your audience immediately when new publications are available – no more waiting weeks or months for fulfillment and delivery!

If you are looking for a brand extension offline, we can also digitally convert your publication(s) for use on CD, kiosk or USB Flash drive. Consider the possibilities here! A CD and USB Flash drive can be bundled with your print or distributed separately in-store, in the mail, at conferences, business meetings, and much more! A kiosk could be located in an airport, mall, travel center, retail store or hotel.

One final touch on any digital branding enhancement is the ability to show your care for the environment. Dirxion knows all about going green and consumers want to know all about it. Give your customers the knowledge, power and ability to give back to the world we live in. Your print publication has so much to offer and can offer even more with a little digital revamping, all while helping the environment.

It should be mentioned here that digital publishing also offers the potential for a lower-cost distribution platform, particularly when it comes to international distribution. Digital publications work really well for publications reaching that kind of broad geography, especially in today’s economic climate. Publishers simply pay a one-time fee to digitize their publication and then they have the capacity to distribute it to as many people across their network at a nominal cost.

As you can see, brand innovation doesn’t have to be expensive, and may present the best opportunity to secure competitive advantage in a high-stakes economic environment. You’ll also have the piece of mind knowing that digital publications can refresh and enhance your brand in a way that can be measured and tweaked accordingly.

Marketing Done Right

It’s official; the new Moosejaw Back to School ‘09 Catalog, “No Pants,” has gone viral.

The concept of the catalog is that in this economy, no one can afford to buy an entire outfit, so all the models are wearing shirts and jackets without pants.

Besides the fun of all this, they are doing a great job marketing the new digital catalog. In addition to the usual link on the homepage and email campaign, they also wrote a blog post about the new catalog and they are using Twitter effectively as well.

On Twitter, they are retweeting (RT) all their customers who tweet and talk about the new catalog. This is a great use of social networking to build the brand and drive more catalog page views.

You can follow Moosejaw on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/MoosejawMadness.

Here is a screenshot of their Twitter timeline from today. As you can see, people are still talking about it!

BPA Worldwide President Glenn Hansen Talks About Rule Changes

The President and CEO of BPA Worldwide recently did an interview with PubExec.com author Matt Steinmetz about the recent rule changes that BPA put into place, and also about the growth and future of digital editions.

When asked by Steinmetz if publishers see digital editions as more of a way to sustain their products rather than just an alternate delivery method, Glenn Hansen responded with the following:

“I believe publishers approach electronic (digital) editions with a two-pronged approach. First, electronic editions are a far more cost-effective means of distributing a publication — especially to international subscribers. Second, publishers are recognizing a shift in subscribers’ — and advertisers’ — preferences from print to interactive platforms. For some subscribers, electronic versions can represent a better way to consume information. For advertisers, electronic editions can provide more pin-pointed marketing efforts and, potentially, a better means to measure brand engagement than the print version.

For example, as more advertisers create video to communicate their message, the electronic magazine becomes a better utility for that form of advertising helping electronic editions realize their full potential in terms of user experience. If the electronic edition is more engaging, usage is likely to follow.”

Read the full interview on PubExec.com here

Dirxion Offers Multi-Language Support

In an effort to provide top quality digital publishing services around the globe, we wanted to remind potential customers and companies that Dirxion does indeed offer support for multiple language formats. We think it’s important in this fast moving digital age to be able to reach out to companies and customers on a global level.

Some of the more popular languages that Dirxion supports:

• Spanish
• French
• German
• Portuguese
• Japanese
• Chinese

and the list goes on…

No matter what language your print publication may be in, Dirxion can replicate the exact “look and feel” of your publication into nearly any language interface in the world. If your company has a global reach, and you’d like to place your product in front of customers in different countries, this is the solution that will make that happen.

You’ll find a few examples of our multi-language support in action below (click image for live examples):

Digi-Key Japan

Digi-Key Germany

If you have any questions at all about Dirxion’s ability to support different languages, don’t hesitate to contact us at +1.888.391.0202 to discuss your questions/concerns in further detail.

ETC Utilizing AND Promoting Dirxion’s New EdgeClix Platform

We love to spotlight customers who are actively promoting their new online publications, and this week, we wanted to give the spotlight to the new ETC online phonebook. After their new online directory went live, they sent out a monthly newsletter and wrote a nice piece about their new online phone book.

The results?

A ton of clickthroughs! ETC’s customers were obviously curious and excited about the mention of the new directory online, as ETC saw somewhere in the neighborhood of a 400% increase in usage. In other words, people were “quick to click” and enjoyed the experience.

As we’ve said before, all it takes is mentioning your new digital directory to your customers via email, social networks or your website, and it’s nearly a guarantee that people will click through to see what all the buzz is about.

Take a look at this quick snippet from the ETC Internet eNewsletter that went out just a few days ago to their customers:

That little paragraph was responsible for a HUGE spike in traffic to their new online publication.

Great job, ETC!

Visit the ETC online phone book by clicking on the cover below:

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