Kennametal is the trusted innovator in metal cutting technology. Founded in 1938 they are the American supplier of tooling and industrial materials. The corporation has become a world leader in the metalworking industry. Kennametal is here to be a part of your team. With over 12,000 employees serving 80,000 customers in over 60 countries they continue to lead the way in future innovation.

The newest asset to their customer-centric motto is their digital catalog in 14 different languages. The Beyond Drive Campaign is just a preview to the Big Book that will come out next year. Looking for something specific and need more specs now, view their interactive digital catalog.

http://catalogs.kennametal.com/app.php

Just a few blocks from Dirxion, you’ll find one of the top music publishers, MorningStar. MorningStar provides services to dealers, specializing in publishing music for churches and schools. Initially, when they contacted Dirxion they wanted a digital solution allowing users to follow sheet music while listening. Were we able to deliver? You bet!

We LOVED the idea and our developers came up with a seamless solution. I could go on with a description, but just listen along in the demo below to get the awesome experience!

Sometimes, Google discontinues products which customers find really useful. Recently, they started alerting catalog publishers about discontinuing their digital catalog production later this year, some time in August. By the time that date rolls around, some of you may be out of luck with where to host and produce your digital publication. While no public announcement has been made, there has been an email circulating with some of the following information:

The Google Catalogs publishing service will be permanently discontinued on August 4, 2015, with any published material or embedded hosted material remaining live until this time. However, support will end on May 4, 2015. This includes assistance with catalog creation, help with website embedding, and answering other support related questions.

Online catalogs have become an increasingly important part of your online store and the end of Google’s catalog self-serve product may have caught some by surprise. Hopefully, you knew about the shutdown, but you may not be aware of a wonderful promotion we have for existing Google Catalog customers. We want to provide you with an opportunity to try the Dirxion Compass Digital Catalog without making a long term commitment. And we are introducing a one-time Proof of Concept opportunity to you, right now!

This allows you to experience how a full-service provider presents the digital catalog to your online shoppers and witness the performance improvement of a Dirxion Compass publication. From helping you pronounce Dirxion (it’s pronounced dīˈrekSH(ə)n, by the way) to providing performance feedback, we do it all.

Google Catalogs and Dirxion are not created equal. Do-It-Yourself software will always have it’s place, but can limit the possibilities and customization that current tech allows. From the very beginning in 1996 we set out to make an innovative custom product with our strong development and production teams. You may not see our developers front and center, but they are hard at work staying ahead of the industry and creating new features! All you have to do is sit-back, relax and enjoy the ride.

You’ll still be able to get many great online products from Google, but a digital catalog will no longer be one of them.  Don’t get caught up in the uncertainty of trying out a new DIY. We hope you take this opportunity to go in a new Dirxion.

Nordson, the world’s leading precision fluid dispensing systems manufacturer, just made it faster and easier for customers to find exactly what they are looking for. They just announced the release of Engineered Fluid Dispensing Product Catalog Sixth Edition. Not only is the catalog digital, it’s available as an app for offline use and it supports nine languages!

Nine languages? That’s right and that’s just the beginning of what this powerful tool can do! Find specific products and parts numbers through the keyword search. Quickly access additional info to products such as direct EFD web linking, data sheets, videos and add to cart. Request quotes through the cart, you can even share your cart with an EFD sales person. You can even create a mini-brochure! View the catalog up close and personal at catalogs.nordsonefd.com.

From helping you pronounce Dirxion (it’s direction by the way ) to providing performance feedback, we do it all.

Not all digital publishing houses are created equal. Do-It-Yourself software will always have it’s place, but can limit the possibilities and customization that current tech allows. From the very beginning in 1996 we set out to make an innovative custom product with our strong development and production teams. You may not see our developers front and center, but they are hard at work staying ahead of the industry and creating new features!

In our line of business, applications with options are better suited to meet customer needs. The customizable elements of our platform and premier service provides a competitive advantage for our customers. Customers as diverse as Baker Furniture and Super Bowl champs New England Patriots have requested and received custom interface design elements to match their style.

Lawson Fleet Solutions recently implemented a slick catalog solution to ensure users can easily navigate to their desired products. The guide starts off with ‘hot dots’ that direct you to the primary product page, which then leads you to a page of related products. From there you are able to explore Lawson’s products with their e-commerce site viewable within a lightbox keeping the user in the catalog. Lawson required diligenceand precision for the creation of this digital catalog so that it is a great solution when users need to find exactly what they want quickly!

We want to hear your ideas and vision for your digital publication. Call our friendly sales team at 888.391.0202 or email at sales@dirxion.com and they can help get you started.

Do your users know which areas you serve when they get to your site? Take a look at the latest in our Local Search platform that rolled out recently for YP55Plus.com and beachbook.com

• Image Slider with Location Based Images
• Responsive Design
  
• Default City with IP Location detection
• Drop down of popular categories
• Drop down of popular locations
• Rotating Popular category quick links
• Rotating featured advertisers
• Integrated Digital Directories
• Weather Widget(where available)
• Location Information Header

This is a major update for the new platform giving you more options than ever to make your local search site standout and drive more results for your advertisers.

Two of the top uses of our digital catalogs are research and discovery! Our dynamic development team has created an enhanced search along with superior navigation allowing your sales team to quickly pinpoint an inquiry. This ensures your sales team can quickly meet the needs of customers.

• Enhanced search
• Custom table of contents
• Cross-reference linking
• Multiple page-turning mechanisms

Compass’s enhanced search features a filtered search to narrow down the results. Simply click on the filter options and you’ll get refined results. The results section provides nifty page thumbnails with a quick click or touch to get to the final page. Search and custom navigation gives your users the ability to find that needle in your stack of pages.

At times, there are cost savings by producing a digital publication in house. Maybe your publication is on the smaller side and doesn’t come out that often. So, a few hours a year, for one of your IT team members — we’ll call him Glenn — to work on it is not a big cost. But, what happens to Glenn when the catalog, magazine, or newspaper is a little more frequent and more substantial in size. How about linking options? Are you going to want Glenn to manually go through the catalog and link hundreds of SKUs or images every few months? YIKES! That’s a lot more time invested.

Assuming all goes well, Glenn can get the publication up and hosted, then forget about it. But, all is not well in the internet world. Suddenly, people start calling in to say they can’t get access to the digital publication on their computer and Glenn is called in to troubleshoot. That conversation goes something like this, “Yes sir, and what kind of PC do you have? Okay, and what browser and operating system are you using?” But wait, then IE and Chrome release security updates to their browsers (OH MY!) and suddenly your publication won’t open (FRIGHTFUL)! So, you call in Glenn. Next up is sales requesting a specific interface feature that simply isn’t available. Then, the scariest thing happens, your CEO sends an email trying to understand why they can’t access the publication on their tablet during an important presentation. Before you know it Glenn is in a terrible pickle, resembling this:

Glenn’s no good, very bad day was totally avoidable. Simply send us your PDFs and let us do the work. Our customers digital publications are being updated on a regular basis to account for the constant change OS and browser updates bring. Not to mention, the new elements we continue to develop at the request of both customers and users. Besides, doesn’t Glenn have something more important to do?

Happy Halloween!

The ‘flat UI’ trend emerged a little over a year ago. You may have heard people speak about it, or maybe glanced at a blog post that mentioned it, but you may be wondering what it is and how it became so popular?

Don’t get me wrong I love the 90’s, but the ‘has been’ flashy illustrations and animations are overkill and long loading. Next came skeumorphic design, design that is taken from the real world, a good example of this is iOS6’s bookshelf. I mean, Apple’s bookshelf has woodgrain, shadows and looks like a bookshelf you would see in your neighborhood book store. And just like most trends, this one hit the skids when Apple released iOS7. They introduced the concept of a flat user interface. A simple and effective technique, that literally flattens the image and uses bright, solid colors.

Flat Design is pure and simple. It’s easier on the eyes, but more importantly, it’s responsive, and can be easily seen on a range of computers and devices.

In keeping with the trends, you’ll notice that our Compass Solution utilizes flat design. It emphasizes usability with clean open space, crisp edges and a two-dimensional illustration. The rich mobile user experience tops the charts! We’ve incorporated a new mobile menu, allowing room for more buttons and features to appear on a smartphone. This is just a small snippet of our new powerful Compass Solution. One of our first customers to take advantage of all the new features is Ballard Designs. From here I’ll let the experience take you away.

Our Digital Publishing Consultant’s can help guide you in the direction that best fits your companies needs. It’s easy to get a hold of us, email us at sales@dirxion.com, call 888.391.0202 or fill out our contact form.

We’ve incorporated three of the largest sites that boost your visits into your digital retail catalog! Pinterest, Facebook and Houzz are three of the biggest sharing sites with invaluable backlinks. Here’s the scenario — a designer is flipping through your catalog on any platform (yes, even smartphones), they see an item they want to share, they simply use the improved crop tool, share on Pinterest, Facebook, Houzz or by email. From that point, the designer can create Idea Books on Houzz or Galleries on Pinterest.

It’s simple yet powerful! Dirxion’s crop tool opens the door for catalogs to extend their reach. Houzz gets 16 million monthly visitors, 300 million monthly page views and 15 million downloads of their apps. Those are IMPRESSIVE numbers! Now with just a quick crop and share, your products can be a part of this number. Get more traffic and make it easy for users to buy your products through Dirxion’s digital publication solution.

Great Idea!
This feature will help with creating vision e-boards in a shorter and more efficient manner. Many of my clients prefer seeing conceptual ideas through email and the internet. Sharing concepts and images easily helps to jump-start the design process and the less time spent means more profitability, from the designer’s standpoint.

Hilary Machovina | Interior Designer, NCIDQ, LEED AP
Remiger Design