Yellowbook Adds Directory Kiosks to the Mix

The largest independent publisher of yellow pages, Yellowbook, arguably has the most complete source of local business information that’s presented online, on phones and in print. Now, when travelers need something at a moment’s notice and don’t have access to the aforementioned, they can still get the information they need, because Yellowbook has extended their digital directory services to airport kiosks.

For the initial rollout, Yellowbook will place five kiosks in strategic locations throughout the Tulsa International Airport - two in the baggage claim and three in the concourses. The Yellowbook kiosks will offer travelers a convenient way to search local Tulsa information by business name or category. Once they find the phone number or address they need, users can then send that listing directly to their cell phone via text message utilizing our newly integrated T3 feature (Touch to Text) for an added convenience.

As useful as these kiosks will be for travelers, they will be equally beneficial to Yellowbook and their local business advertisers. The kiosk placement program not only helps expand the visibility of a local yellow pages brand, but also connects a superlative audience directly to businesses, generating even more value out of a publisher’s advertising program. Kiosks also deliver multiple attractive opportunities for publishers to not only recuperate their costs but gain additional revenue through premium ad placement services - because when a kiosk is not in use, it’s an LCD billboard. Dirxion’s full-service kiosk placement gives yellow pages publishers the ability to quickly and easily deliver their information-rich, local content to yet another place where its going to be needed.

Learn more about Dirxion’s directory kiosk solution.

Extra, Extra! New e-Edition for Newspapers!

Good news! Catching up on the latest in news, entertainment, sports and business just got a little bit easier, because Dirxion has developed a line of digital publishing products tailor-made for the newspaper industry. This means that not only are all your favorite journalists and articles never further than a click away, but also you can finally put the days of shamelessly stealing your neighbor’s paper behind you!

Dirxion is offering newspaper publishers an e-Edition product that gives their subscribers instant access to a complete interactive replica of their paper. With just the click of a button, the entire thing is presented online in the original look and feel readers expect from their print. Whether they’re at home, at work, or on-the-go, every article, photograph, and advertisement will be at their fingertips!

This newspaper interface is a sight to be seen. People read newspapers differently than catalogs, magazines and guides, so each element has been well thought out to make navigating the paper on your computer the most familiar experience. The large “above the fold” thumbnails let you quickly peruse through the most important headlines much like sifting through your paper by hand. The fit width default view is sharp and lays the text out at a comfortable size for most to read the articles without needing to zoom. The full screen option lets you maximize your screen’s real estate to best match the look and feel of traditionally large newspapers.  Every detail was researched and we truly believe that our newspaper interface is the cleanest and easiest to use in the industry. (Give the Chautauqua Star e-Edition a test run)

These e-Editions are highly marketable. Make digital subscriptions a free companion to home and business subscribers of your print product to increase engagement or maybe charge for a digital-only subscription. And they benefit more than just the average office drone - it’s the perfect solution for people with second homes, vacationers, traveling professionals and remote military personnel that would like to stay up-to-date with their local paper while they’re away.

Dirxion’s e-Editions can be delivered to meet deadlines for both weekly and daily papers. Contact us for more information.

Part 2: A Guide to Building Your Online Presence with Virtual Catalogs

As promised, here’s a look into the final installment of a multipart series on how virtual catalogs can be a valuable tool for marketers looking to build their online presences. In it, Jim Coogan, president of Catalog Marketing Economics, reveals the metrics that need to be tracked, as well as what those metrics can tell you about the effectiveness of virtual catalogs.

Metrics are an invaluable tool to have on your side when it comes to virtual catalogs. With traditional catalogs, the only real measurement metrics are circulation and sales dollars. Virtual catalogs, however, offer you the ability to see how shoppers react to every aspect of your catalog – from number of visitors to average time spent browsing your catalog to most popular search terms. You can see where your catalogs are read throughout the world and how those users got there - through referring sites, search engines or directly. A lot can also be learned from the metrics surrounding the promotion of the virtual catalog - through which promotion do your customers respond best to virtual catalogs? Another good practice might be capturing the number of email addresses collected inside the digital edition. This could tell you how effective virtual catalogs are at harvesting email addresses from consumers who haven’t yet bought from the catalog.

I’ll stop for a moment here and invite you to read all of Jim’s insights on how to leverage digital catalogs to target well beyond the reach of their printed circulations. It’s good stuff.

And I’ll end on a similar note as Jim: The greatest thing about metrics is they generally come free with the purchase of a virtual catalog solution (they do with our solution anyway). So … after you’ve read what he has to say and you understand a little bit more about metrics, it’s time to start maximizing the return on your marketing investment and see how valuable shopper behavior and information can make an impact in all of your communications!

Dirxion.com Gets a New Look

We’ve just launched our new website! This will be the new home for all of the upcoming, exciting products, features, news and events from Dirxion. Our ambition is to create something for our clients that can contain the most useful, up-to-date information on “all things digital publishing”.

This new website better reflects the same high quality that you expect from our products. We hope that you enjoy discovering all the little intricacies and that you find inspiration in the wealth of new information and product samples.

Some insights…
We’ve brought live samples of our products to the front and center on each of the solutions pages, because nothing quite explains our digital editions like they can themselves.
The navigation has been simplified throughout the site to get you to the information you need quicker and easier than before.
The new layout consists of more pages, which allows us to go into greater detail on all of our products and features, while also making it easier to add pages as we consistently continue to expand our digital offerings.
The site is all around better organized, and has a cleaner and more intuitive look.

New and Notable Pages…
See our Demo
Mobile Directories
Monetizing Your Digital Directory or Magazine
Facebook Applications
Services Page
Process: From Print to Digital
Expanding Your Reach
Measuring Your Performance

We hope you will enjoy the new www.dirxion.com and that it will influence you to more regularly check back and keep on top of digital publishing information. For the time being, we ask you to bear with us as we put the final touches to it. Needless to say, over the next few days there are bound to be a few teething problems as we migrate everything over.

So, what are your first impressions? We greatly welcome and value any feedback. Hopefully you find the site much easier, cleaner, and more efficient. If you have experienced any problems… go easy on us! With the gamut of browsers and endless lines of code it’s only to be expected. But we’d definitely appreciate it if you let us know if you spot any typos, bugs or if something else that doesn’t quite work on your system.

Thanks,
marketing@dirxion.com.

Part 1: A Guide to Building Your Online Presence with Virtual Catalogs

Over at All About ROI, they’re doing a multipart series on how virtual catalogs can be a valuable tool for marketers looking to build their online presences. Since we have a lot of retailers as clients, we thought this would be a handy series to cover. Jim Coogan, president of Catalog Marketing Economics, a Santa Fe, N.M.-based consulting firm focused on catalog circulation planning, wrote part 1 which reviews the costs of publishing a virtual catalog, as well as the features it offers.

While he points out many features that have brought virtual catalogs up to speed as web applications that shoppers can embrace today, he fails to mention the exemplary features that truly drive home the dynamic, interactive nature of virtual catalogs.

Consider animation, video and audio for example.

Animation: Even simple Flash animations can draw and keep attention on your products. When used in conjunction with a call to action, animations not only engage consumers but also deliver considerably higher clickthrough rates.

Video: Video gives life to your products and captivates your audience. With video in your virtual catalog, you can convey your products with sight, sound and motion. You can creatively use it to add a personal touch to your brand, while elevating your products beyond their static images and text (demonstrate uses, show packaging, and influence your audience with enticing visuals). Video has the power to sway consumers when it matters most – when they’re just a click away from purchase.

Audio: Audio lets your brand speak for itself. You can play voiceovers or targeted promotional deals. You can use music to interact through emotional sensibilities and build more personal brand connections with your consumers. Audio adds simple yet effective impact to your digital catalog as sound is not only more persuasive than text but is retained in memory far longer.

Another really cool feature in virtual catalogs is the ability to create custom catalogs on the fly. With a Print to PDF tool embedded into your virtual catalog, sales reps can quickly create niche, custom-built publications from larger catalogs for highly targeted audiences. This can help you maximize your publishing endeavors and foster an even deeper connection with your valued customers by communicating the right message to the right ears and eyes – all while supporting your strategic branding goals.

Another concept that’s helped virtual catalogs evolve as useful web applications is social networking. Today, many virtual catalogs interface with social networks, which are continually proving to be a valuable business resource. Studies show, for instance, that 83% of consumers who shop online are keen to the notion of sharing their potential purchases with their Facebook and Twitter friends. On top of that, 67% admit that they end up spending more money online if they receive their social networking friends’ seal of approval. Also discovered through this study - 62% of online shoppers are more likely to return to a retail website that offers social tools and twice as many shoppers say they prefer the recommendations of their friends in social communities rather than that of the retailers. If you aren’t using these sites for all their marketing capabilities you could be missing out on some potential revenue! So if you publish a virtual catalog, be sure to use social media sites to circulate it to your customers, and then let your customers start circulating it for you right from the pages of your catalog!

Virtual catalogs have come a long way from just a couple years ago. If you’re already utilizing virtual catalogs and all of the features they have to offer, kudos to you! For those that aren’t quite there yet, our hope is that this multipart series will get you closer to reaching your maximum potential with this fascinating medium.

iBooks Aren’t For Everyone

Over on his blog, Greg Sterling got the conversation started about the possibility for Yellow Pages publishers to present their digital directories in Apple’s iBook Store for the iPad. He uses Dirxion client AT&T’s Real Pages Live as an example, citing that this new medium “…would enable consumers to ‘let their fingers do the walking’ as they do in print but bring all the benefits of digital to the experience…”

We completely agree with Greg’s thoughts about the possibilities the new iPad could usher in to directory publishers. The bad news about this good idea is that Apple chose to construct the upcoming iBook software using a universal e-reader format called ePub. When it comes to complex layouts, with multiple columns and large display ads, this format is very limiting and cumbersome to deal with. ePub is more or less a stripped down - no bells and whistles text and images format - that doesn’t support many of the enhancements that make digital editions so unique; animation, video, audio just to name a few. Long story short, the iBook format will be great for reading… well… books, but it will not be flattering to other published works.

Just because the iPad doesn’t come with an e-reader designed to fit the needs of publishers of things like directories, magazines, catalogs, and so forth, doesn’t mean that they can’t still benefit from its potential. It’s our thought that Greg and some others may have the right device, but are looking at the wrong Apple store.  For those who aren’t book publishers, if you want to make the most of your content on this new gadget, you can best do so through its App Store.

By building your digital edition as an app rather than an iBook, you are not limited to the strict rules of the ePub format. This also means that if it’s not a book then it’s still in this neutral territory that leaves the interpretation of how your content should play with the iPad completely up to the market’s imagination. This means publishers still have a unique chance to differentiate their brand on a device that offers them endless possibilities.

Dirxion is one of the few digital publishers that has already been taking the same PDF files you use for print and using them to create Mobile Directory websites and iPhone apps. Both of these products already work seamlessly on iPhones and should do the exact same on iPads.

The iPad is just one of many new and upcoming products aimed at the publishing industry. By choosing Dirxion for your digital yellow pages and mobile directory needs your, content will be compatible with this new device before it even hits the shelves.

Will Digital Magazines Make the Market?

Bob Sacks of Publishing Executive recently authored a post on The New Reality of the Magazine Business.  In it, he discusses the threatened revenue and delivery models of the traditional magazine industry. In summary, he advocates that as advertising dollars continue to dwindle, printed magazines will continue to have some success, but only for those titles most worthy of the higher cover and subscription prices they’ll be forced to charge in order to employ their editors and writers. For the general magazine population, it is his conclusion that the success of their product will be determined by their content, and even more so by the innovative experiences they can offer readers.

How does Bob believe magazine publishers will create a more superior reading experience? He continues, “You must understand that a major component—and perhaps the most successful part of our industry—is going to be digital.”

I think he has a valid point. If publishers create something interactive and captivating that has the flexibility to work not only on computers, but also on the gamut of mobile devices, I think readers will actually want to pay for it. How much? I don’t know.

Think about a digital magazine’s potential on a device like a tablet. In portrait mode, the magazine page could take up the full screen making it’s natural layout and lifestyle imagery the focal point, but elements within the layout could be interactive. Click to view a table of contents with thumbnails of the actual page layouts and article titles optimized for quick search and usability. To flip through pages, you could click the corner of the page or swipe your finger across the screen. Devices on cellular networks or WiFi, could update content instantaneously, bringing news to readers when it happens rather than the following day on the newsstand. Readers can now share articles with with friends and get a conversations started over email, Facebook, Twitter or a host of other social platforms. Publishers of content are no longer just writers and photographers, they can embed video and audio to take their readers deeper into the story or products. We can add links to related articles and even pull live feeds into a magazine for things such as breaking news, reactions, stats or live scores.

When magazines are digital; the possibilities are endless. If the success of magazines will be determined by all the experiences they’re going to deliver readers, then I have no doubt that the future of the industry looks to be an exciting and promising one.

Feedback:

Assuming the average cover price of a printed magazine is $3.50, how much would you expect to pay for a digital magazine that offered a unique, enhanced experience and could be easily downloaded and read on your computer, tablet, e-reader or phone? Either respond below, send an email to marketing@dirxion.com, or let us know of Facebook or Twitter.

This isn’t print.

Color swatches? Who needs color swatches? This is a digital edition!

At Dirxion, we try to address the needs of more than just one type of client. Our product is very scalable and at its most basic level has a personalized, branded interface that allows you to make your content digital and interactive at a competitive price. But we go a step further than most of our competitors by offering many enhanced features that we “hear” make the digital experience richer.

We’d say we pretty much have it all figured out, but every once in a while one of our customers, like Moosejaw, has creative notions of their own, much like the idea above to have the bags in the their digital edition rotate colors allowing readers to view their options rather than imagine them based on small swatches. It’s personalized service that we believe makes Dirxion stand out from the crowd.  Our product is not a “what you see is what you get” digital edition and we aren’t a self-service “upload and pray it works” website. You’ll always get someone on the phone and when you do, we welcome your creativity. We pride ourselves on our ability to customize your content to your satisfaction.

If you have something in mind for 2010, either respond below, send an email to marketing@dirxion.com, or let us know of Facebook or Twitter. We’d love to put it on the drawing board.

New Year Brings Your Content to New Places and New Devices

For many of us, the New Year symbolizes a fresh start. For my neighbor, Carl, I pray that the fresh start means wearing deodorant. It’s true though; once late December arrives, we suddenly determine that next year seems like the most appropriate time to be everything we’ve ever wanted to be. In my case, that’s a pirate. No more putting it off, pirate lessons commence January 2nd. “This be’th the year I become a seafarin’ hearty, aaarrgghhhh!” (I’ve been reading ahead.)

At Dirxion, we think it helps to apply resolutions to the work place. Pretty appropriate, right? There’s never been any harm done by setting goals. In 2010, it is our every intention to achieve digital publishing greatness and in order to accomplish this we believe in continuing our firm commitment to research and development.

I must say, it’s an exciting time to be in digital publishing – an industry that is being defined by rapid innovation and growth. Over the past year, we’ve watched digital content make its way to a number of new channels and devices, presenting an abundance of new business opportunities for us, our customers and partners.

Being head of the curve is imperative. We’ve had a long, rich history of innovation and advancements in our market and that won’t change in 2010. It should be a fantastic year for our company and publishers alike. We’ve spent the last year rolling out a slew of new features to accommodate for the transforming digital landscape, including our Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program, mobile publishing products and a plethora of social sharing tools.

We already have many new and exciting projects in the hopper for 2010 that will make publishers’ content even more interactive, social and mobile than ever. Our upcoming projects are all a part of Dirxion’s continuing efforts to offer the best solutions for our customers to be found in more places and on more devices. In 2010, we want to be your first choice for digital publishing. So we plan to continue expanding our offerings and growing our range of products to strengthen our partnerships across publishing lines – directories, catalogs, magazines, travel guides, books and newspapers.

Maybe it’s because we’re in the digital publishing industry, but at Dirxion we like to think of the New Year like starting a new book. Our working title is “Opportunity” and the first chapter starts in January. So cheers to a New Year and another chance to get it right! See you in 2010!

SEO: Dirxion’s commitment to increasing your online exposure

For publishers looking to grow their audience with a digital edition, there is no better platform than EdgeClix. Dirxion understands that in order to truly maximize the reach and circulation of your digital edition, it is critical that your content be properly coded for the indexing robots of search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. It is for that reason we introduced a Search Engine Optimization method designed specifically for digital editions.

Now when you send us the same print files, our EdgeClix technology can not only convert them into an interactive Flash representation of your publication, but can also use advanced SEO techniques to make your content more visible to search engines. This advanced process allows the robots to read and index your content – line by line – just like plain HTML.

As an added step, we can build landing pages that work – for your users and the search engines. These landing pages are designed specifically to move users through your digital publication with ease, while also optimizing them for full SEO capacity. By combining strategic keyword titles, keyword text and keyword links, we can better leverage your landing page to improve your search engine rankings.

Dirxion’s goal is to stay true to your print, while taking full advantage of the web’s resources. With our straightforward approach to SEO, you can give your readers the rich, heightened experience of a digital edition that also works to increase engagement and online readership.

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