Another Digital Catalog Tested and Approved

It’s always nice to see people blabbing about your products and/or services. Here is a new blog post from last week that gives a very favorable review of the National Parts Depot Catalogs that we create online using our latest technology, EdgeClix.

Great Online Catalog
National Parts Depot
Posted by MilesSpeed

Finally a online catalog that is easy to use.

I went on National Parts Depot’s website to check out some parts for my Mustang and I was really pleased with how easy the website was to use. I have looked for parts online before and had really bad luck with some of the other websites out there.

The search function works great. Somehow, on other sites, I can enter “Camaro door” and get NO results! Aside from the great search function, the page views are just like the catalog. You can click and zoom in on any part of the page for more information. The shopping list view is helpful too when keeping track of your favorites.

Check it out for yourself!
NationalPartsDepot.com

Thanks for the recognition, “MilesSpeed” We love free press.

Post via Popular Hot Rodding

More Reason to Socialize

Over a short period of time, sites like Facebook and Twitter have grown from messaging tools between friends into widely adopted means of self-promotion, advertising, and interaction. Most recently, the growing popularity of sharing useful information through these networks has caused a shift in the way the internet is being used, blurring the lines between its informational and social atmosphere.

As of last week that gray area got a little grayer. Microsoft announced that they struck deals with the two social networking giants to start integrating real time search results that will come directly from Twitter and Facebook users but will be listed within the Bing search engine results. Google also announced that they cut a similar deal with Twitter and would soon be launching a whole new search tool called ‘Social Search’. So it appears that now the influence of your tweets and updates will expand beyond just their narrow social circles.

This all came about as increasing amounts of traffic to websites were coming from Facebook and Twitter, taking some potential business away from search engines. The search engines, rather than compete, realized that when people are seeking information they are finding that content is often more relevant when it comes from someone within their sphere of influence online and not a mysterious and complex algorithm. Also, social search is predominantly based on recency because more times than not the most recent information is also the most pertinent.

What does this mean for publishers? There are larger marketing opportunities in growing your online social circle and actively participating within it. This is also important because for the first time these new forms of search are giving you some control over being found.  Instead of solely being bound by the strict rules of search engine optimization and highly competitive keywords, now by making regular use of Twitter and Facebook you are vicariously using search engines to reach an even larger audience. The more social you become with your marketing, the more traffic directed through your links.

Search Engine Optimization & Your Publication; What is Dirxion Doing?

As a publisher looking to move your printed material to the web, you’ll find that the majority of the digital publishing options out there are fully Flash-based. To most people this may actually sound more than acceptable. Flash content is great as there are hardly any limitations to building interfaces, designing, animating and creating user interaction. It has all the elements that give a site the heightened experience that today’s users are looking for. Flash is used to break all those conventional rules associated with flat, lifeless HTML pages.

But with all of its pros comes one very large con – unlike HTML, Flash content can’t be indexed by search engines. And if people can’t find your content on Google, Bing or Yahoo, it’s up to you to put it directly in front of them. But even with Herculean marketing efforts, your content will never reach its full audience potential.

Dirxion understands that if you want to maximize your reach and circulation, it’s critical that the content of your pages can be properly crawled by spiders for search engines. It’s for that reason we have introduced a Search Engine Optimization method designed specifically for digital publishers. We call it Trax. When you send us files for your new digital publication, we not only convert your data into Flash but also run it through Trax making a search engine friendly format called ASP. ASP is a dynamic code that is first sent to an ASP engine, where the file can be read – line by line – and then returned to indexing spiders and browsers as plain HTML. So it works just like HTML. And with Trax laid, this data will run behind the scenes solely for Google, Bing and Yahoo to crawl and navigate through your pages. But on the front end of your publication, your readers will still have the rich media experience of Flash.

Our SEO efforts, in a nutshell:

–Presenting all of the pages in your directory in a format that can easily be indexed by the search engines. Search engine users can now find your directory by searching for business names, categories, addresses, phones numbers, and more. Not to mention, search engine results open up pages inside of your directory with searched keywords already highlighted!

–Creating dynamic, search engine friendly landing pages that are designed for intuitive the optimal user experience.

–Providing additional ways to share pages from your directory with friends and family.

–Implementing URL strategies to optimize traffic to your site.

–Updating or adding more content when possible.

Our ultimate goal for customers is maintaining the familiar experience of print, while using the web to increase readership and engagement. Marketing is always going to be king, but there is no reason not to have SEO on your side. With the help of Dirxion and Trax, more readers will find your content. That’s already been the case with the customers we’ve converted.  Search engine directed traffic has been increasing drastically. Some publications are currently seeing up to 78% of their traffic coming from search engines.

Contact a sales representative to learn more about how Dirxion can have your publishing put in front of a larger audience now. Call 888.391.0202.

Flights Go Digital

There is nothing worse than being couped up in a tight airplane seat with nothing to do. If you’re lucky enough to have an in-flight movie, there is a 90% chance it will star the Olsen twins. And your choice in reading materials range between the Airplane Safety Instructions, SkyMall, and … SkyMall. If I buy another ramp or staircase made for dogs, I’m going to have to get a dog.

Finally, there is another option; something never before possible. Airlines have started introducing in-flight wi-fi.  For the ‘low’ price of about $10 for flights under 3 hours long and $13 for longer flights, your laptop or smart phone can surf the web while you are 30,000 feet in the sky. Using cellular towers, this air-to-ground connection can deliver speeds comparable to DSL modems.

For publishers going digital, all this means is that there is yet one more place that your readers will always have access to your work.  It may not seem like a large change but more than anything it is evidence that the world is continuing to adapt into a digital atmosphere. For the first time your audience will have the potential to read your magazine and do their Christmas shopping in your catalogs while they are miles above the ground.

Virgin Airlines, Southwest, United, Delta, and American have all started integrating this technology into select airplanes. It would be nice if the wi-fi feature was complimentary, but in a time where it costs extra money to check your bags that is obviously not likely.

Paying or not, a very recent study shows that 76% of frequent fliers said they’d switch flights in order to have access to wi-fi. This service seems like a no-brainer for people constantly traveling for business, but it will also be glorious for anyone looking for alternative entertainment options.  It’s sad, but I think internet is the only up-charge I could talk myself into paying on an airplane. The ability to read a digital magazine while chatting with friends on Facebook would be justification enough for me to fork out the cash.

Retailers Finding New Touch Points With Digital Catalogs

It is widely accepted that one of the keys to success is the ability to adapt. The retail industry, customarily driven by brick and mortar stores and weighty catalog mailings, has been profoundly affected by present-day circumstances. The current harsh economic climate coupled with the rampant growth of online shopping and social media has caused many companies to take a step back to reevaluate their strategies. The retailers that have done the best jobs to adapt and start using these “threats” to find new marketing opportunities are starting to reap the benefits of their versatility through increased revenues.

The catalog has been the flagship of the retail industry for decades. Even with the recent increased shipping costs and decreased sales, it’s still hard to turn a blind eye to its proven track record and ongoing performance. Data shows that on average, catalogs can still generate $7 in sales for every dollar it takes to have them published and mailed. And how do you give a value to the catalog’s unmatched ability to show off a retailer’s well polished image? For most retailers it also goes unequalled in its skill of generating new business. It would be a drastic lapse in judgment to simply abandon it in an effort to cut costs.

Unwilling to sacrifice reach or branding, the adaptive retailers have been finding that the solution to reducing these expenses doesn’t have to be touching fewer customers, but instead changing how they touch customers. Besides the traditional means - decreasing circulation, trimming the size of catalogs and using less expensive paper - a company can take a portion of their savings to reinvest into Internet marketing. In the retail industry, online marketing and digital catalogs are growing in popularity and are much less expensive alternatives when compared to the traditional print forms. Statistics show that for every dollar a retailer spends doing online marketing they have a $45 return.

So in situations where it may be adapt or perish, those who allow themselves to evolve to the changing circumstances will grow stronger. The retailers who are quick on their feet and can find that harmonization between the tangible and digital can not only survive but thrive in a desert-like economy.

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!

Fast Stats

Do people actually use digital page turn publications? Is online publishing really here to stay? The stats speak for themselves. While we don’t want to get into specifics for individual companies, here’s a quick look at some recent usage numbers for our customers:

In the previous six months, directory publications have seen over 1.5 million page views with more than half of that coming in the last three months.

Overall number of visitors to online directories is up almost 9% when comparing the last 90 days to the previous 90 days and the average time spent on the site is up 29%. Even more compelling is that the reach of these directories is expanding way beyond their traditional print distribution.

Catalog usage continues its steady growth. A six month comparison shows a 15% growth in page views and the last 90 days has increased 29% over the previous 90 days. Another interesting find is that the greatest growth has been for those catalogers that place a link to the online catalog in the top right or top center positions of their websites. This makes sense as those are two of the most valuable positions in online advertising, but it’s still good to see that links to the digital catalog are drawing an increasing audience.

Online editions of magazines and guides are following the same great trends as online, page flip catalogs - up in unique users, up in page views and up in URL clicks.

With new opportunities to sell into online publications and an always improving set of features to enhance user interactivity, we are very excited for our publishers to see continued growth in their online publications.

Will Digital Publishing Help Save California?

California, in case you haven’t heard, has a massive financial crisis happening currently, and state officials are exploring a multitude of potential ways to save money - some more controversial than not.

One of the headlines that caught our attention this morning was a new initiative by the Terminator himself (Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger).

Gov. Schwarzenegger knows that the state spends an incredible amount of money each year on (often outdated) textbooks and educational materials. That’s not a huge surprise, but in an effort to trim that down without sacrificing educational opportunities, digital publishing was the answer. Specifically, open-source digital textbooks. Instead of ordering loads of mostly outdated print textbooks, the Governor is pushing to have all of California’s textbooks available to students in a digital format. There are some very convincing reasons to go the digital route:

1. The potential for saving money is huge.

2. Students won’t have to carry 30lbs of textbooks on their back every day.

3. No more worrying about textbooks listing Pluto as a planet (which some still do). New information can be updated on the fly when you’re working in a digital world.

4. Traditional print textbooks are approved by the state on 6 year cycles. Now, think of how our world has changed drastically in the last 6 years. Exactly. The need for updated information is greater than ever, and with digital textbooks, this cycle could be greatly shortened and approved changes could be made on the fly.

There are plenty of critics of this new digital replacement plan, but hopefully California politics won’t stand in the way of quality education, which is more important than anything. Digital publishing, whether it’s in the form of catalogs, textbooks, regular books, or one of many other implements, will save money and will definitely provide a fresh and exciting new way to engage the target audience - in this case, the children.

Digital Publishing Buzz Steals The Show

There was an interesting article over at NYTimes.com yesterday that talked about the fast growing market of ebooks (regular books in digital form).  The popular BookExpo America tradeshow wrapped up this weekend in New York, and the buzz around the tradeshow floor was all about electronic readers, ebooks, digital publishing, and any other buzzword that relates to the hottest trend in publishing.

Of course, there are mixed feelings on the subject of digital publishing, with even a few authors that are calling digital stories “elitist”. But the authors that are making the sales and moving forward with technology are the ones embracing devices like the Amazon Kindle and the future lineup of electronic reading devices set to launch in the coming months.

As reported in the NYTimes.com article, ebooks make up a mere 1%-3% of sales so far, but it’s the fastest growing segment of the publishing industry.

At any rate, it’s a great article with even better insight on the recent show and the publishing industry, so check it out here when you get a chance.

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