Due to the expansion of online video, product and informational videos are increasing dramatically! This visual marketing tool boosts interaction between your business and customers. According to Haymarket, consumers are 64% more likely to buy a product after viewing a video about it.

We’re following the explosion of video marketing to ensure our customers have the best options available when adding video content throughout their online catalog. If you’re featuring videos on the pages, we’ve created a clean play button that does not take away from the product on the page but slightly grabs a user attention so they know more product information is available. When multiple videos are added to the pages, the products can suddenly find themselves taking a back seat with all the video play buttons. This presents a visual conflict with your catalog layout.

We’ve developed a highly effective solution to handle multiple videos that relate to products, advertisers or articles throughout a publication. The new video tab featured in the left side navigation allows you to categorize and specify which videos to apply to certain publications. This allows for the quick addition of videos and adds nicely to our many existing options to feature videos.

          SpillTech                                                                               HD Supply

In addition to featuring videos, Dirxion can be a source for your video creation needs. Our partner in this area has provided some great examples for your viewing pleasure, http://www.previewmyvideo.com/demos/Dirxion.

Adding videos gives you a great opportunity to increase revenue or simply create more value for your advertisers. Contact us to get more information on adding videos to your online publication!

directXchange By nemoa

The DirectXchange was really designed with us in mind. There’s not many opportunities to throw an X in the middle of a name, but we’ve had that going on for quite some time now. Admittedly we never used the capital X, but that’s really just a design thing.

The theme of Marketing to the Minds of Catalog and eTail Shoppers is exactly where we fit into the blending of your catalog with your eCommerce experience. Finding the right balance is critical as there are shoppers that are very familiar with the catalog. Usage analytics will tell you that some of them truly enjoy browsing through the online catalog and ordering what they see presented on the page.

There are still several things that the catalog does particularly well. Kohler puts it very simply in their new bathroom catalog, Kohler ECO Bathrooms.

Painting a picture for the user of what the product can potentially look like can inspire them to make the purchase. Moving quickly through the pages, the user has a wide selection of image scenes presented in a way that marketing and graphics still to better than anyone else.

Catalogs also help solidify your brand. The print catalog delivered in the mail may not have the same impact of the Sears Christmas catalogs from days gone by. However when MacKenzie Childs incorporates their catalog into the overall brand mission, the online version of that catalog becomes an instantly recognizable asset that users are willing to shop.

Lastly the catalog is an essential reminder that you are still there and offers a compelling reason to purchase from your store. Catalogs and flyers can be used as a weekly, monthly, or quarterly reminder that the user should go back to your store be it online or brick and mortar. Spurring the user to an action is one of the more powerful reasons to get the catalog into their hands in both print and online.

The appealing part of the DirectXchange is that it’s an opportunity to share your experience with others, while learning new ideas about what is working for colleagues in your industry. Additionally the networking events that allow you to connect with both contemporaries and suppliers are critical to building long term relationships that are mutually beneficial. We’re excited to meet(and maybe share a drink?) with our business partners in attendance as well as meet new movers and shakers in the retail and catalog marketing space.

$550-$2500! That is what it costs to ship (50) 7lb catalogs to a tradeshow booth. Once these giants of print are unloaded ready for you start handing them out, you notice the struggle, it’s real! Carrying around a 7lb catalog is cumbersome and a nuisance for your booth visitors. And there’s always a chance you could run out of catalogs. Having a few print catalogs can be a part of a cohesive booth layout, but here is a better way to present and distribute your catalog information.

Why is a digital catalog better at a trade show? It doesn’t cost anything to ship and it offers the tools to share catalog content specifically for show attendees. Providing the entire catalog is easily accomplished with an offline version loaded onto a USB. For real time presentations, at the trade show, use the USB version on a large screen and watch users navigate the pages, shop for products, and create order forms. Once attendees are done interacting with the digital catalog, ask them about their experience and hand them a USB with the digital catalog on it. How impressive is that? They get to take home the catalog in their pocket with your brand on the USB, it’s an impactful way to add brand awareness.

Let’s take the trade show experience to the next level. The digital catalog is a powerful stand alone tool but when put into the hands of your sales team and combined with our Tear Pages options, it creates unlimited options of what can be shared with the prospect. Tear Pages adds a wealth of benefits to the digital catalog, empowering your sales team to create and share custom publications to the extent that they can be used as presentations! Use the best software available to boost the sales. Prepared ahead of time or at the trade show, Tear Pages makes a lasting impression that can also be used as a post show follow up. You can’t go wrong with an interactive catalog that uses your existing investment in print without the actual and intrinsic cost of bringing the big books to the show!

Take your online publication to the next level and give users a fuller experience with an ad widget. Widgets can be used in a multitude of ways and will grab a user’s attention. Consider implementing an ad widget to promote a featured advertiser, alert customers of a sale, showcase a product, or encourage customers to fill out a form. The possibilities are endless!

Brady made great use of their ad widget! When browsing through their catalog certain pages trigger different widgets to appear. These widgets offer anything from a PDF downloadable promotional piece to product announcements. Schoolhouse Electric keeps it simple and clean. After browsing their Schoolhouse Electric catalog for 15 seconds a ‘request a catalog’ widget appears.

Offer your users a little guidance like Ferguson. The best feature of the Ferguson catalog is that users can create and email a list of products directly to their salesman. Boom! Now, that’s convenience. Everyone loves a good discount, Chico’s ad widget offers a 20% discount if you sign up for emails. EIS gives their preferred customers prime real estate in a rotating widget.

Using ad widgets gives you a great opportunity to increase revenue or simply create more value for your advertisers. Contact us to get more information on ad widgets.

An online publication is essential to keep your customers and clients in the know! When you have several publications our robust bookshelf is necessary for organization. This central location serves as a hotspot for users to filter, share and search through several publications at one time. While the bookshelf is amazing for external use it can be utilized internally to maintain a central location for things such as marketing collateral, newsletters, magazines and much more. If there’s a need to keep external and internal literature separate we have a multi-bookshelf solution. In fact, HD Supply has ten different bookshelfs!

A bookshelf with easy navigation and quick reference points eliminates stress and helps to reduce everyday problems for your team. A bookshelf of literature, provides users with a wide range of collateral including catalogs, sell sheets, newsletters, magazines and brochures in one convenient location. If users know it’s available it will be the one resource they go to, habitually. That equates to more people looking and engaging at the collateral.

Don’t have your team digging around the network for pieces of literature they can’t find. Give them quick access to all the literature they need in one central location with features to hone in on their specific needs. Let us help you get organized! Contact us to find out more and schedule a free demo.

Quickly — think of an industry that is still rooted in Adobe’s Flash technology?

Yes, a technology that has been on a downslide since the advent of smartphones; a technology that is nearing further disability from major browsers for its security vulnerabilities; and a technology that now exists in pseudonym (see “Adobe Animate”) because its creator so desperately wants to move on.

There are a few answers that come to mind, like computer gaming and video streaming, both of which are realizing the need to wriggle out of Flash’s development grips and find their way toward a more-reliable future. After all, Chrome and Firefox unexpectedly blocked Flash technology a little less than a year ago today. The block, though temporary, sent a grim message across the web to Flash developers: move on or risk having nothing.

The industry that Dirxion is concerned with, of course, is digital publishing. This industry is stubborn and resilient in its use of Flash, even though Adobe wants more to be recognized for its own transition to HTML5. Still today, nearly 10 years since the release of Apple’s first iPhone, most digital publishing kits are brought to you by Flash.

Actually, let me paraphrase the question — what industries sell online advertising for their websites?

It’s not a trick question. Too many to even count.

Each of these industries has been touched by Adobe Flash. Let that passive voice sink in for a moment. Anyone who has posted online advertising in the past five years has likely been relying heavily on Flash. It is that pervasive.

But now, nearly a year has passed since the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) laid out an overhaul to its display creative guidelines that make HTML5 the new standard in interactive marketing. The efforts further encourage agencies to move away from Adobe’s Flash, which for years has been the unofficial standard. It was a hugely-important-but-unsurprising move by IAB. It really marked the end of Adobe Flash, and here’s why.

Google is no longer accepting Flash-based ads on Jan. 2, 2017. Go ahead and put that on your calendar as the execution date for Flash. In the U.S., Chrome is leading the web browser marketshare and trending further upward. It would come as no surprise if the other major browsers followed suit. There is little doubt that IAB’s guidelines precipitated such a plan.

Google said the move will “enhance the browsing experience for more people on more devices.” It will also force a bevy of online advertisers to shape up before next year. Changes will come even sooner, with June 30, 2016, being a prominent date on which ads built in Flash can no longer be uploaded into AdWords and DoubleClick Digital Marketing. If things aren’t clear enough, Google deliberately points out that “it’s important to update your display ads to HTML5 before these dates.”

Some loyalty to Flash is easy to understand: since its invention, Flash has been the lifeblood to industries like digital publishing. Dirxion, along with everybody else providing such services, was at one point deeply entrenched in Flash.

But IAB, Google and a whole wide world of HTML5 developers wants to show us that Adobe Flash is the past, HTML5 is the future and too many of us are stuck in a messy in-between. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem like there is an option, and it is mobile-or-bust in a smartphone-entranced society. HTML5 will eventually prevail.

As a sales rep, imagine walking through the halls of a laboratory, beakers and microscopes are abundant and every person you encounter is wearing masks, gloves, and protective gear from head to toe. Sounds like something out of a movie, right? Well, this is the everyday environment for a Lab Equipment Sales team and it’s not easy.

With tablet in hand, you’re ready to discuss new products and create an order list. But first to accommodate the sterilization needed for lab surroundings you need to take out sanitizer to clean your hands and wipe off the tablet. Lab experts know that you see many different types of businesses so when they see you taking extra steps to adapt to their unique work space, it will convey a level of professionalism and understanding of their needs.

Aside from creating a knowledgeable and professional appearance, the digital catalogs and bookshelf will make the entire sales experience a breeze for you and your customers. Sales teams have enough to worry about; knowing all the details of each individual product, how it works, how to demonstrate it and being up to speed with all the terminology associated with their industry, worrying about where they can find the most current print collateral, finding the physical catalog, or a particular item within the catalog. Having a bookshelf with easy navigation and quick reference points eliminates that stress and helps to reduce everyday problems in the field. Why lug around large physical catalogs or scroll through a library of pdf’s when you can use the online catalog bookshelf search and find everything at the touch of a screen? Having a central location, right on your iPad or laptop, to access marketing material or product information will give you the power to quickly search and answer any questions your customers might have.

Digital catalogs with a bookshelf will help you always look prepared and informed so you can focus your time on demonstrating great products! Contact us to schedule an overview of features you won’t find anywhere else.

“In 1960 New York City – the high-powered and glamorous “Golden Age” of advertising – Don Draper, the biggest ad man in the business, struggles to stay a step ahead of the rapidly changing times and the young executives nipping at his heels.” (http://imdb.to/1Paqu9j) Meanwhile masses of sales and marketing teams were creating 3 ring binders like mad men. Piecing together all those catalogs and collateral sections together manually and adding urgent updated pages when needed.

In 1996, Nintendo 64 was released harboring some of the most influential games ever available; Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda. All while N64 was being sold in masses, some daring marketing teams moved on to file sharing the collateral on a ‘hard to find’ local drive.

Then came PowerPoint, which really didn’t come on strong until 2002. In 2002 the animation engine in PowerPoint was massively overhauled, allowing users to create advanced and custom animations. It was a great upgrade but training was needed. The files were still too large to email and there is no interactivity available.

Online file sharing through companies such as DropBox™ was the next big thing to hit, it’s great for sharing files but anyone with access to the folder can delete or move files at anytime. It’s also not going to be your go to for presenting high quality publications and content to your customers.

From sales binders to online file sharing, these widely used options lack in key areas, especially transactional sales, searching capabilities, and responsive online/offline use. No one wants to have all these options spread out randomly, it gets confusing and cumbersome for the user. Combining all your needs into one solution packed with powerful tools will arm your sales team to smoothly overcome these obstacles.

We create the online catalogs designed to increase engagement between customers and sales. By using an order form or integrating with your existing eCommerce site, the barriers to purchase are significantly reduced.

Save the cost of big clunky binders that sales reps dread to carry around. We’ve conquered searching multiple catalogs, ordering, presenting and combining all your valuable print within one interface.

Our friendly sales team is available to answer any questions and show you the features of an online catalog. Let’s connect.

New York City Public Library — Featured in over a dozen major films including Ghostbusters, Spiderman, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Truly a great library.

Great Library of Alexandria — The largest and most significant library of the ancient world. Unfortunately destroyed by Julius Caesar.

The Library of Congress –Home to 32 million books and 61 million manuscripts. Ranks #1 in the list of most famous libraries according to LibraryScienceList.com

Your Digital Catalog Library — Creating a robust collection of your catalogs and associated literature can be an overwhelming task. Part of this process is making sure everything is showing up in the correct order and has the functionality that both external and internal users need. It’s really more of a bookshelf than a library, but Dirxion can make it great for you with benefits that include:

• Easy to navigate filters
• Search across all brochures and literature
• Quickly browse through the pages on your desktop, tablet or smartphone.
• Branded for you so that customers know who they are working with
• Tear Pages tool created for sales users needing to create custom presentations to share with customers

Did we mention that you don’t need a library card?

In the first four months of the Lane Style digital look book by Lane Bryant, the average number of pages per session grew by over 400%. This solidified the belief that their shoppers wanted more than one way to shop online. Check out their customer showcase, here.

The steady increase and user adoption was a result of offering consumers choices and convenience. You may call it a catalog, circular, or look book, with each one representing something slightly different. In some ways they are all similar, each containing clothing and accessories you want to feature and the represent hours of creative layout.

For their outdoor action catalogs, Moosejaw likes to keep shopping and marketing fun and they take pride in being the most fun outdoor retailer on the planet! They came to us in 2009 for their digital catalog solution that would fit with their overall Madness. We love it!

Bella+Canvas is all about quality tees and team apparel! They didn’t want to take any shortcuts for their digital catalog shoppers. Both branded catalog lines feature elements which provide the best experience for a digital catalog shopper. Reviewing the catalog usage and events, allows them to make any adjustments needed to increase the catalogs engagement with users.

Retailers know they have to be across all the channels where potential consumers are looking. Being seamless and saying ‘take your pick we’ll be there’ can increase reach and may lead to higher shopping cart value. As a full service online publication provider, we’re here to help with every step of the process, from how to upload your PDF’s all the way to marketing best practices for your new online publication.