The appearance of a thick glossy catalog in the mail-box was a seasonal occurrence, decades long. Families would circle things in red pen, dog-ear pages and make orders on the telephone. Although some nostalgia is attached to physical mailers, the logistics of it are proving hard to worth. The retailers and wholesalers are contending with an increase in the cost of postage, supply chain uncertainty, and consumer market that requires instant satisfaction. The unchanging quality of print cannot possibly keep pace with the changing demands of the new business. When you are still using physical distribution as your sole criterion, there is a possibility that you are leaving money on the table and good customer data. Going digital with your catalog is not only a matter of keeping up with the times, but it is also a smart business decision to make the most out of your budget and shorten your sales cycle. The benefits of digital catalog formats include live inventory updates or a simulated shopping experience, which paper formats and other physical mediums cannot rival. This is why it is now time to press the pause button and begin to digitalize.

1. Reduce Costs and Increase Margins radically

The short-term advantage of dropping or cutting print is the effect on your bottom line. Creating a physical catalog is a costly venture all the way through. You must take into consideration creative layout, photography, paper, printing plates, binding, and ink of high quality.

The cost only keeps increasing after the printout of the catalog. Distribution entails intricate logistics, postage charges and fuel surcharge. Once the printing is done, and you notice a typo, you have two options that are not very good: you can pay to get the printing reprinted again or you can go ahead and release a catalog with mistakes in it.

With the help of a digital catalog, most of these overheads are removed. Printing and shipping costs are eliminated. Your catalog can be sent out to thousands–or even millions–of clients via mailing or social media at a fraction of the cost of sending a hard copy booklet. This will enable you to redirect your spending into the marketing schemes that will yield traffic, as opposed to spending the money on paper, which will be wasted in the recycling bin.

2. The Magic of Live-Time Updates

The snapshot in time problem is one of the greatest threats associated with print. Immediately a catalog has been printed the information contained within it is frozen. When a supplier alters a price, a product is out of stock or a new model is issued a week later, your print catalog is out-of-date. This causes frustration among the customers where they call to make an order and realize that the item is out of stock or has been overquoted.

Online catalogs are fully agile. You are able to update the product information, pricing and availability in real time.

3. A Smooth, Commerce-able Shopping Experience

Any catalog is intended to stimulate the sale, but print catalogs put a lot of friction in the purchase process. A customer sees a product that he or she likes, lays his or her catalog aside, walks to a computer, types in a URL, searches on the item (hopefully with the correct spelling), and consequently adds the item to his or her cart. At each leg of that journey, you stand a chance of an interruption that would cost you the customer.

Digital catalogs are a solution that removes the inspiration-purchase gap. Combining your catalog with your ecommerce platform, you make your catalog shoppable.

4. Decreasing the Path to Purchase

The newest online catalogues have given people the opportunity to use the image of a product and simply press it with the mouse button and add it to their shopping cart without having to leave that page at all. This smooth connectivity will save the number of steps needed to make a purchase to a drastic level, which increases the conversion rates. Rich media features like 360-degree product views, video demos, and direct connections to user reviews can also be added to the experience by print, which cannot support such features.

5. Unsurpassed Data and Analytics

The time you send out a physical copy of a catalog, you are only putting it in a black hole. You may be aware of the number of you sent and the number of sales that you have made in the catalog period, but relating the two is sometimes more a matter of guesswork. You are not aware of which pages he or she has read, which pictures have been neglected or how many minutes a customer has taken before thinking of a particular item.

Digital catalogs transform the dark spots into insights. Since they exist online all interactions can be monitored.

Metrics That Matter

On a digital platform, you are able to analyze granular data points, such as:

• Dwell time: The duration in which users spend on individual pages.
• Click-through rates: What products are most catching the eye.
• Heatmaps: Clicking and scrolling locations of the users.
• Dead ends: At this point, the user is bored and quits.

6. Limitless Extension and Removability

Your budget and your mailing list are the physical limits to physical distribution. Increasing your coverage would equate to a higher cost of postage and purchase of more lists. Moreover, it is not easy to share a physical catalog; a customer is obliged to give the book to a friend in person.

There are no geographical limits of digital catalogs. Anyone, anywhere in the world can access your content, so long as he has an internet connection. This renders it extremely simple to have your customers become brand advocates. They can share a link to a particular product or the whole range of products with a single click in WhatsApp, Facebook, email, or Pinterest.

This viral potential widens your sphere of influence. A properly developed online catalog can go through the social networks and be exposed to the potential customers whom you could not have reached with direct mail campaign.

7. Conclusion

Going to digital is not only a saving of trees although added environmental advantage is a great plus but also about keeping your business with the current shopping style of the people.

Consumers demand to have speed, precision and interactivity. A digital catalog is a winner on all fronts and offers a sales tool that is dynamic, becomes integrated with your range, and is much cheaper to create. Although, naturally, there might still be one niche use case of the high-end print lookbooks, to the great majority of businesses, the switch to digital presents a competitive advantage too high to be disregarded.

If you are looking for a fine catalog software option, look no further than PageTurnPro digital catalog software.