Many Merchants Discover Customers Prefer Virtual Catalogs over Ecommerce Sites

[mandy]

With broadband penetration hitting critical mass, more multichannel merchants are adding interactive, or virtual, catalogs to their Websites. Usually presented as a link on the e-commerce site, interactive catalogs generally mirror offline print books; online visitors use their mouse to “flip” the virtual pages and to gain close-up views of specific products and descriptions.

As cumbersome as an interactive catalog might sound — for one thing, it takes much more time to flip virtual pages than print pages — many merchants are discovering that a significant segment of their customer base prefers them to navigating through an e-commerce site...

full article: http://multichannelmerchant.com/webchann..._05302006/

[valleygirl]

I'm racing to get my first print catalog finished in time for the holidays.  I for sure won't be doing an interactive online version of it this year.  Maybe next year.