In these modern times, when almost all organizations are looking for an online presence, just about everything is being prefixed with an “e”. For instance - ebook, ecommerce, ezine, ebrochure, and ecatalog, among others. eCatalog or online flash catalog is the latest innovation in this category.
Surely, you must remember those clumsy paper catalogs that you received via mail. I won’t say that all paper catalogs are useless; some catalogs must have been helpful. But nevertheless, I am quite certain they often found their way into the dustbin, primarily because they were not easy to store for later use. And when you finally made up your mind to buy the product you selected off the catalog, the catalog itself was no where to be found. This is where an eCatalog saves the day.
An eCatalog is an online version of a paper catalog. Since it is hosted on a web server, it is available online 24/7. Prospective buyers simply need to log on to the product website in order to look at the eCatalog.
For Online Buyers - Flash Catalog offers an intuitive interface to browse through the products. An eCatalog is laid out in the form of a virtual flip book. Each page shows a single product or a collection of products, as per the catalog owner’s wish. It features an exciting page flip effect. eCatalog pages can be flipped in the same way as you flip through the pages of a paper catalog. This can be accomplished by dragging the page corners, or by using the navigation system.
The navigation panel also allows you to move to a specific page in the catalog by specifying the page number - this comes in handy if the eCatalog has hundreds of pages. You have a scrollbar as well to allow quick and efficient navigation. Yet another awesome feature of the eCatalog is zoom. Internet Shoppers may zoom any product page up to an incredibly high level of detail - more than 300%. Printing any page is also simple, and can be done by a simple click. The eCatalog or 3D flash catalog uses a “load on demand” feature to make the catalog extremely fast loading. In conformation with Web 2.0 standards, the eCatalog also has a “Tell a Friend” feature.
For Sellers - Flash Catalog shortens the sales cycle by bringing the products right to the customers’ computer. This further results in higher sales. With an eCatalog to showcase their products, online shopping cart owners may do away with the expensive paper catalog, and save thousands of dollars in printing and postage costs.
Moreover, the cost of building an eCatalog is only a small fraction of the cost of getting a paper catalog printed and posted to prospective buyers. Updating a page flip catalog is easy enough, and therefore your catalog always shows the latest products on offer. So if a product runs out of stock, you may easily remove that from the eCatalog. It’s not just product catalogs that you can create with an eCatalog. Online businesses will find multiple uses of an eCatalog - brochures, magazines, newsletters, leaflets, and photo albums are some of the uses.
All in all, an eCatalog or flash catalog is a handy tool for both online sellers and buyers. For buyers, it offers ease of shopping. For sellers, it generates more sales by shortening the sales cycle to a great extent.