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 lackluster paper catalogs that you received via mail. I won’t say that all paper catalogs are useless; a few of those catalogs must have had useful product listings. But nevertheless, I am quite certain they often found their way into the dustbin, primarily because they were not easy to store for future use. And when you finally made up your mind to purchase 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 enables you to jump to a certain page of the catalog by specifying the page number - this comes in handy in case the eCatalog has hundreds of pages. You have a scrollbar as well to allow fast and easy navigation. Another awesome feature of the eCatalog is zooming. Customers may zoom in on any product page up to an incredibly high level of detail - more than 300 percent. Printing any page is also darn easy, and can be accomplished by a simple click. The eCatalog or online 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 creation cost of an eCatalog is minimal compared to the cost of getting a paper catalog printed and posted to prospective buyers. Updating a page-flip catalog is easy enough, and hence your online catalog always shows the latest products on offer. So if a product is out of stock, you may easily remove that from the eCatalog. It’s not just product catalogs that you can create with an eCatalog. Internet marketers will find multiple applications of an eCatalog - brochures, magazines, newsletters, leaflets, and photo albums are some of the uses.
In essence, an ecatalog or flash catalog is an awesome web application for both Internet buyers and sellers. It expedites the sales process and hence gets more sales for the seller. And it offers ease of shopping to buyers by providing an innovative and intuitive interface.