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their digital catalogs. Regardless of who they choose,
Zasman says suppliers should make sure the provider
is an expert in the field of digital catalogs. “They
should have powerful servers to ensure fast loading
speeds with no downtime, allow for updates that are
quick and simple, and provide them with access to live
tracking with in-depth information about how their cat-
alogs are used online,” she says.
The success of an online catalog doesn’t rest solely
on its presence in the digital sphere, says Zasman.
“The biggest mistake suppliers make is getting a digi-
tal catalog, linking it to their website and forgetting
about it,” she says. “It is a great resource for those on
your website—but with the correct provider, distribu-
tion channels, marketing and staff training, usage will
be exponentially higher.”
Zasman encourages suppliers to take care with
designing a cover that is meant to stand out on the
web. “Have the cover tell a story about what is inside.
End users do not know the suppliers in our industry,
and the goal is to have distributors share your digital
catalogs with them,” she says. “Small images and fonts
can be difficult to view online. If you are designing a
catalog for online use only, reconsider your fonts and
images—the bigger, the better.”
Zasman also recommends placing fewer products
on a page, since online catalogs don’t have to be lim-
ited to a certain number of pages. And, making a cata-
log more end-user friendly, by removing contact infor-
mation, can make it easier for distributors to share with
their customers.
PPB
Asks:
What Do
Distributors
Want From
Their
Catalogs?
ALL THE FULL-COLOR
IMAGES and catchy copy in the
world won’t do a supplier any good
if distributor clients don’t find it
easy to place an order.
PPB
asked a
number of distributor members
what they want from their cata-
logs. Here’s what they asked for:
• Suppliers need to be consis-
tent with the placement of
standard colors offered and
PMS equivalents in catalogs.
They should all locate them
in the order instructions in
the back of the catalog.
• Colors shouldn’t be hard to
locate on websites.
• Having separate logins for
every company is frustrating.
• Some suppliers include about
a third of the instructions
online. Please put all instruc-
tions online or, better yet,
put the full catalog online.
• Blank, high-res images should
be offered instead of, or in
addition to, images of items
with logos on them.
• Supplier catalogs should be
current on company websites
and in SAGE.
Of course, some distributors are
more than ready to see print cat-
alogs go away for good. Their
reasons? They say printing is bad
for the environment, contents are
out of date as soon as they’re
printed, and the money could be
spent on developing products,
increasing inventory and develop-
ing better marketing pieces.