The E-cat is an interactive, engaging way to distribute product information to customers, distributors and prospects. The catalog is designed for maximum flexibility and ease of maintenance. By porting your web store to the desktop, your customers will be able to browse through your store on their desktop, without bandwidth constraints, gather product information, and place orders online via the Paypal Shopping Cart. It’s the only digital catalog with a mp3 player, video player, web content updater, and live help available as built-in options.
The E-cat broadens your reach by opening new marketing channels, such as:
- E-cat CD-Rom Direct Mail: Supplement or replace print catalogs.
- E-cat CD-Rom Handouts: Tradeshow and/or point of purchase.
- E-cat Download
- E-cat Email attachments
The E-cat is:
Easy to use — It allows your customers to make quick comparisons, get product information and jump to a buy page or picture enlargement page in an intuitive and easy to use interface.
Easy to build and maintain — The Content Manager will aid in the structuring of your catalog content. The only skills required to maintain the catalog are basic html editing of your product pages.
Economical — Compact, interactive and economical, digital catalogs do more, sell more and produce a better ROI than print catalogs. The E-cat is inexpensive to produce, maintain and update.
Eternal — Content is easily updatable through the web, so your customers will have easy access to your latest offerings. (See update content option)
Ecological — An EDF-Pew Alliance for Environmental Innovation report finds that the companies who last year alone mailed 17 billion catalogs to American consumers (approximately 59 catalogs for every person in the United States) are doing little to reduce the environmental impacts of their paper use. Create goodwill with your customers by offering a more environmentally-friendly alternative to paper catalogs.
E-commerce enabled — because the product pages are simple HTML pages, you can easily integrate your Paypal Shopping Cart into the E-cat.
The standard E-cat template is highly customizable and adaptive. Whether you have 50 products or 1500, the catalog will accommodate them. You have control over the look of the catalog, and over which option modules you want to include. The option modules add extra functionality to the catalog. Custom E-cats are also available. Please see the custom order form for more information.
Included with the E-cat builder Demo, is a fully functional sample catalog. The only limitation is that you can’t distribute it. The sample has all options enabled, so you can try them out. See ‘Using the sample catalog’ in the Help files, to make changes to the sample. If you decide the E-cat is right for you, use the built-in or online purchase forms to place either a standard template order or a custom order.
The 4 basic steps in building your catalog are as follows:
assemble content:
select colors:
select options:
distribute:
assemble content:
The E-cat is a dynamic catalog. This means that all catalog content (images, HTML product pages, XML files, etc.) is loaded in at runtime from external files. In this way the catalog can adapt to different menus and varying quantities of products. By separating the catalog from the content, the process of populating and updating the catalog is greatly simplified.
Structuring your content into a format the E-cat can understand is done using the Content Manager in the E-catalog builder. This tool will create simple XML documents (essentially a flat file database), that orders all your content.
The first step in populating your catalog is structuring your menu, by which your customers will navigate your E-cat. The E-cat utilizes a dynamic menu with adaptive scroller. This allows for fast, easy, intuitive navigation through the catalog contents. See Content Manger > Menu editor.
The Menu will then dictate how the rest of your catalog gets structured.
See Content Manger > File editor.
select colors:
The look of the standard E-cat template is highly customizable. An infinite number of color combinations are possible by using the Color Picker tool. If you desire a custom skinned catalog, then please use the custom
purchase form to get a quote.
select options:
There are currently 8 optional modules that can be included in your catalog with minor configuration. They add amazing functionality to the catalog. Take them for a test run in the sample catalog.
Current modules include:
1. Sound player mp3
Add voice and/or music to your catalog to enhance the user experience.
2. Video player MPEG
Bring your catalog to life with an informational video.
3. Contact form
Provides an easy way for your customers to contact you.(PHP based )
4. Newsfeed
Send news and notices to the user by enabling the news option. Use the Newsfeeder form to create newsitems.
5. Content updater
With this option, your catalog content never gets outdated. The content updater replaces and/or appends new content as they become available. Your customers can painlessly download updates through the internet.
Use the updater form to administer the updater.
6. Join mailing list form
Provides an easy way for your customers to join your mailing list. (PHP based)
7. Tell-a-friend form
Provides an easy way for your customers to tell others about you. (PHP based)
Add live help support to your catalog and communicate directly with your customers.Note: indirectly a seperate application administered through the Flash Livehelp Administrator.
distribute:
After you’ve assembled your content, selected colors, selected and configured your option modules, you are ready to distribute your catalog to your customers. The E-cat can be distributed on a CD-Rom, CD business card, downloaded from a web site, or emailed as an attachment.
Standard E-cat template is $98.00
For custom E-cat’s, use custom order form to get a quote.