Product Catalog Software Blog

It might be too simplistic to suggest that B2B companies are mainly interested in pumping out catalog pages, while B2C companies care more about creativity and the presentation of the catalog page as an individual work of art.  However, there is an underlying fundamental truth at play.  While B2B must win over the “brain” with detailed and accurate specifications, B2C intends to win over the more unpredictable “heart” by getting the customer emotionally involved with the products they are trying to sell.

The typical “page pump” solution involves a pre-set library of rigid templates that are merged with product information, specifications, and other technical data to create charts and tables.  While this approach is fine for many B2Bers (not to mention some B2Cers), more than ever we are starting to see a desire for better-looking output…regardless of industry.  Part of the problem is that “page pumps” are often indistinguishable from one another.  While it may convey the nitty-gritty details, it does not necessarily set your company apart from your competition.

A more modern approach is to infuse some of the creativity and design aspects from the B2C realm into the typically staid B2B pages.  Granted, there is a fine line to walk.  You can’t lose sight of what the customer wants and needs, and you don’t want to needlessly complicate the process of creating catalog page output.   In most cases, however, it is entirely possible to enliven your pages with a more creative, flexible, yet still fully automated approach.

With a choice between a bland,  “cookie cutter” page and one that grabs your attention, why continue to choose the “Blah” approach?   The time has come when choosing to spice up your catalog pages no longer means it can’t be automated, or easy.

We are very excited to announce our all-new product, PRINTexpress™.  It’s the same game, but we’ve just changed the rules!

Printing is sometimes necessary and unavoidable. However the burden on the environment is enormous. Based on a mixture of softwood and hardwood trees, 40 feet tall and 6-8 inches in diameter, it would take a rough average of 24 trees to produce a ton of printing and writing paper, using a certain pulping process.

As the world gets more environmentally conscious, there is a growing trend to use less paper. Consumers are adopting this by increasing their paperless habits. Apsiva is making it easy so catalogers can aid this process and help the environment by reducing paper use.

Many catalogers have already realized the need to reduce the number of pages in catalogs. The fewer the pages in the catalog, the less trees get gobbled up. Some catalogers have gone even further by re-designing and shrinking their page margins to .75 or less. This is barely noticeable, but the savings add up.

Though these strategies are useful, they don’t go far enough. Apsiva’s products are environmentally friendly and with Apsiva’s products, you can do more. In the first part of this article, we will focus on how to use Apsiva’s web catalog software.

Apsiva’s Private catalogs module can be used to email personalized catalogs to your customers instead of print catalogs. Apsiva’s private catalogs can be setup for individual customers or businesses by selecting the products only that customer can use. This capability offers a few key advantages:

1. It allows the customer to get their specific prices
2. It displays only the products that are a fit for the customer
3. Pricing and products are dynamic.

Many organizations are taking advantage of web based private catalogs, public catalogs and e-commerce sites with Apsiva’s catalog software: WEBsource. As always, WEBsource draws data from a centralized content management system, hence eliminating the need for managing content in multiple databases. Apsiva’s catalog creation tools are all built on the same platform.

In part 2, we will discuss how Apsiva’s PDFsource software allows you to reduce your catalog emissions.

The complexity of publishing to each catalog channel has grown. This is primarily due to the evolution of each channel in its offerings. The result has been that the tools that provide centralized content management have also grown in complexity. While having the opportunity to work with many different catalogers over the years, Apsiva has found one constant: not all users within an organization have the same degree of skill when using software. Some users are comfortable with Excel, some with Word, and some with Adobe InDesign. So, with the right user interface, a catalog designer can be freed from much of the tedious work which allows them to spend that time creating.

Apsiva’s new catalog building software solutions have evolved to make this process as effortless as possible. Apsiva’s new version 7.0 is easy to use but yet, at any moment, a user can dive deep into any specific area of the application to get more detail.

If we simply replace the wasted time spent on performing repetitive data-entry and error-checking tasks with wasted time spent on stumbling and fumbling through a tool that isn’t intuitive, we haven’t gained anything.  That is why Apsiva has made the user interface a focus:  in the end, the success of any software hinges on the user experience.  Powerful features don’t necessarily have to translate into a jumble of menus and buttons; with Apsiva, the complexity is hidden in the background, deep in the tool itself, where it belongs.  We don’t want novice users to feel intimidated by our tool; we want them to actually use it and get the value from it starting Day 1.  At the same time, we don’t want to alienate the power users out there who prefer the no-nonsense, nitty-gritty approach.  So a power users functionality is still available, just not out front-and-center.  Allowing the end user to choose an interface of his/her choice is how Apsiva makes the return on your investment quick.

Apsiva is built entirely on open standards which offers various benefits as discussed in this post. The main function of Apsiva is to empower creative teams by making digital assets easily accessible. As Apsiva makes manages content, it does so in a way that rights and permissions to content are publicly available to other applications. A benefit of this approach is users outside of Apsiva can continue using products such as Adobe Bridge to search for digital assets based on product links. While Bridge has many powerful and useful features, it can be completely nullified if digital assets are poorly linked to products or have no linking to begin with.  Apsiva’s technology puts enough keywords in the digital assets to make assets searchable and accessible and up-to-the-minute accurate from external tools and systems. External systems (like the web) can also benefit from this approach since assets don’t need to be duplicated across systems.

The core of Apsiva’s capability is to link products with their corresponding digital assets, supplier logos, certifications, etc.   Apsiva’s strength lies in automatically linking images with products. This linking does not ‘relocate’ the image to Apsiva’s internal structure, but leaves the images in neatly organized folders.  This is the open standards approach.  This makes assets easy to find and fosters reusability which in turn saves time and money.

This capability makes Apsiva’s implementation ‘Open’, and hence gives you more than one way to get to your digital assets without duplication.

By centralizing digital assets, Apsiva brings an organized approach to digital assets and improves searchability across all the members in the creative team.

What does it mean when content is ‘granular’ in nature, and how much is enough? If all copy for a given product were to be stored as one large blob of text, it might be fine for display on a website, but it would be unwieldy when it came to print copy. Storing this content instead at a more granular level:  for instance, breaking down copy into a headline, sub head, main copy, and features makes the same text far more useful. In this form, we can now pick and choose which elements are best suited for a particular channel; at the same time, we can easily update a specific element such as Price and have it instantly available to all channels, without updating it in multiple places.

Almost as bad as “not granular enough”, however, is “too granular”. Yes, it is entirely possible to get carried away and break content down into too many elements to the point where it stops being useful and instead becomes a maintenance chore.

Finding the right balance when it comes to content granularity is key. We recommend that content should be broken down to the extent necessary but only to the detail we can get away with. There are no hard set rules, and it’s going to be different for every company. The challenge is in understanding the pros and cons, and striking the right balance.