Yes, You Really Could Win an iPad

It’s been posted here. (Flipping Pages blog)

And here. (Nxtblog)

And here. (Twitter)

Which means you really should hurry and fill out this survey to make sure your voice is heard! Last year, publishers from all across the board filled out this same survey for a baseline: B2B, B2C, full-service, and self-service publishers. We’re looking for even more responses this year to compare.

We’ll ask you questions like, "How satisfied are you with your circulation" and "Which best describes your attitude about how new devices affect readership?" At the survey’s close, we’ll reveal the responses so everyone can see the industry’s trend.

As an additional bonus, and a thank you for your time, we’re holding a drawing for an iPad. The name will be selected from among those who participate in the survey.

Ready to participate? Click here to take the short survey now.

Taberific

Almost as long as there have been Nxtbooks, there have been tabs inside the Nxtbook. These attractive features serve to direct the reader to certain parts of the digital publication, much as they do in print.

But did you know they can do something they can’t do in print? Check out this application of the Nxtbook tabs in action; notice how you have the ability to link to more than one section from an individual tab. Ask your account manager for details! 

Inflation Increases USPS Rates Again

It’s probably just a coincidence that I read these two brief articles side-by-side, but it did reiterate a truth about digital publishing.

The Dead Tree Edition article notes the USPS will be raising prices for postal services  over 2% with mention of pursuing other rate hikes. Given the reports of the postal service’s struggles during the recession, higher rates shouldn’t be a surprise. But it does mean possible increased strain on publishers using USPS to distribute their print editions.

The second blurb, this one by Bloomberg Businessweek, gave tips on how to use email and social media to reach and build your audience. The fact of the matter is, both of those methods ignore inflation rates. The benefit of using the power of the Web is that distribution is free.

The End Goal: The Purchase

The goal is easy to articulate: get customers from desire to purchase as quickly and smoothly as possible. The trick is how one actually does it. 

For eCommerce investors, the process involves several factors, including being available to the customer wherever he/she is, getting the customer to the product in as few clicks as possible, inspiring confidence in the product and brand, and creating an experience that encourages the customer to return. While there are many channels for eCommerce, a digital catalog achieves these goals in ways no other singular channel, including a website, can. Consider the following:

Mobile: You cannot have a conversation about ecommerce without admitting the importance of mobile. Customers demanding a product in their palm – not at the brick and mortar store – are using tablets and smartphones to find purchases. Digital catalogs through Nxtbook Media reaches all the major devices, getting your catalog in their hands, now.

Product Search: If your customer is on a mission, he or she will want to find the product fast. A digital catalog is designed to connect your customer with the desired product on the page and/or your website. Take this client who used a product search by SKU feature in their toolbar. Or this client who links all of their SKUs directly to product pages on their website.

Familiarity Breeds Confidence: While we always advocate optimization for multiple screens, our page flipping technology keeps catalogs looking familiar to customers. The familiar layout enables them to navigate your catalog comfortably. By adding digital extras like animation, product info pop-ups, shopping carts, and other rich media consumers recognize that your company applied resources to the catalog. In a world of closing businesses – even franchises like Borders – projecting an image of technological growth and security can help to instill confidence in buyers.

Elegant Product Images and Descriptions: One of the benefits of a digital catalog is the ability to add extra images and descriptions to products. This gives customers the ability to view the products before buying them in an optimized format. Customers can then buy with confidence rather than hesitate and possibly navigate away from the page.

Now is the time to utilize digital catalogs to provide a straight path to the purchase.

 

Success Team Workshops: A Must for Clients

As a service to our clients, the Nxtbook Success Team hosts monthly webinars geared toward helping clients tackle tasks associated with publishing. Today’s "Success Team Workshop," as Success Manager Todd Reinhart calls it, focused on building circulation and featured Success Managers Todd Reinhart and Adam Grim, Project Manager Angela Bauman, and Director of Email Campaigns Mallory Weiss.

Though I probably should have been live-blogging the material, here are a few snippets of the conversation clients in attendance heard:

"40-50% of visits to your digital edition is going to come from your email campaign." – Angela

"[Email] reaches your busy readers who don’t have time to search for you." – Mallory

"Some say social media is the panacea that is going to save our industry," while others say there’s no way to measure ROI. – Adam

"[Website promotion] enhances your digital publication’s opinion in the eyes of search engines." – Angela

When considering email, consider all elements: subject line, branding, consistency, text v. image, free marketing tools from Nxtbook, tying into social media. – Mallory

"AddToAny found that 88.9% of link sharing is done through social media." – Adam

And those are just some highlights. If you’re a Nxtbook Media client and you want to participate in the Nxtbook Success Team workshop, look for the next webinar’s information in the Nxt-Steps newsletter. Of course, if you have a "Best Practice" you want to share with the Success Team to be featured on a webinar, or if you have a request for a webinar topic, contact your Success Team.

In the Top 10

Looking over some of our digital edition stats from the past month, some interesting traffic patterns emerged, forming natural Top 10 lists.

Interestingly, over half of the Top 10 most visited digital editions this month were related to travel. The 2011 Chicago Official Visitors Guide, published by Miles Media Group, and Car & Travel, published by AAA NY, for example, appeared on both Top 10 lists for most visited and most page views.

On our Top 10 Referrers list ranks both Google and Facebook. Several clients’ personal websites made the list too. For instance, check out how Steinmart links to their catalog directly from their homepage. How effective is that? Well, their catalog is on the top 10 list for visits, too.

When analyzing Top Platform use, the iPad Native App is jumping up the pages viewed list, though computer screens still boast the greatest visits. The trend still points to more people viewing digital editions with computer screens, though those who use an iPad Native App spend time looking at quite a few pages.

What Drives Change?

What’s driving change in your business? An essential part of discussing any strategy with digital publications is to recognize what pushes your company to change or embrace new models. What factors makes your business re-evaluate how your approach reaching your audience?

Some possible factors:

Devices: The sheer number of devices available to display your content is staggering. Apple alone has 4 screens which you can use (iPad, iPad2, iPhone, iPod Touch), not including computers. Does the entry of another device cause you to second-guess your content layout and platform? Do your sales reps wonder how to sell for each new screen?

Social Media: Some days it may be difficult to tell if social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and now Google+ are true content distributors. A recent study by Nielsen and AOL showed nearly a quarter of the 10,000 social media messages they analyzed contained links to content, but knowing how to make your content shareable might be a struggle. Is your team active and excited to engage in social media, or are you waiting for a few more case studies before you develop a plan for your business?

Content Consumption: It seems just as some businesses catch up to the ways content is being consumed now, other businesses are coming up with new platforms and new models. Does your business have a strategy for creating viral content that’s spread across multiple platforms, or do you find yourself scrabbling onto all the trendy new sites so you’re not left behind?

Staff: Employees available can change a business model entirely depending on the type of people you have and use. For instance, digital natives would offer different ideas than digital immigrants. Designers expert in digital layout provide different insights than print designers. Having enough staff members at all will certainly shape how you approach business strategy.

Effective digital content creation requires an evaluation of not only the goals the business hopes to achieve, but also an evaluation of the reasons why the switch to digital is important for the company. This is why Nxtbook Media considers it a top priority to fully partner with our clients to suss out what strategies and resources will best benefit them. 

IRCE 2011: Dynamically Fed Content and Digitally Optimized Catalogs

This post was written by Eric Gervase, a Sales Director at Nxtbook Media. Eric attended IRCE 2011 to talk to potential and current clients and apply our knowledge of the ecommerce market.

 

Internet Retailer is an event we’ve been attending for a number of years now.  We’re proud supporters as exhibitors and always love to see all the fun stuff that our potential customers and other exhibitors are doing.  For instance, check out this crazy display by End Point.  I have to guess that the display had something to do with their deployment of Google’s Liquid Galaxy.  But, frankly, I just found the booth wildly interesting.

As usual though, some of the most interesting conversation happened with our potential customers.  As a digital catalog provider, we were talking with everyone about creating a great digital catalog from their print pdfs.  We were also talking about the ability to create mobile and tablet versions of their catalogs for apps or web-kit versions on Android and Apple products.  But… time and again, there were two other recurring themes all week.

1.    “Can you create a digital catalog from a feed delivered from our current website?”- There were certainly a fair share of attendees that had catalogs and were interested in a standard conversion into our Nxtbook technology.  But, for clients who don’t have a print catalog, the idea of a feed driven digital catalog came up over and over again.  About 5 years ago, we created a concept product we were calling Nxtbook “On The Fly”.  It was a dynamic catalog that we were pulling search results from Amazon’s store and displaying in a page turning format.  There were a ton of people interested in the idea, but it never really got off the ground.  Perhaps it’s time to dust that one off…

2.    “I don’t have a print catalog, can you design a digital catalog for me?”-  Again, it’s pretty clear what we do for retailers who already have a print catalog.  But, in the instance of a retailer who doesn’t already have one, how can we help?  The answer is, we can design a digital catalog for you from your raw product photos, descriptions and pricing.  In that process, we will take special care to design for the screen by using font sizes, page sizes and image sizes that makes sense for a computer, tablet or mobile device.

Overall, I really enjoyed my experience at IRCE 2011.  The other exhibitors were great.  The attendees brought us lively conversation and some new ideas (as well as dusted off some old ones).  And, let’s not forget, the weather and food in San Diego was fantastic.  All in all, it was a great trip.  We can’t wait for next year.

You’ve Got to Circle Readers with Content

Face it: your audience is crawling all over the Web.  That’s one of the reasons why so many publishers have made the move to getting their materials online. Creating digital editions is a crucial step to developing an online presence. But chances are, if your readers like your publication, they’ll appreciate more chances to interact with your brand and your content on other platforms. We have a couple of plans to help you circle your fans with content they can interact with.

1. Animated buttons and toolbar buttons – sharing to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn has always been as intuitive to our platforms as it is to your readers. We’ve just taken it a step further: from intuitive to obvious.
2. YouTube – Adding video to your content calendar provides engaging content for your digital edition AND increases your online influence. This publisher set up their own YouTube channel for their publication, Beauty LaunchPad.
3. Facebook Page – As of right now, 45,893,447 people “Like” Facebook, and Facebook stats report over 500 million active users. Somewhere in there, your readers are bouncing from page to page, clicking "Like" as they go. Some publishers take advantage of this: NailPro magazine’s page provides a meeting ground for readers and editors and those interested in the industry, and they have incurred 8,677 "Likes" so far.
4. Twitter Thoughts – Having readers follow your brand on twitter is an easy way to consistently interact with them on a large and small scale. Take Connections which uses the medium to post links to articles as well as respond to readers’ tweets.

Building an online presence can take time and resources, but the efforts enable current readers to have a deeper engagement with your brand and new readers have a chance to find your publication on platforms they already frequent. To that end, Nxtbook Media Creative Services Team can help you plan and implement a social media strategy to increase your online influence. Simply click here and tell us what you need or contact your Account Manager to get started.

Just Hours Away

We are just a few hours away from our free webinar, Creating Commerce with Digital Catalogs. Don’t miss this opportunity to sign up and learn how digital catalogs contribute to conversions in the B2B and B2C marketplace. In this webinar, Caroline Ashmore of GRESSCO and Meg Duskin of ASHA will describe some of the reasons why their companies decided to produce digital catalogs, what ways they distribute and market the material, and lessons they’ve learned along the way. This is a can’t-miss opportunity for you to learn from others’ experiences.

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