What Catalogers Have to Guard against When They Use the Web

• Web search for products is slow. Flipping through a catalog is easy. You can find what you want and order it. You can’t flip through a Web site. To find a cardigan sweater in Appleseed’s catalog took about 45 seconds. To find the same sweater from scratch on Appleseed’s Web site took 3 minutes. To find the sweater on the Web site using the catalog number took about 1 minute. Fast search is possible, but only if very clever marketers team up with very clever Web programmers.

• The colors on the Web are not true. There is no way that catalogers can know what users’ monitors are doing to the pictures of their products. There is no known cure for this disease.

• Out-of-stock information is seldom accurate. When you call a telemarketer, her software tells her and she tells you that the item you want is out of stock. Web sites seldom do. As a result, you place the order and find out by email a few days later that the item is out of stock. After a few experiences like this, you stick with a live operator. This is really inexcusable. To get customer acceptance, Web sites have to be as good as or better than a live operator. They have to know what is out of stock in real time and be able make instant recommendations on substitutes.