In e-commerce, you would have to try all kinds of marketing methods to get visitors to browse through your online mall and make a purchase. Would the paper catalog which many traditional marketers still swear by do the job for your e-business? Entrepreneur.com cites research results which show that this traditional strategy is quite helpful to a e-commerce website:
Catalog recipients account for 22 percent of traffic to a catalog company’s Web site and 37 percent of its e-commerce dollars. Catalog recipients make 16 percent more visits to that company’s Web site than those who do not receive a catalog. Catalog recipients view 22 percent more pages and spend 15 percent more time at the Web site than those who do not receive a catalog. On average, the total amount spent on a Web site by a catalog recipient is $39, more than twice the $18 spent by noncatalog consumers.
Read: Double Play [Entrepreneur.com]
I can’t imagine that print catalogs are very effective for ecommerce companies – they use up enough office paper as it is.