Hold Everything has been using this style for a while, it is slow, choppy, and god help you if you are using dial up.

Good to see these poll results, as we are looking into this as a cheaper alternative to catalogs. I guess people think they suck, which is what we thought. What about the ability to print out product tear sheets?

The 'flip-through' online catalogs seem to be design laziness to me. The company either doesn't want to (or can't afford to) put the time and money towards a good, usable design for an online catalog so they have a flash developer turn their quark docs into "pages" and voila! A less usable and often unsearchable online catalog.

Many of the 'flip' catalogs don't print well. We've used PDFs for products with large specifications (i.e. electronics) or a simple print style sheet applied to the product's html page for lighter applications. Good luck, Drew!

They aren't bad.

But unless you have a real and internet friendly system as the primary search method they are major turn off.

The advantage of the internet is SEARCH and SORTING, and the ability to include LOTS of details that your print catalog can't handle, don't fight it.

I am a major internet shopper and researcher so know how to search and sort with the best of them. However, although I use them extensivley, I hate almost all commerce websites because there is no easy way to simply browse and pick out something that catches your eye. Hard copy and on-line catalogues perfectly serve that purpose for me.

You can't search them! Every time I am trying to find something I saw sometime in the past i ahve to look through the whole catalog! Shame on them! What indecisive customer wants to have to flip through all the slow moving pages every time?

And as a side note, Hold Everything's phone ordering system blows. I will never use them again, since they could not tell the difference between a BILLING and a SHIPPING address. They sent everything to my old address in Chicago! And couldn't even correct the problem 3 phone calls later! Not to mention the product arrived broken and replacements broke due to faulty/stupid construction. Be careful if you choose to order from them.

catalog dot google dot com

I HATE THEM

I'm a big fan of the online page-turner catalog. The typical interactive/searchable/sortable storefront, while my choice for actual purchasing, often ends up being pretty bland in order to accomodate all of its functionality. Being able to leaf through the print catalog online can be a nice companion when what you want is to get ideas or absorb the eye-candy.

most of the online ones could be more user-friendly. but I get so many paper catalogs that I never asked for, and the waste makes me shudder.

I think they are the worst of both worlds. The graphics quality is usually poor, often unreadable on my 15" LCD monitor. Very slow. Seems sheer design laziness to use design for a different medium (paper) on the 'net. And they are so cumbersome I can't imagine they are more "user-friendly" even for newbies. I won't shop at a site that uses them.

I like them as a backup to the main website, but I wouldn't want to shop at a site that merely gave you a big pdf file, especially since the images always get crunched down and ugly. They're nice as support, but I'd rather see a site with great pictures and text where the pdfs gave you super-specific information that the catalogue wouldn't contain. The one thing I do like about pdfs is that they always get downloaded to my desktop, so I can keep them sitting around long after I'm done surfing.

I HATE them so very much. I really think it's just laziness on the retailer's part.
In a perfect world, we'd get no unsolicited paper catalogs but could easily request them if we really wanted (I do like to browse through selected paper catalogs, at home, at my leisure, at the print quality they were designed for); and online shopping would be built around the convenience and ease-of-finding-stuff that it does best.

Our company is trying new ways to bring one of kind products from our gallery to customers. Since we use Google to drive all of our business to us we know they've searched for just what we have. We send a word file with images & info back after the customer has requested it. Tough if you have dial up.

Williams Sonoma Home has recently relaunched their website - replacing the old eCatalog with a full-featured eCommerce site. You can browse by category of products, search, and see related items.