E-coming of Age

It remains a crapshoot when I look to see which recognizable names come up on my product searches. Although Williams-Sonoma is close to the top in both free and paid search listings for “cookware,” Home Depot is nowhere to be found on the first page of my “hardware” search. As for more specific searches, such as “golf drivers,” TGW came up in the free search, but mostly small sites showed up in the paid search.

So although both e-mail marketing and search engine optimization have come a long way in just a few years, there are greater advances catalogers can make. We’ll continue to offer more and more articles on these subjects, beginning with Alan Rimm-Kaufman’s E-commerce Link column in this issue in which he conducted a fascinating study of e-mail sign-ups. Check it out, and let me know how you’re doing.

Paul Miller, Editor in Chief

(914) 669-8391

pmiller@napco.com