Ricoh Catalog on your company website

We just have our webmaster link to the product pages on the Ricoh website (in another window, of course).

Ditto.

I went to both of your websites (Shaja and ITDude).Both of your websites allow the prospect to inquire about sales and service locations at which time they get directed to a list of your competitors as well as directions to their company. I am trying to avoid having my customers get this kind of information by visiting my site. Does anyone have a better way?

There is a company by the name of StructuredWeb. Check out my site www.peterpauloffice.com. Structuredweb uses a service called managed catalogs to update your website with your manufacturers information while keeping your client on your website. We have used them for the past 3 years or so and would highly recommend their service. Feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss offline. kshumard@peterpauloffice.com

Good looking site, nice and professional!

My answer reflected the simplest and least expensive way to get the catalog on your site. It's not ideal, but it's cost efficient.

Realistically, if a prospect is checking out your website, they've already checked or will be checking out the manufacturer's web site as well. We don't worry about it, because we are confident in what we have to offer.

I will not use Structured Web because of a personal bad experience. No, I will not elaborate publicly.

We used StructuredWeb last year and were not at all satisfied. That is why we are trying to find another way.

I was wrong on what I told you about how we handle our product pages on our web site. We don't link directly to Ricoh's product page. Our webmaster takes the photo and specs from Ricoh's page and creates a product page of our own. Old Glory, you shouldn't have found a direct link from one of our Ricoh or Konica product pages back to their sites, although we do link to the manufacturer's sites from a different page.

(Correction necessary because I was a bit out of touch with our current practices. But, I'm still keeping my shiny new Docusultant karma!)

Some of you might remember that awhile back, I asked everyone how they went about getting a Ricoh Product Catalog of some kind on their website. The only answers I got were “link to the www.ricoh-usa.com site” or “Structured Web.” Neither answer was acceptable to me. We had done the Structured Web approach and the catalog was never anything close to current. The ricoh-usa link also linked our customers/prospects to every Ricoh competitor in our territory when they clicked on the “Sales and Service Locations” button. In addition, with Ricoh Directs becoming bigger threats, I didn’t like the idea of Ricoh knowing who was surfing their site and potentially passing that info on to the Direct Operations.
We decided to spend the money to have our own Ricoh catalog. Now that we have done it, we wondered how many other companies there were that might be willing to spend a small amount each month to have this catalog appear on their site. We still have some cosmetic enhancements in the works but if you go there, you can get an idea of what your catalog would look like if you used it. The address is www.cbs-digital.com and the cost would be $200 a month. This catalog would actually be integrated into your site with your frame surrounding every page of the catalog just like our frame now surrounds ours. You would also be able to pick and choose which products would show on your catalog in case there are Ricoh products you don’t sell. For instance, we don’t sell the PriPort but if you do, your catalog would show them. We would probably also establish some sort of minimum expectation such as, “updates within 72 hours of Ricoh’s announcement.”
Let me know if this sounds like something your company might like to investigate further. My email is jim@cbs-digital.com or you can call me at (800) 284-4270.