Building An Online Buyer's Guide

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, July 1, 1999 by Wayne D'Orio

Web versions at print guides can offer more products, more effective searches and more opportunities for advertising programs. Here's a three-step primer.

PRODUCING AN ANNUAL BUYER'S GUIDE OR directory is a regular practice for many business-to-business titles and for a growing number of consumer magazines as well. Often, it is the largest and most time-consuming issue of the year. Each version requires faxes and phone calls by the hundreds or even thousands just to acquire and check the information.

Of course, these issues are also often a magazine's most profitable, what with repurposed editorial, paid listings and ads.

But truth be told, obsolescence creeps in fast. Even before the publication date, calls start coming in asking for changes that are too late to input. Sometimes it's just a detail, a specification of a part that has changed. Other times it's major--a key advertiser who says its area code will change in a month. There's nothing to do but wait for the next guide, next year.

Now imagine if publishers put the same guide online. Changes large and small could be made instantly, keeping the entire guide up-to-date all year long. Better yet, the program's software could allow advertisers to input the information themselves, meaning each change would need only staff approval before being posted. Want more? What if all of a title's potential customers, also known as readers, could search for specific items in the guide with just a few keystrokes? Tailor a search to his or her particular needs? A contractor who needs a 30-inch stove would soon have a list of all the manufacturers who make them. By checking the features and price of each model, the contractor could decide which one to buy.

Publishers could sell banner ads, section sponsorships and even prioritized listings for those who pay. Ultimately, publishers can transition into e-commerce--if not on the magazine's Web site, then at least by sending a reader on to a sale on an advertiser's site after a reader has hotlinked to the manufacturer's page. Online reader tracking would also allow the publisher to show advertisers real-time statistics of how many people saw a listing, went to their home page and, ultimately, bought a product because of the company's ad.

Welcome to the future of the annual directory. If you think this is implausible, think again. Or check your competitor's Web page. Their version of an online directory may not have all the bells and whistles mentioned above, but it probably has some of them.

Web directories, or buyer's guides, are one of the easiest, most effective ways to establish a profitable position online and bridge the gap to e-com. And they are not just applicable in the b-to-b environment: Many consumer magazines publish annual guides. "It's totally changing the buyer's guides part of publishers' businesses," says Erik Matlick, president of InfoExpress.com Inc., a New York-based company that converts print guides to the Web. Matlick created his first product in January 1998 at the request of Workforce, a 32,000 paid-circulation title from ACC Communications, Costa Mesa, California.

Before Matlick finished that site, he saw the possibilities and began to offer his services to other publishers. InfoExpress now has put up or is working on sites for 29 magazines, including more than seven for Miller Freeman Inc. Its projects range from MFI's comprehensive Music Gear Online guide--which incorporates both its Guitar and Bass Buyer's Guide and Music Technology Buyer's Guide--to IDG's more basic Computer World site.

While InfoExpress is the market leader in this relatively new area, other vendors, including New York City-based Grand Central Network's Infotaxi and Berkshire Information Systems, in Lennox, Massachusetts, also build online directories for magazines.

Right now, most publishers' emphasis is just to figure out how to efficiently move their guides online. While the potential exists for making online guides the kind of cash cows a print version can be, most magazines are not yet concentrating on ROL.

The process of transferring a guide from print to online breaks neatly into three parts: The first step is to get your guide online; the second step is to make the Web version better than your print version, and the third step is to investigate the best ways to make money on the project.

1. TRANSFERRING YOUR PRINT GUIDE ONLINE

As basic as it seems, getting your guide online quickly is still the top priority for magazines. Before publishers start to worry about the array of options that can be added, they need to get their guides up and start advertising their existence to both readers and advertisers.

"Lots of people haven't figured out how to do it," says Dawn Pearson, business manager for new media at Washington, D.C.-based Hanley-Wood, the 25-title b-to-b publisher that specializes in the building trades. "We're taking a stab at it." Hanley-Wood put its first buyer's guide up in 1997 for the 141,000-circulation Builder and has since added three other sites.