CUSTOMER INTERVIEW WITH ROWENA DE ROOS, MANAGER INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION AT FORBO FLOORING SYSTEMS
"Bind people to your company by inspiring them with great content."
DIGITAL PRODUCT CATALOG
Forbo Flooring Systems has been producing and supplying floor coverings worldwide for the project and consumer markets since 1928. With offices around the world, communication, both internally and externally, is very important. Since 2015, Forbo has been using this online magazine tool for the creation of various publications. Think of inspiration magazines, annual reports and brochures. The counter is now on more than 80 publications in 6 different languages. You can read all about it in this interview with Rowena de Roos, International Communications Manager at Forbo Flooring Systems.
Why a new product catalog?
We were looking for a new way to present our product collections (such as Marmoleum) in a modern, fresh and above all inspiring way. We used to use PDF a lot, but that is simply not practical and not interactive enough. Our website was not a solution because it is quite static and can become a maze. Due to the amount of content, our website is starting to look like a kind of Wikipedia ;-). Keeping our digital product catalog up to date is now also child's play, even after publishing. That is very important to us because our collections often change. With a digital catalog we can effortlessly make adjustments or even add new content. Duplicating and translating our sales and marketing communication tools for our other offices is also easy!
What is the purpose of the product catalog?
We mainly use our digital product catalogs to inspire readers with good content. The primary goal is inspiration. Ultimately, we want to get readers warm enough to contact us. We therefore always have a call-to-action on the last pages with different contact options.
When is the digital catalog a success?
Our product publications are a success if we inspire readers enough about the possibilities of our collections to contact us. We do not want to overload people with text, but rather inspire them with a beautiful image. That is why we have not set hard sales goals because we really use it for inspiration.
We also use Google Analytics to see how our catalog (and other sales and marketing publications) perform. We can see exactly how far readers get in a publication. If they get stuck on page 2 and then leave, that's a bad sign. That is why we keep a close eye on which pages readers come in and where they leave. We never knew that in the time of PDFs. The data therefore determine the success, because everything is measurable. That is really a relief.
"The data therefore determine success, because everything is measurable. That is really a relief"
How did the transformation from PDF to a digital publication go?
From the beginning, we saw the opportunity to use digital publications as a completely new concept for our communication. It was therefore not a question of transferring PDF content to an online magazine.
We took a completely different approach because the focus has shifted much more to image and video, rather than text. We took this up step by step together with our creative agency Plan B. In the past we first wrote all our texts. But now we first choose image & video and add text to it. It is really a different mindset.
How are the reactions?
Very enthousiastic! The navigation is intuitive and the leaf rhythm of the publications is experienced as pleasant. We receive very positive responses to digital publications from our local marketing managers (in other countries). As I said before, we can effortlessly duplicate publications and then translate them. Which allows us to quickly create content. Our representatives are also very pleased. They show the publications on their tablets, because of the offline availability they don't even need an internet connection. Very handy! And they no longer have to carry all kinds of brochures and sample books ;-).
What are the results? Has the objective been achieved?
The main purpose of our digital product catalogs is to inspire and it certainly succeeds. Since we switched from PDFs to interactive digital publications, we have received many positive responses and many requests. Objective achieved! We also looked at the statistics. Here we see the need for responsiveness. 45% of the traffic views the publication via tablet or smartphone! Visitors spend an average of 3 minutes in our Dutch catalog, on our website, for example, this is only 50 seconds for similar content. We are very happy about that! For our English catalog, the statistics are even better. Here we see that our visitors spend on average almost 5 (!) Minutes in the publication and view more than 18 pages (out of 23). This also makes us happy!
"With our online magazines, we now present our product collections in a modern, fresh and, above all, inspiring way. Meanwhile, our printing costs have decreased by 50% by digitizing everything!"
What are the future plans?
We would like to do more with personalization. For example, showing the reader's name & company name and filling in personal data in forms beforehand. All this is possible with an online magazine!
Together with Plan B, we will first test everything in the Netherlands and then roll it out to other countries. Of course we want to digitize even more, after all, we are on the eve of "Digital Transformation" at Forbo.
What are your tips for future online magazine users?
Let the image speak. Use large photos and videos and try to limit the text. Bind people to your company by inspiring them with great content.