Some co-workers of mine went to a web site usability session conducted by a director from the Mequoda Group and came back with some materials that I've been perusing. This material has some good descriptions of the types of web sites that exist today that I think are worth describing here. This first part in a three part series covers the product marketing and catalog marketing web site models.

Product Marketing Web Site

Product marketing web sites feature either a single physical product or very small number of products which. As such, these types of web sites are commerce-based and user-driven. Often, the products are CDs, DVDs, and books. In much the same way that direct mail operates, visitors to a single product marketing site is presented with a landing page where the pitch is made. Ideally, the user is converted to a sale through a single and simple order flow, without any distractions such as "browser more products".

Publishers often mistakenly build a catalog marketing site thinking that because they have multiple products to sell, they need to provide shopping cart functionality. This line of thinking leads to an overly complicated site that doesn't necessarily convert better. In fact, a single product marketing site can perform 29 to 50 percent better in terms of conversion rates.

Catalog Marketing Web Site

This model of site is much more complex than a single product marketing site. The advantage of such a site is that it offers multiple products or services for sale to a targeted group of users. Like the single product model, the catalog model is commerce-based and user-driven. It is, after all, where the idea of a shopping cart is most prevalent. While it shares some aspects of a print catalog or a brick-and-mortar business, catalog sites that sell information products (books, reports, periodicals, music, etc.) have a compelling competitive advantage in that they can allow shoppers to sample products at any time of day from the comfort of their home or offices.

In the case of a publisher, a catalog site may be overkill because visitors are not shopping for multiple products. Instead, they're likely shopping for one magazine, one book, or one report. However, other businesses such as Amazon.com have proven that this model can be extremely successful when a company deals with hundreds or thousands of products.