Stop those catalogs with Catalog Choice! October 10th, 2007 by Matt
The idea.
Growing up in the US, I remember how annoying it was to receive commercial sales calls on the telephone late in the evening, when the family was sitting around trying to enjoy some quality time together. This problem was later solved (mostly) through the introduction of the “Do Not Call,” registry — a legislated service which marketers must consult before they can call you. If your name is on the “Do Not Call” list, it’s illegal for them to call you.
A similar problem exists today with paper catalogs. American consumers are simply inundated with unsolicited, undesired paper catalogs from a multitude of merchants. While receiving these catalogs can be just as annoying as receiving the marketing phone calls, there’s a deeper, more concerning problem. The production of the 19 billion paper catalogs sent each year in the US takes a huge toll on the environment.
19 BILLION. We throw around terms daily like million, billion, trillion, without really having a feel for the magnitude of those numbers. Consider this, it takes 11 days for a million seconds to pass. It takes 32 years for a billion seconds to pass! So, 19 billion catalogs — that’s a lot of wasted paper!
Earlier this year, my company MakaluMedia was offered an opportunity to participate in a project backed by some of the US’ largest environmental and non-profit organizations to help address this project. Today represents the culmination of several months of hard work on this project, and I’m proud to announce the launch of Catalog Choice:
Catalog Choice is a free service, that allows people to find and opt-out of the undesired catalogs they receive. The concept is very simple; you sign up, search for a catalog you receive, and opt-out. We take care the rest, and in about six weeks’ time, you should no longer receive the catalog.
The application.
Given that the service targets all American consumers, including a large segment who may not be computer saavy, a major objective was making Catalog Choice simple, inviting and easy-to-use. (Well, in fact, those should be objectives of any product really.)
Making something simple is anything but simple :) It involves everything from the visual aesthetic, to the interaction workflows, to the choice of the wording on the site. (For example, we opted against using the term “Sign up”, as some people find that idea intimidating, and rather went for “Get started now”.) We hope we’ve succeeded, but we’ll be monitoring the visitor’s experiences closely to tune and adjust the application as needed.
Technically, the site was built using the Ruby on Rails application framework, which is simply fantastic.
The launch.
The big launch happened yesterday, and shortly thereafter we were mentioned on a couple of very popular websites:
That certainly got the traffic flowing, allowing the powerful Engine Yard servers to finally break a sweat. :)
And the day ended with the good news that next week we’re going to get some major national media coverage!
The team.
I almost feel guilty to be paid to do work that’s so enjoyable, and the biggest part of that satisfaction comes from being part of the tremendous team we have in MakaluMedia. In this Catalog Choice project, Mike Rohde, an “icon” in the logo design world (couldn’t help saying that ;), designed the logo, Alex Bendiken applied his wizardry to design the application’s user interface and user experience (Alex, by the way, is the guy that won the Slashdot redesign contest!), the Rails application development included Christian Kumpf (one of our crack engineers in Germany, who happened to build an ultra-stable satellite telemetry processing system last year!), Alex (yes, same one; he does Rails application development too!), Brian Cooke (maker of famous Mac OS X applications) and our latest additions, Alvaro Silva and Luke Brown, systems work by Irish legend Niall O Broin (who will never have a weblog, so don’t get your hopes up) and, finally, project management by Fausto “I dream in SQL” Roveda, and myself.
All in all the project has been a ton of fun, and hopefully it’ll be a big success.
We need your help.
This project has been especially satisfying as it represents something that could have a major positive impact on the environment. But for that to happen, it needs to be used on a very large scale. And in that respect, we could really use your help.
As a free service, and given the high costs of marketing, the team is hoping in a big way that the service will spread via word of mouth. If you’d be willing to link to the site from your own website or blog, we’ve got some hopefully nice looking badges available here:
http://www.catalogchoice.org/#about
And if you use the service, please consider using the “Invite a friend” feature. Thanks so much.
Miscellaneous updates.
- To handle all the customer service incoming emails, Catalog Choice are using a service that absolutely rocks, MailTank. It is fantastic.
October 10th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
[…] I’ve written more about the project over at our company blog. […]
October 11th, 2007 at 10:44 am
Catalog Choice is a good idea and I wish you good luck with your idea. But I don’t really see the benefit. If I receive a catalogue I don’t want, why can’t I just write an email to the sender by myself? And why should the companies listen to you and stop sending catalogues in future?
October 11th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Just wanted to say we are happy to have Catalog Choice on board with Engine Yard and look forward to your growth.
October 15th, 2007 at 11:36 am
[…] A more detailed write-up about the project has been posted to the MakaluMedia Summit blog. […]
November 20th, 2007 at 11:27 pm
It might not be the best idea to promise results in 6 weeks. We received a file from Catalog Choice with over 6,000 customers wanting off the list. I can say for certain that updating 6,000 profiles is not a priority in the height of the holiday season.
November 30th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
You do not realize that restriction of commerical speech is only one step from the restriction of all speech. Catalogs are welcome or business would not send them for over 100 years.
December 1st, 2007 at 5:20 am
KC Truby, that would be true if every catalog we receive as consumers was one we requested.
However, that’s not the way the system works. Many of the catalogs sent to consumers were NOT requested by them; the consumer’s name was purchased from a list, based on other catalogs they may have requested, credit cards they may carry, etc.
Giving consumers a tool to decline to receive these unsolicited catalogs, saving both money and precious resources as well as themselves aggravation, can hardly be described as “restriction of commercial speech,” any more than prosecution of someone placing harrassing or obscene phone calls is censorship. As any lawyer will tell you, not all speech is protected, nor should be.
December 9th, 2007 at 3:56 am
I find the concept of the website to be much better than the implementation. Innovation is not what a website visitor wants, but rather to be as simple, obvious and intuitive as possible for the new user (see, eg, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html) and other Jakob Nielsen papers, and as efficient as possible for the repeat visitor.
For example, you show the declined catalogs sorted by recipient name. Since about the only reason I can think of to have the list is to see what catalogs have already been declined (and maybe to change that for one of them), so it is obvious that the list should be sorted by catalog name, with the recipient name as one of the data fields.
For another example, the info about a catalog to be declined shows (partly) in the bottom right of my screen, forcing me to scroll to get to all the info, while most of the screen is blank — which could be the result of my using it on an old Mac with Mozilla 1.3.1.
Regards,
Bob Stelloh
January 11th, 2008 at 7:00 am
I think your idea of stopping catalogs is wonderful. I tried writing the catalogs (before the postage went up again) and got no where. I was shocked to find that I wanted to decline some 45 catalogs. That would be great. I should know, in at least 4 months, if it works. I do most of my shopping out of a catalog and am receiving the ones I want. I have never heard of many I declined and i am not interested in their products. I recycle most of them but if they were not sent in the first place, think of how many trees would be saved.
I wish you success in your venture.
January 16th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Catalog Choice is a good idea.Today it is important to make a choice.A choice for our enviroment and a choice for our future.Good luck for your project!
February 19th, 2008 at 4:47 am
I want so badly to eliminate a catalog that I am receiving because someone fraudulently charged against my credit card (that’s resolved) and now I am getting the catalog they purchased from. I have called them twice and talked to the manager (supposedly) and each time was assured my name would be taken off and I am still receiving their catalogs, six months later. Can “Catalog Choice” help me? What do you do that is any different?
Thank you in advance for your reply and help.
Bonny