Barnes & Noble.com (BN.com) has announced two new partnerships that further expand its capabilities in the digital world. These partnerships come on the heels of a redesign of the BN.com Web site (www.BN.com), which the online retailer unveiled at the beginning of this month.
Mobile commerce service provider Digby will market books, CDs and DVDs on BlackBerry smartphones through a newly established Barnes & Noble Storefront, which is available as a free download to all current Research in Motion BlackBerry smartphone users. The Storefront is updated daily and includes rich content, such as product descriptions and images; a mobile shopping cart that supports multiple-product orders, and secure transactions and password-protected buying.
“Consumers now have a fully stocked Barnes & Noble right on their BlackBerry with access to hundreds of thousands of products available for delivery in three business days or less,” says Marie Toulantis, chief executive officer, BN.com. “Digby on the BlackBerry delivers a convenient buying experience, available to our customers anytime and anywhere. With their help, we’re taking a leadership role in the development of this important distribution channel.”
BN.com also has partnered with Zinio, a digital publishing and distribution platform for magazines and books, to power its new “See Inside” digital book preview feature. The new feature was part of the redesign of the BN.com Web site. “See Inside” is currently available for thousands of book titles on the site; however, in an interview in the Oct. 5 edition of Book Business Extra, Toulantis said that BN.com plans to add more titles to the service.
Zinio’s digital reader enables customers to view books online in the same way they would in a retail environment, with capabilities such as dual-page viewing, searching and page-turning. “We selected Zinio’s technology because its flexibility allows us to preserve the look and experience of reading a book while increasing customer interactivity,” says Toulantis.
- Companies:
- Barnes & Noble