Super stores

The pandemic demonstrated that webstores are essential for dealers – but, in order to maximise their potential, they must provide the experience that customers are looking for

During the pandemic online sales grew by 48% as many shops had to close, and 50% of orders were placed via a mobile device. For dealers too, many sales switched overnight to online; those with a professional, responsive, mobile-optimised ecommerce website, along with a relevant product offering and the flexibility to cater for the rise in homeworking, had a distinct advantage over their rivals.

“More and more businesses are waking up to the fact that online is super-critical,” says Steve Bilton, managing director of FusionPlus Data. “We are having conversations now with dealers who were totally anti-ecommerce three-to-four years ago but now have realised its value. It should be the most powerful sales tool they have, along with their sales team.”

For Steve, there are several crucial aspects that dealers must focus on if their ecommerce solution is to deliver the revenue that owners might hope for. “Speed and reliability are the foundation of a webstore experience,” he says. “The customer needs to be able to log on – ideally be wowed by the look and feel of it – and they need to find what they are looking for quickly, and have enough information on the page to hit ‘buy.’

“If the customer can’t logon to the webstore, or if there is a problem, or when they do or a search takes 10 seconds, that is not a good experience for an existing customer or, worse, a new or potential customer.”

Of course, it is also important how the webstore looks. It needs to be eye-catching when it goes live, and this needs to be kept up throughout the duration of the webstore’s life, Steve adds. “It needs to have the tools for the dealer – if they have the skills – to constantly innovate on the look and feel of the site. Or the dealer needs to have a relationship with an organisation that can do that for them.

“In addition, it should not just be beautiful on the customer’s laptop, but also on their tablet and mobile too. Customers research products on their ‘phones in their lunchbreaks, so that mobile experience needs to have the full fidelity of the main store, meaning they can place an order, download statements etc.”

Content is king

But it doesn’t matter how good the website looks, or how fast it is, if the product content within it isn’t of a high quality customers won’t be able to find what they are looking for or have the confidence to push the buy button, warns Steve. “High quality product content helps customers to achieve a more accurate search as they will be able to filter down by things like colour or size to find what they want,” he says. “Having complete content for each individual product is also vital to give customers the information they need to buy with confidence.

“It needs accurate descriptions, bullet points that highlight the key points of the product, good quality images that show the product, product attributes that can be easily read and a video showing someone operating the product. Video is becoming more important, especially among the younger generation. Ideally, for technical or chemical products, you also need the supporting documentation.”

Steve continues that, as most dealers operate B2B, there is other must-have functionality required, such as a procurement. “There are customers with cost centres, or that have multi-level authorisation requirements – so the person who places the order, it might be a requisition that gets pushed up to his/her boss who has to authorise it, and that could also go up to the FD. This is all about giving the dealer the ability to promote how they can help an organisation to control their spend.”

Another facet of webstores that is becoming increasingly significant is stock availability data. “More and more suppliers are seeing the value in providing the software houses with stock availability feeds. Customers can search through the catalogues online, but they only want to order something they can get, so stock availability feeds are really important,” Steve says.

Back office integration

Another crucial consideration for dealers it integrating their webstore with a back office system, says Clare ffolkes from Advantia. “An ecommerce website cannot operate in isolation,” she says. “To be truly effective, it needs to be integrated with a full back office system and incorporate dynamic marketing functions. This ensures that, irrespective of how the customer interacts with the dealer, they experience consistency – and it allows dealers to reinforce brand awareness, build trust and loyalty, and tailor communications to known customer behaviours.”

Dani Attard from Comgen explains that Advantia and Comgem have been developing a new, fully–integrated, cloud-based solution, designed to overcome the challenges of new ways of working and provide dealers with a cost-effective platform to grow and build their business. “Benefits of this solution include streamlining operations, avoiding duplication of effort, and creating targeted communications based on real-time customer data,” she says.

“Our all-in-one platform enables dealers to develop long-term customer relationships and offer more personalised on and offline shopping experiences, akin to leading online players, while building upon that friendly local presence that many customers value and trust.”

Andrew Long, customer care consultant at Prima Software, agrees that dealers need a webstore that is fully integrated with their back-office system. “Resellers need a webstore that can be managed centrally via their back-office system so that customer accounts, product data, catalogues and pricing can all be managed without the need for manual intervention by the reseller to duplicate their work,” he says. “Not only does this reduce the workload for the reseller, but customers can also access up-to-date and accurate information at any time of day when browsing the webstore.”

Relevancy is key

When a customer lands on a webstore, relevancy is key, Andrew adds. “Customers want to see current product trends that are appropriate for them,” he says. “The resellers who thrive are the ones who adapt to the demands of the market, and an intuitive webstore is at the forefront of this. With the integration of orderpads and contracts, resellers can use their webstores to promote customer-specific products through product lists, banners and advertisements that can be updated and interchanged and be visible to the customer in a matter of minutes.

“Taking advantage of integrated Punchouts such as SAP Ariba and Proactis grants resellers access even larger client bases, attracting more business and maximising revenue through PrimaGo webstores. “The addition of a managed, and regularly updated, catalogue service provides resellers with regular and consistent updates to quality, attributed product data.

“Suppliers can access this marketplace to submit their own marketing content for use by resellers. By using features such as vouchers, reward points and dynamic marketing materials through this marketplace and their webstores, resellers can offer a professional, efficient and relevant browsing experience that will keep and build upon existing client bases.”

Marketing

Ben Jarvis, product manager at ECI Software Solutions, believes thathow dealers’ webshops appear on screen is crucial. “This includes the ability to display products where they want on the page, as well as easy customisation of the homepage and the ability to upload offers or deals.”

He adds that it is important that dealers can market their ecommerce store effectively to ensure they reach the target market. “By integrating their ecommerce software and CRM system, dealers can offer more personalised customer journeys,” he says. “The ability to remember past orders, and save shopping carts, is now deemed essential, with customers increasingly time-poor and seeking efficient and streamlined service.

“It’s becoming increasingly common for dealers to have electronic data interchange (EDI) systems in place, which can import data from suppliers and change the way orders are processed and handled. Since integrating an EDI system, many customers have reported a performance uplift, with day-to-day processes far more efficient.”