Common Mistakes Made On Distributor Web Sites
Or Evolving Distributor Web Sites
By Bob Boyles, Principal

Smarter Distribution recently conducted a survey of competitor web sites for a distributor and turned up an interesting variety of web sites. For the purpose of analysis we divided the sites into three groups. Sadly, the vast majority of web pages fell into group one.

Group One: These were boring brochure pages and pages that didn’t work at all. These types of pages are long list of product lines the distributor represents and heavy on stories about how grandpa founded the company when he returned from fighting the Germans in World War II. These companies were desperate for content when designed their web sites and thought customer were interested in this stuff. Ask your self, do you shop at Wal-Mart because some guy named Sam Walton started the company in Arkansas? Your customers already know what you sell and they are not interested in Grandpa.

Group Two: This group consisted of professionally designed pages that looked good and offered some content relevant to the target market. Hiring a professional to do your web page makes a world of difference. Web page design is 50% content and 50% visual medium. Let’s face it most of us are not graphics artist. Working smarter involves knowing when to do something yourself and when to hire it out. What really separates these companies is that they offer some relevant information on their websites. Weather its product drawings or product specifications these web sites offer something that the customer can use and will want to come back for. The content customers are interested in can vary by industry but you need to offer some thing like downloads, product selection and

A quick word about links: the era of links is quickly coming to a close. The availability of search engines like Google and Teoma is ending the need for links from one site to another. If I need to find the URL for an industry association I don’t go to a web page and scroll the links what I do today is go to Google and do a search. Yes, I know that Google’s search engine ranks pages based a combination of meta content and linkage but we’ll leave that to the web pros to fight out. For now don’t assume that in adding links you are adding highly useful content.

Group Three: Nicely designed pages that offered some interaction between the wholesaler and their target customer base. These companies are beginning to understand that in order for a website to evolve into its full potential that there must be some type interaction offered between the customer and website. There are a wide variety of transactions offered on distributor websites. Some offer full-blown order entry programs others start out with offering the ability to request a return of a product.

Interaction with your business software product can be an important asset. The ability for customers login and to check stock is a first start down the road to full interaction with the customer. Your ultimate goal is for the customer to be able to do everything on the web site that they can do over the phone.

Some of the common mistakes made on distributor web sites are:

Bad URLs: Take a look any list of distributor or manufacturer email addresses and you are sure to see companies that are still using AOL and Hotmail accounts as their primary email addresses. Some companies still think that they cannot have branded email accounts unless they invest in their own mailer servers, etc. This is the easiest problem to solve, by simply going to Register.com and grabbing a simple URL and using web based email servers you can have an unlimited number of email addresses at mycompany.com and avoid to the whole web-server and email-server headaches. Using an AOL account simply sends the message “we’re old school”. Having a simple URL is key. Leave out all the hyphens, underscores, abbreviations and dots in the name.

Contact Info: Rule number one of web site design is to prominently display information about how to contact your company. Customers still use the web as a giant phone book so your phone number and address need to be display on each page.

Some companies are evolving beyond this and pushing their customer to use the web and not make phone calls to the customer service or sales departments. Need and example? Try to find a phone number on the AVIS.com website, it’s buried under the rates tab. These companies are attempting to lower their cost of doing business be pushing customer to use the web and save them the cost of phone sales reps. Southwest Airlines estimates that it cost $1.00 to handle a transaction over the web and $7.00 to handle a reservation over the phone, so for every reservation made on their web site they are saving the difference. (1)

Until you’ve reached the point where your website can do everything an inside sales rep can do, display the phone number and don’t make me hunt for it!

Doing-It-Yourself: We all want to think we are tech savvy. The reality is that there is a wide gulf between the amateur and the professional artist. Farming the website design out to the brother-in-law is going to yield you a website full of potholes. Some of the common ones are using frames, orphan pages, lack of navigation support and long download times.

Assuming that “If You Build They Will Come”. Having a website is simply another tool that you are going to employ in your marketing campaign. As part of your marketing efforts the website must be coordinated with your other marketing material. The same logo and color design carrying over from the business card to the sign out front to the sales brochures to the web page will go a long way towards being a company brand. Having a website alone will not generate any traffic. First, you must incorporate the website address into all of your other marketing material. The website address should be included on the business card and on the sales brochures, etc.

Remember those days when the web was new and everyone rushed to put up a site because you just never knew if you were missing those orders from South America, etc. Well the truth hit real fast and that is that the web page should be designed and targeted at your existing customer as much as any new business. So unless you are targeting the retail market the page rank is not wise investment. If you are targeting the random retail shopper there is an entire army of consultants dedicated to getting your website ranked on the first page of search engine results for keyword lookups.

The simplest way to build website traffic is to have content that customers are interested in seeing. With brochure sites it’s one and done, content rich sites become a lot more “stickier” and will draw repeat visits.

The second simplest way to build website traffic is to have your employees talk it up with the customers. If you’ve done your homework right the content on the website can be a common referral area when salesmen are talking to customers.

Not Tracking The Website Activity: Most distribution companies are unaware of the growing number of tools to track website activity and get feedback. If the website is part of your marketing efforts and is more than a brochure site then you’ll need to understand how customer are interacting with the site and what they find valuable. Need an example?

Summary: The web is changing the way that companies interact with their customers. Perhaps it’s not changing the way the world works as fast as we once thought but the changes are taking place. Those distributors that take and active role in exploring their web options are the ones that will continue to maintain their technology lead over the competition. You added a website to reach customers in a new and convenient way. If you follow some simple rules the webpage can be an effective addition to your marketing arsenal.

Bibliography

(1) Dallas Morning News, “Southwest Keeps Site Simple” 8/15/02 by Alan Goldstein.

About Bob Boyles and Smarter Distribution:

Bob Boyles started his strategic consulting business in 2001 and has focused on the change that technology is forcing in the supply chain and how independent distributors can not only respond to that change but also maximize the return they are seeing on their investment. Bob has spent a significant amount of time as an Installation Consultant for several of the big name software companies in the distribution market. Working with hundreds of distributors across the country on installing, upgrading and utilizing their software. Bob also worked as Corporate Systems Manager for one of the largest electrical wholesalers in the country as that company moved from a completely manual operation to an on-line real-time system.

Bob is a graduate of Appalachian State University (BS - 1981) and University of North Carolina at Greensboro Graduate School of Business (MBA - 1985).

© Copyright 2002, Robert S Boyles, Jr. All rights reserved. This article cannot be reprinted or reproduced in whole or in part, without the express written permission of Robert S Boyles, Jr.