eCommerce for Distributors: How to Get it Right

While sometimes the pressure to digitize your business may seem arbitrary, based on the popularity of being on the leading edge of technology, there are tangible benefits to leveraging eCommerce for distributors. The potential to inform your customers that you are not just current but better positioned makes exploring the options available to distributors well worth the effort. Expanding your business into eCommerce or giving your existing solution a much-needed overhaul is an important decision, and you need to make sure the options you consider are worthy of your investment.

Advantages for Distributors Getting into eCommerce

Increased Sales

The popularity of eCommerce among distributors is well-founded, in large part due to the impact on sales. The ability to quickly and efficiently extend your market reach and offer a highly personalized purchasing experience is well worth the investment. Whether your goal is increased B2B sales or expanding your retailers’ B2C footprint, a solid eCommerce for distributors’ products can profoundly impact your bottom line.

Automation Capabilities

Automation is no longer just an up-and-coming industry buzzword but an evolving norm in today’s business. Automatically calculating shipping costs for a variety of destinations, propagating details for a rotating catalog across your systems, and having key metrics reported at scheduled intervals are just some of the benefits realized by distributors leveraging eCommerce.

Expanded Market Reach

ECommerce for distributors extends the reach of your business by allowing you to provide your product anywhere, anytime, tapping previously unexplored markets limited by outdated technology. And once your marketing team sees the level of control they have over communication and the public exposure to your company, they will never be happier.

Increased Efficiency and Cost Savings

Of course, one of the main drivers for embracing newly available technology is increasing the efficiency of your business. This is true regardless of industry or solution — but especially so in a market dealing with high volumes of merchandise and heavy storefront traffic. Being able to access and track orders in real time results in better accounting and a better customer experience.

Enhanced Customer Experience & Support

One size does not always fit all, and eCommerce allows distributors to shift this paradigm as well. Every customer can have a personalized user experience, allowing them to comfortably explore their options without getting bogged down by information they do not actually need. This also means that support can be requested in a way that makes the most sense for distributors, whether it is initiating a real-time chat with support staff or submitting detailed correspondence for later review.

Scalability Options

Fluctuations in modern business necessitate the need for systems that can expand (and sometimes contract) quickly. While growth is always the goal, it sometimes makes sense to pull back or adjust to the changing needs of the marketplace, and eCommerce for distributors can make this adjustment much more fluid. Challenges like rapidly increasing transaction volume and expanding product lines can be handled in stride.

Competitive Advantage

All of these increased capabilities together spell a distinct competitive advantage for you in the marketplace. Presenting an online experience that is not only simpler than analog but offers vastly more potential for growth will set your business up for success. The distributors who can successfully pivot to eCommerce will be more agile, more capable, and more accessible than their competitors who don’t.

5 Key Features of a Distributor eCommerce Platform

Keeping the advantages of a digital approach to business in mind, what does an effective eCommerce for distributors platform look like?

Customer-Specific Pricing and Discounts

A high-performing eCommerce for distributors platform will have an easy-to-access, simple-to-navigate storefront that specifically addresses the needs of individual clients. For example, you may have different contracts for different retailers or wholesalers, which means different pricing schedules for the same products. You want to make sure that the price your clients see is the one that specifically applies to them and to easily make adjustments when prices change, or discounts are available.

Customizable Catalog Management

A distributor’s catalog of available products and services must be relevant, current with existing inventory, and flexible enough to adapt to changes in supply. This catalog can be extremely dynamic, and you want your client to have the flexibility to manage it in a variety of ways to suit the current needs.

Real-Time Inventory Updates

If your business lives or dies by the accuracy of its inventory, then the benefits of distributor eCommerce are especially significant. Even for companies that eschew a just-in-time approach to supply, keeping up to the second tabs on the status and location of the goods you are buying and selling is a critical function that requires a battle-tested solution. Selling products you do not have in stock is not always a workable approach, and if not, you want your system to update the minute it is available and let interested consumers know.

Integration with ERP Systems

A robust eCommerce for distributors solution that does not play nicely with your existing Enterprise Resource Planning systems is not going to provide much benefit to your company. LANSA Commerce Edition has been successfully integrated with at least 16 of the most prevalent ERP applications in the market, with the low-code flexibility to adjust to any smaller or homegrown systems just as effectively.

Personalization and Innovation Capabilities

Worried that a transition to distributor eCommerce could de-personalize your relationship with your customers? What if you had the ability to craft a unique user experience for each of them, including only the functions relevant to their business? LANSA Commerce Edition can maintain that personal touch that your clients value while offering more options than they ever had pre-digital. Features like advanced search capabilities, detailed product specs, and customer-specific pricing make LANSA Commerce Edition a worthwhile foray.

LANSA Customer: Rotary

Rotary Corporation is the world’s largest supplier of parts and accessories for outdoor power equipment, such as lawnmowers, chainsaws, snow blowers, and more. They sell exclusively via dealers and have been offering their dealers an eCommerce website since 2002. Although still functioning reliably, the site was showing its age and could not meet Rotary’s new business requirements. The ability to search for products on their website was extremely limited, and their marketing team had very little control over the digital, public-facing front of their company. They enlisted LANSA Commerce Edition to help them modernize. After a thoughtful and thorough collaborative effort, Rotary was not only able to improve its online presence but also harness data previously disconnected from its systems, allowing consumers to search for specific details on over 9,500 SKUs.

“The website is an important instrument for how we do business with our dealers and how we present ourselves to the bigger public. The LANSA team didn’t just simply copy our requirement definitions. They took the time to improve on it and came up with great suggestions to improve the functionality and enrich the user experience. We felt they were as dedicated to the success of the website as we were.” – Caylee Bickmore, Web Marketing Coordinator at Rotary Corp.

6 Best Practices to Successfully Implement eCommerce for Distributors

So you have decided you are ready to up your eCommerce for distributors game; what’s next? Careful planning.

Thoughtfully Develop Project Requirements

The first order of business is deciding exactly what you are trying to accomplish. Are you looking to augment your online presence or start building one? Are there transactional pain points you are looking to alleviate? What do your current customers have to say about it?

Be sure to consider how you will address crucial parts of your business. The way you calculate tax and process payments, how you build and publish your catalog, and how you fulfill orders are all elements that a worthwhile eCommerce for distributors system can not only address but streamline and improve.

It is probably worth investigating your competition to see where they struggle and where they succeed. When you implement your eCommerce solution, you want it to stand apart by offering services and an aesthetic that other distributors either are not offering or not presenting as well as you could.

Choose a Reliable eCommerce Platform

There are a lot of things to consider when selecting an eCommerce for distributors platform, we’ve boiled down the list here into a quick cheat sheet of the most important factors reported by distributors across the industry.

When you know what needs to be done, finding the right partner and platform to help you across the finish line is imperative. You want a solution that provides improvement, stability, flexibility, and security, among other things. A product like the LANSA Commerce Edition can help you check all those important boxes. LANSA has built thousands of e-business sites for a dizzying variety of clients worldwide and has the experience and track record of making your eCommerce for distributors solution everything it needs to be.

Carefully Choose Your eCommerce Team

Implementing the right eCommerce solution for distributors should be a collaborative effort between you and your technology partner. Once you’ve got a solid platform in mind, the employees you choose to be a part of the implementation team should embody this collaborative effort. No one knows your business better than you, and the input your team provides to your technology partner is crucial for the success of the project.

You will need staff from a healthy cross-section of departments, who ideally have some past experience with eCommerce. You want seasoned marketing professionals who can help craft an appealing front end and keep your company message on point. Technical support, whether you are talking about integrating existing ERP systems or managing your new data streams is also critical. And finally, you need strong leadership for the project to champion the upgrade and foster buy-in from the rest of the company.

If your team lacks some of the skill sets you think you will need to succeed, do not be afraid to leverage the resources of your technology partner or another third-party specialist with a wealth of experience with eCommerce transformation.

Always Keep Customers Needs in Mind

What your consumers need should always influence the project decisions you make. Whether you survey your clients directly to find out what they would like to see or aggregate data that helps you determine what is working and what is being largely ignored, take the pulse of the people you are doing business with. If you offer cutting-edge functionality that none of your customers want or need, then your hard work is for naught.

Do Marketing Right

Also important is making sure your customers actually know about your new and improved eCommerce interfaces. Let them know how you have improved transactions they thought were lacking and get them excited about the new capabilities they have. For many, this kind of digital overhaul presents a great opportunity for re-branding. Do your homework and make sure your brand is on point.

Ensure to Comply with Industry Regulations and Standards

Finally, make sure you are crossing all the T’s and dotting all the I’s that your regulatory agencies are looking for. Protecting private or otherwise privileged information is a must, and should be a standard part of a healthy eCommerce for distributors implementation.

Why Should Distributors choose LANSA for their eCommerce Goals?

Here are some of the more compelling reasons to leverage LANSA eCommerce Edition for your eCommerce needs:

In Summary

Your distribution organization can benefit dramatically from an investment in eCommerce. The market has spoken, and eCommerce is no longer just the wave of the future, but the new standard for doing business. Digitizing your commerce should not be merely about staying current, but improving the way you are able to conduct business and expand your market share in ways you may not have thought previously possible. From aesthetic appeal enticing potential customers to detailed and accurate inventory management and everything in between, eCommerce for distributors offers some exciting ways to re-envision your company. With low-code modularity, extensive integrative capability, and a proven track record, the LANSA Commerce Edition can help your B2B eCommerce for distributors platform realize its full potential.