Make Your Move to eCommerce

Published: September 17, 2020

There are many concerns when it comes to moving into eCommerce. For most wholesalers, it is effectively increasing their sales channels by a third, adding in online sales to the existing phone and physical transactions. It is indeed a big move, but one that not only is consistently proven to provide considerable benefits but is very much in demand by your customers. 

82% business buyers want the same experience as when they are buying from themselves.

According to an analysis carried out by Oporteo, eCommerce sales in the wholesale sector were almost 4 times higher than retail, this was surprising even to us, and of course this study was conducted before the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020. 

As expected, retail sales have surged dramatically but again, wholesale customers now expect the same seamless multichannel shopping experience when buying from you as they do when shopping for themselves.

LIVE WEBINAR – POLL RESULTS

Number of electrical wholesalers surveyed, felt that there was some need to move to eCommerce 

OPPORTUNITIES FOR WHOLESALERS

This additional sales channel brings many opportunities over and above just selling products. Moving into eCommerce allows your business to reach new customers beyond your existing contacts. Third-party sales platforms such as eBay and Amazon can be utilised for further exposure.

Despite the initial investment into a digital sales platform, this can be in fact the easiest return on investment to measure. Everything can be tracked and all activity measured due to tools such as web traffic analysis and re-targeting tools which can literally track where a customer has come from, how they have moved around your website and how they can be recovered should they move on.

Despite the lack of face to face interaction in eCommerce, wholesalers can be closer to a customer than ever before thanks to online chat tools, help desks and CRM systems. Customers are also interacting with you outside of work hours and on personal devices allowing for further data collection on where and why they are browsing your store.

There are many opportunities to cut back on cost. Automated order processing eliminates manual staff input and drives more efficient changes in warehousing and shipping.

WHICH PLATFORM SHOULD YOU CHOOSE?

This takes some research to determine what platform is right for your business. 

e-Commerce platforms have varying levels of integration with your internal systems, depending on the needs of your business. 

Regardless of which platform you choose, putting in place a secure payment method is a MUST. Customer information must be kept secure at all times and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which is a regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy in the European Union and the European Economic Area effective from 2018 must be adhered to. Luckily the most common eCommerce platforms manage much of this for you, taking the hassle away. 

TOP 10 E-COMMERCE PLATFORMS OF 2020 

Shopify 

Shopify plus 

BigCommerce 

Magento  

WooCommerce 

Squarespace 

Wix.com

Big Cartel 

Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Volusion 

CONSIDER YOUR MARKETING OPPORTUNITIES

Moving into eCommerce also unlocks new marketing channels. The online activity that you may have been doing previously would have simply been driving awareness of your products and brand. With an eCommerce platform, marketing activities become about driving transactions and business growth.

Some marketing opportunities for driving eCommerce transactions are: paid advertising, social media, content marketing and SEO.

And of course, this all being digital activity the performance and ROI is much more measurable, with most platforms offering analysis, allowing insight what is working and what is not.

 

From the Metpro Webinar “Become a Digital Wholesaler: Reduce Costs and More Using Digital Platforms”. Follow Metpro on LinkedIn for future events: https://www.linkedin.com/company/metprome

Download the full ‘Become a Digital Wholesaler Report here: http://bit.ly/digitalwholesalerreport

Order Electrical and Mechanical supplies from Metpro Online: http://www.metpro.co.uk

 

Man on Phone Photo by Isabell Winter on Unsplash