Manufacturers these days are thinking about how they can go direct to consumer online while still remaining loyal to their tried-and-true channels. Some are actually selling direct to consumer and fulfilling in different manners (e.g. from a warehouse, dealer/distributor networks, and in-store pick up.)
Since researching and finding product information is the #1 goal of visitors, it’s to your advantage to update your content and functionality available on your ecommerce platform. Manufacturers should have comprehensive and SEO-friendly product descriptions with images, videos, and specification documents to ensure the user experience is not disorganized and busy.
They can also take advantage of social media integration, customer reviews, comparison tools, advance sorting features, custom configurators, and strong site search function — all features available on Magento Enterprise, and all features that are becoming necessary to maintaining conversion rates as other sites get more and more robust.
When the manufacturer does not sell direct to consumer online, a well-designed (and functional) dealer and store locator is essential to driving sales to the channel. We also suggest using peer-to-peer inventory status, so customers know exactly where they can buy the item they are researching (e.g. online partners, in-store, distributors, dealers). Keeping that path to purchase easy and efficient will have an enormous impact on site usability. To see this in action, check out prAna, a site Gorilla recently built, where we implemented P2P inventory look-up to maintain channel harmony.
Link to:
www.prana.com
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Outside of the traditional B2C measures (e.g. traffic, uniques, conversion %, CAC), multichannel companies and brand manufacturers should include these measures to understand the success and areas of improvement for their ecommerce channel.
- New online and offline accounts
- New users within current accounts
- Online and offline sales growth
- Online and offline AOV
- Promotion conversion %
- Lead conversion %
- Repeat purchase %
- Customer service inquiries
- Track the growth of the following actions: email, newsletter, catalog request, coupon download, sample requests
The ecommerce channel should be central to all other channels helping create channel harmony and drive sales across the company.
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Gorilla will be helping prAna improve their ecommerce channel and community engagement using the Magento Enterprise Platform and Word Press. Stratton, Creative Director, is in Boulder today visiting their very unique and cool retail store. He is not just shopping, but also meeting with some key executives. We have a fair amount of outdoor types who partake in rock climbing and yoga, including the latter for myself.
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We will be helping Medline launch specific business units onto the Magento Enterprise Platform. Medline’s strategy to create niche sites is consistent with other large enterprises looking to take advantage of focused sites with focused integrated marketing campaigns to improve market share.
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2010 brings a lot of excitement for the ecommerce world. Retail ecommerce sales numbers were up 14-17% in 2009, depending on the source, while the rest of the retail sector was flat to down 3%. These impressive sales growth numbers are increasingly driving experienced companies to rethink their ecommerce strategy and increase investment in this channel.
This same growth potential is pulling brand manufacturers and companies that have traditionally invested little in their ecommerce channel to shift strategy. These companies will continue to invest in their nascent ecommerce channel to improve sales and margins and to complement their existing sales, distribution, and retail channels.
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