“You’ve got to be on the Web. If you’re not, you’re doomed to fail!”
How many times have you heard this, or something like it? You hear about it everywhere, from industry trade publications to popular national business magazines. What many of them don’t tell you, however, is that a poorly executed e-commerce application can cost you customers that you never even knew you had.
In every business, the customer experience is the key to success, whether you are on the phone, face to face or online. Even if your price is right, customers won’t want to do business with you if they can’t quickly and easily conduct a purchase and be confident the product will be delivered on time and at the agreed-upon price.
Are you setting up your e-commerce initiatives for success? To decide, think about the following:
Customer Buying Experience
Your e-commerce site should be intuitive, allowing customers to flow easily from the initial log-in, to finding the product they want, to paying for that product easily in a secure fashion.
If they are buying tires, allow them access to a fitment guide to help them decide what they need. Better yet, allow them to click on the tire to see a picture of it as well as a description of the features and benefits (UTQG rating, mileage warrantee, best application). Don’t require that they know the item number, but be sure they can find the tire they need based on any number of criteria (e.g., size, manufacturer, tread pattern).
Overall, ask yourself how easy is it for someone who doesn’t know anything about tires to buy tires from you on-line. If it’s not easy, frustrated customers may never complete their orders, and you’ll lose them without ever knowing you had them in the first place.
Data Integration
The slickest front-end design doesn’t mean a thing if the information you are displaying is not accurate. The inventory you show should be ‘real time,’ not ‘as of the last time you uploaded a file.’ If you are not displaying real-time availability, customers could potentially order a tire that was just sold out in the last hour, leaving you scrambling to fill the order.
Worse yet, some businesses allow their customers to purchase online, but their e-commerce systems are not integrated with their back offices. They print the orders and then manually enter them into their POS systems. This means that the inventory wasn’t real time, and there is ample opportunity for error in re-keying the orders. This could lead to improper pricing, quantities, or product. In addition, these businesses are missing out on many of the cost savings e-commerce could afford them. It can cost up to five times as much to process an order manually as it takes to accept an online order in a properly constructed e-commerce application.
Remember, many customers in the tire industry still like the ‘warm fuzzy’ they get from talking to a salesman, so the first time an online order goes unfulfilled, it will be a real battle to get that customer to buy online again.
Customer Account Information
One of the hidden benefits of e-commerce can be a reduction of calls to your billing department. The right e-commerce application should allow customers to really ‘do business’ with you over the Web. This includes not only purchasing but viewing back-order status and account status, including invoice and payment summary and detail. This can significantly reduce the number of phone calls to your back office, allowing you to grow your volume of business without increasing your staff.
Back-Office Systems
All of the above can fall apart at the seams without the right back-office systems. When a completely integrated order flows through your system, it should create a document for picking in the warehouse, show that the item is no longer available for sale and let your purchasing department know the product is moving out of stock. This allows purchasing employees to reorder new product, ensuring it is available for the next customer to purchase. The online order should also trigger updates to customer account balances, invoices, and payment details.
Done wrong, e-commerce can cause headaches for your salespeople, make each transaction a logistical nightmare and add more work to your back office.
Done right, e-commerce can help free your salespeople to be true salespeople, not just ‘order takers.’ It can also reduce the cost of each transaction as well as the burden on your back office and, most importantly, create another compelling reason for your customer to do more business with you.
Remember, your customer’s experience – from order to fulfillment – plays a large part in dictating the success or failure of not just your e-commerce initiative, but also your overall business.
