The e-commerce market has rapidly evolved over the years and it’s one of the best markets to tap into for business growth. Now more than ever today’s buyers are relying on e-commerce platforms to find detailed data. From product availability and pricing to tracking the progress of their order.
Traditional distributors find that their industry is quickly changing, with their customer service becoming less of a competitive advantage. Instead, customers are drawn to a strong online presence. Today, customers prefer to conduct their own research, compare prices and make their purchases online at their own convenience. This has allowed businesses to reach a wider market presence by providing cheaper and more efficient distribution channels for their product or service. Therefore, the main factor that’ll drive customers to your business is e-commerce.
How can distributors improve their online presence?
Here are some of the best ways to improve your online presence that will help you succeed and survive in the digital age.
Create a user-friendly website
Establishing and maintaining a user-friendly website is absolutely necessary in having a strong online presence and increasing web traffic. This means that your website needs to be easy to use and practical across all devices, including desktops, tablets and phones.
The speed in which your website loads is also critical to prevent losing visitors. According to a study by DoubleClick by Google, “53% of mobile site visits were abandoned if a page took longer than 3 seconds to load.” Although there are a number of factors that can cause your site load time to lag, images can play a major role in site speed.
Images are often very large files which can slow down page load times. However, images are critical to a website so removing them simply isn’t an option. The best way to overcome this is to crop your images to the correct size. For example, if you want an image to appear at 500px wide, resize the image to fit that. Otherwise if you upload an image at its full size, it will require your page to upload the image and then adjust to the appropriate size.
Further reading:
11 ultimate tips that will make your website user-friendly
5 ways to improve your website load time and performance
Produce helpful content
Helpful content isn’t just about providing clear product descriptions. Although it’s supportive, it won’t necessarily drive people to your product pages. To maximise your online pages, it’s essential to include helpful and informative content that actually generates the traffic to view products pages.
The best way to attract more website traffic is to produce more content with helpful guidance. For example, writing blogs about topics manufactures and tradespeople can relate to can help attract traffic to your website which will ultimately lead them to view your product pages.
Further reading:
How to drive sales using your company blog
Have an effective SEO
If you’re wondering why your website isn’t featured on the first page of a search engine, poor SEO is likely the cause. However, regularly producing helpful blog content can help. This is because Google’s algorithm is much more likely to show a helpful article page, like a blog post, as opposed to a product page. Visitors go online to look for answers to questions far more than they do to find a specific solution. So, learning and applying this knowledge is key to effective SEO.
Further reading:
Blog SEO: How to search engine optimise your blog content
A guide to effective SEO tactics to improve ranking
Get social
If you haven’t already taken advantage of social media, you’re missing out on a number of fast, inexpensive and effective ways to reach a wider audience. In this day and age social media is the most effective way to reach your target audience and increase brand awareness. Creating content that caters to their interest with popular, but relatable hashtags can help to further your reach.
Remember, “out of sight, out of mind” is very true with social media, so it’s important to keep your profile updated consistently and maintain a constant presence to keep you at the top of your audiences’ mind.
Further reading:
How to use social media for small business: 11 simple tips
ROYD Tool Group are always on the lookout for new and eager distributors. The ROYD Tool Group brands consist of TRACER professional construction markers, SMART multi-tool accessories and OPTIMAXX extreme performance wood screws.
Each of our brands have implemented all of these e-commerce tactics and we will help support you with your own efforts. In particular, with marketing as we will help you with your website content by providing access to our wide range of marketing assets. Along with ongoing brand marketing campaigns and social media collaboration, we will help increase your brand awareness and drive demand.
Interested in becoming a distributor? Click here to learn more and become a distributor today!
