E-commerce is playing an increasingly important role in the B2B food sector. Online platforms have become a vital sales channel for both wholesalers and manufacturers.
What should wholesalers focus on to deliver an optimal customer experience?
And how can manufacturers ensure their products are visible and appealing within a wholesaler’s online assortment?
In this two-part article series, we explore the four most important topics in B2B food e-commerce. Topics that deserve a firm place on the digital agenda of both wholesalers and manufacturers.
These are:
- Visibility and findability in this article
- Activations and category vision in our next article
Visibility on the wholesale webshop
The basis of the webshop is the visibility of your assortment: how are products shown in the webshop, in promotions or search results, on the product detail pages in pictures and text.
The minimum requirements for visibility
The minimum requirement can be summed up with the acronym ACCU. It must meet the conditions:
- Accurate
- Complete
- Consistent
- Unique
Accurate: All product information must be correct in every detail.
Complete: Product information must contain all relevant elements. For e-commerce in food, this means: Product name, brand name, product picture, commercial description, features and labels, ingredients, allergens, nutritional values, storage conditions
Consistent: Product information is presented in an equal way for the entire assortment. For example: all product photos with the same amount of white space and the same structure in the product names.
Unique: The information provides a clear distinction between products, making them easy to recognize.
Why is visibility so important in a webshop?
We regularly conduct research into the behavior of orderers. This clearly shows the importance of good visibility:
- The order taker has little time when ordering.
With good visibility of the assortment, you make ordering easier. It becomes a pleasant experience for your customers. They search less. Doubts less. Make fewer mistakes.
We see in practice that web shops where visibility is not in order are simply used less by customers. Beware! Buyers usually do not complain, but do their order in a different way. If necessary, with another provider. - The wholesale website is the No. 1 source of information and inspiration.
Many hospitality professionals regularly visit the wholesaler’s website to stay informed and inspired. Inspiration is found in the blogs and articles published there. But also simply browsing through products in promo or new products, provides a lot of inspiration for your target audience.
If a webshop does not have its product pages in order, it simply misses out on sales opportunities.
What should a webshop do to get its visibility in order?
For a wholesaler, getting the entire assortment in order is quite a job. You have to deal with different suppliers, all with their own insights and standards. So the alignment between wholesaler and supplier is very important in that. You also have to agree on certain things together. Consider:
- Guidelines for photography
- Rules for product names
- Categorization of the assortment
The more clearly the options are aligned, the more certain you can be that you will receive the data that also fits into your plan. We have already supported several wholesalers in this regard.
Findability
With findability, we think primarily of searching within the webshop itself. So about ‘on site search’.
We have a challenge for you:
Try the keyword ‘Cola’ in a webshop. And see what you get as a result.
Do it for a moment, before you read on.
And? Do you indeed get the familiar soft drink?
Or do you find products with chocolate?
Or coke-flavored candy?
Maybe Pina Colada?
The technology of the search engine
Technically, you may think about a search engine as simpler than it is.
Basically, it’s not very difficult either: it starts by matching a search term entered with the data in the database. Most likely, the search term is searched in the fields brand, product name, item number, short description, long description. And perhaps in more fields.
In almost all cases, there are many matches. That’s why the second step is so important: sorting the results. The most relevant result at the top. What all should the search engine consider?
- Where the search term appears: for example, ‘cola’ in the product name is more important than in the long description.
- Whether the search term is used ‘freestanding’: for example, ‘cola’ as a separate word is more relevant than as a letter combination in ‘chocolate’.
- Whether underlying keywords come into play: For example, with products whose names are sometimes misspelled. Think of the Frika(n)del, the Panne(n)koek and the famous Spa Rood. That product is not called Spa Rood at all, but people search for it using that term.
Are you aware of what rules your search engine uses, and in what hierarchy? To properly steer search results, you need to get those basics right. Then you can look at how you want to steer the information on product pages to show those pages at the most relevant times.
Open the doors of the ordering site
About 90% of food professionals orient themselves to a new purchase by searching through Google. But does this (optional) customer end up on the right ordering platform? A good product name and comprehensive description increase the chances of being found, when a search engine user uses the same searches as you.
At what times are specific product searches made? When a competitor’s customer experiences supply problems and wants to see if he might be able to buy his products from another wholesaler as well. Or when a new party in the market is orienting where best to purchase its needed range. When a manufacturer promotes a new product and enthusiastic end users start looking for where to buy it. Very often moments when a potential customer is close to his buying moment.
But often these doors to product pages are jammed shut, closed behind a login. A wholesaler often has a reason for this, such as distribution capabilities or prices that are not the same for every customer. But closed web shops are not findable to Google this way. At an event of GROUP7, Helga Webers of the wholesaler Solucious told us: “40% of the landing from external come from product-oriented search”. This makes an open webshop a very rich source of leads.
Leads that are not helped with you quickly find another party they do business with. And you’ve lost their potential with that.
And now?
Would you like to work with GROUP7 to see how much potential lies ahead of you when you redesign your webshop or product detail pages? If so, please contact us for a no-obligation consultation.
Many of our customers, both wholesalers and manufacturers, ask for our help to move forward faster together. If we combine our knowledge and experience, we can quickly become among the front runners in e-commerce.
GROUP7 has been advising both manufacturers and wholesalers regarding product data for a number of years. We see putting the product pages in order as the first step in a good cooperation between wholesaler and manufacturer.