A large UK distributor of industrial lifting equipment needed to reduce the number of staff involved in order processing. Some of the larger specialist equipment they sold always needed a personal service, but many regular items and spares were suitable for selling online.
Most eCommerce systems handled only consumer sales, but the distributor needed a dedicated trade eCommerce system that could show each customer only their individually-agreed trade prices.
After considering a number of options, the distributor opted to work with Perceptis' Tienda™ eCommerce platform, which is available in a dedicated trade version.
Before customers can see trade prices they are required to register for a trade account. Strong calls to action prompt the user to access the account signup page and until they do this the eCommerce website displays only list prices.
When a new registration occurs the distributor's staff receive an automatic e-mail notification. This allows them to be able to credit check the company applying for the account.
Once this has been done, one of the administration staff can mark in the system whether the account has been approved or not. If approved the account becomes live and either way the applicant is informed automatically by e-mail.
Once approved the trade account holder is able to login to their account and whilst logged in will see their individual trade prices. The Tienda™ eCommerce Platform also supports multiple users from the same company and keeps track of who placed each order.
The trade version of the Tienda™ eCommerce system includes all of the features of the consumer version that are relevant to trade customers.
The distributor is able to put items on special offer with extra discounts over and above the standard trade discount and promote these on the front page.
The system also keeps track of how much each customer company is spending with them which assists in deciding which discount level each customer should receive, as well as allowing some to follow up those customers where order levels have dropped.
The distributor has more than ten thousand products and spares available for sale online and since implementing the system has significantly increased their sales and profit margin, while reducing the administrative cost associated with processing each trade account and manually processing each order.
