The objective of your parts distribution website design should be to make it the de facto reference for your industry so that even your competitors and suppliers will use it to run their businesses. This will guarantee your brand is known to everyone who matters. It will also mean that you will get the first look from parts shoppers. If you get the first look and you have the part in stock, then you will get the sale. It is that simple. Parts buyers are much more likely to shop around for availability than they are for price. If you help them identify the part and clearly show that you can ship it that day, you will win the sale almost every time.
To be the website that gets the first look, you need to have a significant competitive advantage over the next website. It is not good enough to be just slightly better. You need to create a huge gap in the search capabilities and content of your website to create something your customers, suppliers, and competitors cannot live without.
The objective of your parts distribution website design should be to make it the de facto reference for your industry so that even your competitors and suppliers will use it to run their businesses.
In the spare parts industry, this competitive advantage can be created by winning in the areas of product images, easily accessible equipment manuals, and product categorization.
Lots of Product Images:
Images of the part allow the user to be sure they are purchasing the correct item. The major function that the website should serve is to help customers identify the correct part for their repair, and the picture of the part on the website matching the part that they are looking at in the machine is the best way to create certainty. That certainty results in sales.
Having more product images than the next guy creates an advantage that can be maintained and accelerated by sales growth and continued inventory breadth investment.
It is impossible and unnecessary to have every part image. You should start by making sure you have a picture of every product in stock, then a picture of every part you have sold in the last 12 to 36 months, and finally doing some competitive analysis and identify any gaps in your product images against major competitor websites.
For parts, it is important to capture multiple images so that all angles of the part can be seen. If you are looking to buy a toggle switch, you need to see the front of the switch as well as the connections on the back to make sure that you are purchasing the correct replacement for your machine. It is also helpful to see the label on the side to make sure the part number and specifications are correct. Having more images of a particular part make your website more useful than the competitor who only has a picture of the front of the switch.
Taking the next step, 360 degree views are no longer cost prohibitive for lower average order value products. Implementing the capability to spin the image of a part on your mobile website creates a “wow” feature that lets your customer almost hold the part in their hand before buying it.
Easily Accessible Equipment Manuals:
The second most popular search traffic source for your website after “parts” will be “manuals”. Be comfortable with people using your website without buying anything. Being helpful in areas beyond selling parts creates visitors to your website which builds your brand and helps your organic search results. The most impactful way to do this is to supply as many equipment manuals as possible while also making them easy to find on your website. Blogs, FAQ’s, technical support forums, etc. are other ways to drive information seekers to your website, but the need for digital versions of equipment manuals is by far the most searched for information of your customers, suppliers, and competitors.
First, don’t bury the information on your website. The means of searching for a manual should be on the home page and above the fold to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to find and use. Drop down menus that filter results by manufacturer, brand, model number (or series), and manual type will get the visitor to what they want quickly.
It is extremely important that the equipment manual search function be available and easy to use on the mobile version of your website. The likelihood that your website visitor is standing in front of the machine with their phone or tablet is very high. The mobile experience of your website is more important than the desktop experience for this type of functionality.
The second most popular search traffic source for your website after “parts” will be “manuals”.
The metadata associated with a manual is important as well. In addition to Manufacturer, Brand, Model#, and Manual Type, you should also be capturing revision number, revision date, date loaded to the website, employee who loaded the manual to the website, source of the manual, and expected revision date to enable a process to review and update manuals.
The review of existing manuals needs to be an 80/20 process based on importance of the brand and model. You should be tracking the number of views a given manual receives in order to classify them as fast, medium, and slow movers. The frequency for the review of fast movers should be more frequent than medium and the review of medium movers should be more frequent than slow movers based on the availability of resources or known update schedules of manufacturers.
Landing pages dedicated to the models of highly viewed manuals should also be created. The page would include manuals and products associated with the manuals. The purpose of the landing page is to improve SEO results for searches that include specific equipment model numbers.
Categorization and Search Optimization:
When a customer enters a search, they can’t be overwhelmed by a huge number of incorrect results. If a customer searches for “Speed Queen Valve”, you need to give the results in order of the probability of being the correct part as well as providing the ability to search within the results rather than start from scratch with a new search.
In order to improve the perception of the quality of your search, you should be passing the order frequency of each part to the website and presenting results in the descending order of most frequently purchased parts. This will show the part at the top of the page that is most likely to be the one the customer wants by pure probability. It also puts search results above the fold that are more likely to have a picture and give the perception that your website has more product images.
You should also be using the equipment manuals that you have collected to scrape the parts lists of every make and model of equipment you can get your hands on. Categorizing the parts on your website by make and model in which they are used create the ability to use the lefthand side of the screen to drill down within a set of search results and allow the customer to filter by model number. This categorization also enables the customer to search by “Speed Queen TC5 Valve” and receive the result of only the valves in the parts list of the TC5 model.
In order to improve the perception of the quality of your search, you should be passing the order frequency of each part to the website and presenting results in the descending order of most frequently purchased parts.
Scraping parts lists out of manuals sounds like a lot of work, but once it is done it exists forever. The category lists that you create work 24/7/365 on your website answering customer inquiries that would have otherwise gone to your customer service or tech support teams. Make and model categorization is another “wow” feature for your website that can be done with no coding to create a competitive advantage for your business.
You will know that you have become the reference for your industry when even your competitors and suppliers will use it to run their businesses. Whenever you visit a customer, supplier, or competitor, you should see your website open on the desktops of every customer service rep, purchasing agent, and warehouse receiving clerk. First mover advantage matters since competitors will have to leapfrog rather than match the functionality and content of your website in order to change the habits of website users, so get started now.