Brands and manufacturers are tasked with the unique challenge of engaging and connecting with two separate audiences: Customers and wholesale B2B clients. But the gap between the ideal B2B and B2C buying journey continues to narrow, with shoppers of all kinds seeking relevant content, high-definition images and detailed product information to make the best decisions.
Home furnishings manufacturer Company C has implemented the SaaS platform from MarketLive to improve its e-Commerce strategies across the entire business.
In addition to its customer-facing web site and three stores, Company C has a network of more than 1,000 wholesale partners. With MarketLive, Company C now has an improved B2C site, and a dedicated B2B portal for wholesale partners and designers. Through the portal, partners can place orders, look up product pricing, access inventory levels and sift through selling tools and collateral.
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Although the business has a 20-year history, Company C recently established a multichannel strategy to help differentiate the brand, according to Walter Chapin, President and Co-Founder of Company C. “That requires building a relationship directly with our consumers.”
To better connect with customers and wholesale partners, Company is steering away from siloed strategies that force customers to hop between a catalog, desktop/laptop or mobile device. Now, the company is focusing on “giving partners a dedicated site where they can get all the tools they need to succeed,” said Chapin in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “We want to convert the web to be a digital platform and grand central for all people we interact with, whether that’s consumers, wholesales or media.”
With the new dedicated B2B portal and improved B2C site, Company C will be empowered to help customers make the best decisions, and buy “how and when they want to buy,” Chapin said. The new e-Commerce site was designed to give all customers a 360-degree view of products, creating “a hub for everything they may want, whether it’s a technical view of products, basic content or photography.”
With the MarketLive platform, the Company C team will be able to make enhancements to the web sites in a more agile fashion while ensuring site uptime.
Company C previously made manual adjustments to custom-built components, making it difficult for employees to maintain the site, according to Chapin. “We wanted a cohesive platform that would be easier for our customers to use and us to maintain.”
