First, buyers want to verify that you have what they’re looking for — fast. Thomas’ research reveals that you don’t have much time to make that first impression. Industrial buyers spend 3 to 5 seconds on a homepage verifying you have what they seek before moving on.
“If I’m replicating my sales process at my website, I’ve got to figure out: How are they getting to me? That’s the first step,” Rigano says. “What are the words that they’re typing into a search engine to find me? I’ve got to make sure that that information is in my website; otherwise, I don’t even stand a chance at being found.”
These questions marked a crucial shift in the Web strategy at Keats Manufacturing Co., which also works with ThomasNet. Its first website focused more on the company and its processes than its products.
“Understand what it is that they’re putting into Google. That’s how you’re going to come up higher in their searches,” says Matt Eggemeyer, Keats’ vice president and COO. “I don’t think they’re putting in, ‘small, family-run operation in Chicago.’ They’re looking for a tin-plated 006 automotive terminal.”
Once he understood this, Eggemeyer revamped Keats’ website with less emphasis on company history and management team backgrounds, and more on products like terminals, clips, wire forms and lead frames.
“The way to hook them is to show that you can make the part and make it exactly how they want it,” Eggemeyer says. “You need to stay industry-specific, talk about your products and talk about how you make the products.”
With attention to detail, Eggemeyer launched Keats to the top of search results in several categories on ThomasNet.
“I come up in the top 5, if not No. 1,” he says. “No. 1 translates into over 1,000, sometimes as high as 1,500 unique visitors a month.”
Those numbers dwarf the dozen or so visitors he saw at trade shows — each of which cost more than his entire website.
“Traditional search methods — Yellow Pages, trade shows, all that kind of stuff — is dead and gone,” Eggemeyer says. “This is where you need to be.”
Virtually kicking the tires
The verify step is a broad brushstroke drive traffic. If you want to keep it there and turn it into sales, consider the next two steps in ThomasNet’s VSET strategy: search and evaluate.
“Once you hook them, then they want to kick the tires to get the warm fuzzy and see that this is a company that we want to develop a relationship with,” Eggemeyer says. “All the other superfluous stuff like the history and the management team needs to be on the website but maybe a little deeper. If they really do care, they’ll dig deeper.”
On his website, Eggemeyer went beyond the types of parts that Keats makes.
“We enhanced it one step further by adding the specs that are involved in making those parts: how thick are they, what kind of plating do they get, all the different sizes and dimensions — which make my website that much more attractive, especially when it comes to the search engines,” he says.
What type of information should you provide? Customer service reps are good sources of the knowledge you’ll equip your virtual salesman with because they have vetted the questions over the phone that you’ll face online.
“Let’s anticipate the questions people are going to ask, the information that they’re going to look for, and make sure that your site is armed with this information,” Rigano says. “I would want to have information on my products, on the materials that I use, on the amounts that I could run. How is it being used? Is it a bearing that would go into a wheel, a conveyor belt or a pulley? All of these things are going to be relevant to that market.”
Consider showcasing your offerings with detailed product information in an online catalog, where you can add descriptions, specs and photos. Maxi replaced stock photos and shot its own, with a common background, to create uniformity.
“What we had before was basically just a static one-page website. It didn’t change over time; it didn’t allow you to get more information,” Rubin says. “With Thomas, we created a front end and a catalog that work together seamlessly. We put more information in with secondary and tertiary pages. You start out very generally, and then you drill down to get the specific item you want.”
For Maxi, this was an also opportunity to showcase its core beyond containers — through sustainability. Rubin illustrates this online with videos of involvement in local green fairs and blogs about donating to boost local school recycling efforts.
“Know your core competencies and let the Web strategy complement what you do,” he says. “We’ve tried to graft a new way of communicating this information to customers, both our existing and new, but we’re still keeping our core values as a company in terms of what we do with our products and how we conduct our business. … You can’t lose sight of who and what you offer.”
