How to win with ecommerce

The eWholesale Collective held its first webinar for wholesalers recently, which explored the importance of mastering content and search to enhance the customer journey. Here is our round-up of the top ecomms takeaways

While many wholesalers adapted quickly during Covid to offer online ordering for customers, there are still many more yet to fully get on board.

Business-to-business channels see the highest levels of online participation, with more than 60% of UK buyers starting their shopping journey online. However, for retailers and foodservice operators buying from wholesalers, the path to purchase online can be fraught with obstacles.

For those who have yet to get started or want to improve their offer, help is at hand.

The eWholesale Collective is here to help; providing clarity, insight, advice and practical suggestions to improve your offer and your customer experience. To do this, the Collective has focused initially on mastering content and search – both of which are essential for ecommerce success.

Hosted by the Collective, the webinar featured Mars Wrigley’s Susie Bain, EU DCom Capability & Channel Acceleration Lead, sharing expert advice on what content and search is and why it matters.

Content is the information you share on your website about a product – the image and details such as pack size and price.

Search is how your customers find the products they are looking for.

CONTENT

There is no real product to see so your content has to provide everything your customers need. With online shoppers spending just 8.5 seconds looking at a product page, it’s key to include:

Image: Is this the right product? Use an optimised image for both desktop and mobile to drive sales.
Product title: Supports search discovery with relevant search keywords and clear, consistent naming conventions.
Features and benefits: Describes product features, story and reinforces branding.

TIP: Including this content will increase a product’s online visibility, communicate value, drive profitability and increase the likelihood of it being added to basket.

SEARCH

More than 90% of purchases begin with search. Search is the most used method in which shoppers find, research and buy products on b2b websites.

Search is keyword driven so it is critical to understand the most common keywords used on your site.

TIP: Shoppers will want to see the relevant bestsellers at the top of the page.

REVIEW

Use data to review your search performance. What are the top and trending keywords? Which convert to sales and which don’t?

The search algorithm typically scrapes product titles and descriptions to determine which products are relevant to show against a search, so update written content to ensure keywords are included in the product description.

Shoppers often misspell product names so reflect this in the back-end product data to link these searches to products. ‘Search tag’ back-end product data to ensure frequent misspellings appear when searched.

TIP: Regularly update written content and back-end product data to ensure bestsellers show up on search.

ENRICH

Enrich the search experience to drive incremental sales and revenue with ‘new’, ‘sponsored’ and personalised search that highlights key products. You can also introduce branded and category search landing pages to build basket size.

TIP: Invest in technology to enhance the search experience, build basket size and drive additional sales and revenue.

REGISTER NOW

Spend a day with our ecomms experts this summer to pick up more advice, insight and practical advice on how to win in ecommerce and drive sales and customer loyalty.

Email contact@ewholesalecollective.co.uk for more information.