Even if your company is a custom manufacturer or a relatively small distributor, this two-part series shows how dynamic online technology platforms can help your business thrive in tough economic times.
Sometimes a picture is truly worth a thousand words.
In previous blogs I’ve asserted that in order to flourish and grow in the digital world, industrial suppliers need to advance beyond static websites. To better illustrate, I thought it would be helpful to compare the “before and after” shots of two supplier websites – one a customer manufacturer and the other a small distributor.
The Way Back Machine is a digital repository which archives former versions of most websites so you can see how your website or a competitor’s has evolved over the years. I use this free online tool to evaluate how well a corporate website has embraced digital technology.
First, let’s look at Specialty Manufacturing Company, a family-owned business in St. Paul, Minnesota. SMC is an over 100-year-old custom manufacturer of highly configurable, small volume valves. The company targets engineers within the automotive, medical, water purification and chemical industries among others.
Digging into the Way Back Machine archives, we see that this is how Specialty Manufacturing Company’s website home page looked in 2003:
Here’s how it looked when the SMC site was redesigned in 2004:
The Challenge:
Beyond just making cosmetic changes to their home page in 2004, SMC created a website that incorporated a dynamic technology platform for greater functionality.
Like many custom manufacturers, they were used to offering a great deal of customer service and support early in the buying process. But in order to stay competitive and better meet customer expectations, they realized they needed to launch a 24/7 online sales channel which would streamline their own sales process and thus make it more efficient. SMC’s goal was better engage and qualify engineers while they were sourcing online in order to bring them further down the sales funnel before they called for a quote.
The Dynamic Platform
Accordingly, the new dynamic platform at the core of the new SMC site has a ton of functionality. It invites prospect interaction and builds rapport with them early on in the supplier evaluation process by providing deep, searchable content and multiple calls to action (e.g. “Submit RFQ/RFI” , “Save to Favorites”, “Email Page to Colleague” options ) on every product/capability page.
Now engineers can:
- find a valve and configure it online
- build a complete CAD file that may be inserted right into their drawing
- come back to SMC’s site and easily change their design anytime
Outstanding Results
Dan McKeown, SMC President and CEO reports that by offering this level of interactivity, their website truly represents “customer service before the sale”.
Instead of hoping to entice reluctant prospects to call them to discuss their applications when studies show the majority wish to avoid a sales pitch, SMC gives engineers tools to help them match their requirements with SMC’s capabilities. Once the engineer has configured the SMC custom valve online, they are more than willing to contact the supplier for further technical support, fine-tuning and pricing.
SMC’s new approach has been validated many times over since 80% of engineers that download their customized CAD files into their designs, end up specifying SMC into their applications.
“So when it comes to the buyer, “McKeown says, ” we’re spec’ed in and we stay spec’ed in.”
Since launching their new interactive platform in 2004, SMC has experienced:
- 7% – 11% sales growth each year
- Over 30% increase in web traffic
SMC has attracted new business customers such as Hewlett Packard (HP) whose engineers designed a custom valve on SMC’s site for their printing application. SMC is now shipping over 100,000 of these custom valves to HP every year.
Similarly, Canadian jet ski manufacturer, Bombardier, also exploited the functionality of the new SMC site by modifying a particular valve. After Bombardier confirmed that SMC could make the valve, they went on to order $100,000 worth of that custom valve in one year.
If you are a custom manufacturer like SMC, perhaps it’s time to abandon your static website for a dynamic platform which is better equipped to sell your capabilities and bring in more qualified RFQ’s 24/7.
For further insights on how well a dynamic online platform works, view the complete interview with Specialty Manufacturing Company’s President, Dan McKeown at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLS2LPiPaig.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series when we’ll discuss how a small distributor in Chicago levelled the playing field and exponentially increased sales with the launch of their dynamic online platform.
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