Selling complex B2B products online is possible. Really.
Using a website to purchase a complex product requires plenty of information and planning. So does selling them.
Technically the business is T.I.E. Industrial. But, we just know them as robots.com. (That’s a pretty choice domain name).
Selling high-priced, industrial robots is tough. Selling them online seems even harder. It can be done but the process must be deliberate.
Before actually completing B2B purchases online, the customers must trust the product information on the website…and we have to get it there.
We redesigned the visuals and implemented a stable, low-friction product review experience. This started with lots of planning and flow charts prior to a single line of code.
Cut to the chase, we built it, and the website works just as we all planned (and on time too). Plenty of easy-to-view product data, a comparison tool, and easy contact methods.
The site works great, so customers are happy. Leads are way up, so the client is happy. A great start to a great relationship, so Solspace is happy.
It can seems like ecommerce is a space best for simple things like t-shirts but not for complicated products like industrial robots. Fortunately, we know this isn’t true. We’ve built websites for clients who successfully sell expensive audio engineering equipment and even power station parts and modules. Both cost thousands of dollars and their respective customers fully complete these purchases online.
We know selling robots online is possible for robots.com too. Our first phase is to get their customers used to engaging with the technical specifications of these products on robots.com. They already have plenty of great product data and imagery. While planning the next phase, we're paying close attention to how users behave on the website and how they respond to the sales staff.
For robots.com, we decided to take this process in phases. The first was to redesign the web experience and get customers used to reviewing the complex details of industrial robots in an online environment.
This started with meticulous planning of what content and data was needed and how it should be experienced by the customers. We redesigned the website to focus on making sure the customer could get as much information as possible online. This meant a web design that quickly gets out of the way of the users and removes as much friction as possible for them to learn about the products.
We finished with a backend that allows the client to easily manage product information and allows customers to review product data and even generate a comparison chart for better decision-making.
We launched the new robots.com in time for our client to attend and promote themselves at a key industry event. In just a couple of months after the launch leads dramatically increased more than 1500%. We tripled-checked; it's not a typo. The customers’ reactions prove that they are understanding the product data. Once they connect with the sales staff it's clear they've already progressed through much of the product consideration process.
The next phase will be to allow customers to actually complete these transactions online with a true B2B ecommerce experience. Naturally, this requires us all to go through that meticulous planning process again. But, with the success of the first phase behind us, we’re all eager for the opportunity.
Selling high-priced, industrial robots is tough. Selling them online seems even harder. It can be done, but the process must be deliberate.
