Quick Attach Attachments LLC has come to expect the unexpected with its inaugural e-commerce website. The manufacturer of plow blades, mowers and many other attachments for tractors, all-terrain vehicles and backhoes, expected to grow sales and leads but didn’t expect $2 million in online sales in December, its first full month of selling on QuickAttach.com.

Heavy equipment lags behind many other industries in providing its customers with state-of-the-art e-commerce sites, says David Thompson, director of public relations and sales training, as most manufacturers rely on their bricks-and-mortar dealers to close most sales.

To combat that “Quick Attach set out to create a modern, feature-packed and informative e-commerce site,” Thompson says. Doing so required integrating its new e-commerce platform from Magento Inc. into its customer relationship management software from Salesforce.com Inc. and its enterprise resource planning system from Syspro. Enterprise resource planning, or ERP, systems include integrated software applications designed to help companies manage data on such things as customer activity, inventory levels and financial records.

“Customers now have instant access to the latest pricing, inventory and marketing materials, including video,” Thompson says. “We have also organized our pay-per-click, email, direct mail and TV advertising to funnel customers to our new site. Our sales staff has also been trained to assist customers with how to navigate our site and to make online purchases.”

Quick Attach took something of a leap of faith with the new website. “We put in all of this effort with the expectations of increasing revenue and leads, but we were unsure of how this was exactly going to work out for us,” Thompson says. “We spent hundreds of hours planning the design and data flow of this site.”

The short answer is, customers like it. In addition to its stout December web sales, 26% of company sales are online and overall sales increased almost 30% in the first two months of operations, Thompson says. Plus, leads have increased by 30% and “our closing ratio of those leads has nearly doubled, from 14% to 26%,” he says.

Through some experimentation with marketing, Quick Attach increased its average order value by creating discount code campaigns tied to minimum order amounts. For example, for a President’s Day sale, Quick Attach offered 17% off the manufacturer suggested retail price sitewide and free freight delivery in the continental U.S. for a minimum $3,000 order. “We went from an average order amount of $3,500 to over $5,000 just by creating this threshold,” Thompson says.

While sales reps don’t always appreciate the addition of e-commerce, Quick Attach’s sales reps “have renewed vigor and are much more efficient” since the rollout, Thompson says. Lead and call software through Salesforce.com enables Quick Attach to ensure that a sales rep contacts every lead and every potential customer who creates a shopping cart within five minutes, “at least from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.,” he says. “This has increased our closing ratio and has separated us from the competition when it comes to customer service. Our customers are flabbergasted that we contact them in such a short amount of time.”

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