Kris Harrington

You’ve accomplished the first four steps, and now it’s time for the final one — revenue growth. Growth in revenue comes once you have a deeper understanding of your customers and can act on insights gained through analytics.

The actions you take with this new knowledge will increase customer satisfaction and ultimately raise the average order value. Customers will keep coming back to the site and, through key features like suggestive selling, will buy even more.

Understanding your Customers

B2B customers don’t have a lot of time to waste, so what do they expect once they’re on your site? They want you, as the manufacturer, to make it easy for them to find what they are looking for.

Making their job easier through ecommerce enhances their experience and builds customer loyalty. If someone knows they can efficiently find something on your site, why would they bother looking elsewhere? Whether it’s helping them find the right product, get price and availability, or get the status of a shipment, ensuring they get their answers the first time is most important.

A good analytics platform will give you the data you need to ensure you help your customers accomplish their goals online.  If not, the data will point you in a direction for improvement.

The more you know about your customers the better the ecommerce experience you can create for them. In addition, doing so will increase brand awareness and help drive even more people to your site.

A Continuous Journey

The ecommerce journey is continuous. Remember to utilize the insights in your data to help prioritize and manage changes to your online content. Once you’ve made the powerful changes that are going to help with product conversion, use promotional marketing tools like banners, upselling, and email marketing to tell your customers about the change.

The best companies maximize their site performance by continuing this cycle over and over to get small incremental improvements which lead to profitable wins. Getting an eStore up and running is a great achievement, but the real test is in refining the site and continuing to learn and grow.

About the Author

Kristina Harrington is the president and chief operating officer at GenAlpha Technologies, which provides digital commerce technology for manufacturers. Prior to joining GenAlpha, Kris worked for more than 10 years in leadership positions at two large multinational original equipment manufacturers, Bucyrus International and Caterpillar, supporting the mining industry. In her various positions, she worked with internal stakeholders, dealers, and customers to deliver business results both in aftermarket and equipment sales. She can be reached at [email protected].

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