good morning and welcome I'm excited to be able to chat with you all about a really important topic it's actually a little bit of a conglomeration of topics talking about some mistakes that is really easy to make as a manufacturer getting into e-commerce I am joined by the one the only the legendary Kurt uh from B2B tale so thank you for joining me Kurt uh it is an absolute pleasure to have you on here Joseph thank you what an honor what a privilege I just I love our little Jam sessions together each month and this I am just I didn't sleep a wink last night man I am just thrilled about this topic because I think I've made every mistake uh possible and so we'll cover five of them how's that let's let's do that yeah absolutely let's actually let's just jump right in let's Dive Right In man we have a lot to cover and I know in a short period of time and so uh I don't want to leave anything uncovered I want to you know hit any questions that folks might have and let's Dive Right In so you know for manufacturers out there making this digital transformation and what you and I love to say is the E and eCommerce stands for easy Commerce we want to make it as easy as humanly possible for our ideal customers to make those purchases if you could would you please let's run through the five topics that we're going to cover these are five mistakes that are common for manufacturers what do we have Joseph yeah so we have uh these five are are super easy to make uh and in it's our goal to help ensure that you don't make these so number one here is once and done basically viewing e-commerce as I don't know like a tombstone like you once you make a tombstone you don't change it uh and and unfortun well fortunately actually it is the complete opposite it is more like a living breathing being than it is a tombstone and so that's that's a very important thing talking about uh where we Source product data from it's easy to just look at it as okay well it's in it's in the database here in our Erp let's just dump it out and throw it on the website easy Commerce right um and there's some pitfalls that we have to avoid there we also have uh relevant product details and really this comes down to helping your customer understand what you are selling it's one thing to put a picture up there with a title it's another thing to give them the information that they need to feel uh successful as a visitor and now a customer purchasing your products a value proposition I would say this is probably the most overlooked aspect of a website in almost every e-commerce website that I see but it's critical and then number five is poor customer communication I don't think I really need to explain on that one I I think everyone knows what that ISO Captain Obvious there so let's I love these five let's and you know and I I know many manufacturers we've you know uh let's Dive Right In so once and done an analogy that I like to give is you know I'm sure you've had this happen manufacturer gets their brand new website launch excited popping champagne and all right turn on to SP it where are the orders right or you know what does that look like so the once and done it's kind of a a gym membership you know if I just go to the gym once and I don't see any results I'm like who you know whose fault is that so let's dive into the once and done I think you've got a great analogy here what are we talking about yeah so let's let's go to the next thank you that's this is perfect I I am guessing every person in our audience recognizes this picture here uh it is the picture of the Windows XP uh background desktop background I vividly remember this having spent I don't know how many years of my life operating computers with this desktop background and if you think about in those dark ages of computing although we just recently ex uh exited those for some companies uh thanks to the end of life um what ended up happening was Microsoft built this product Windows XP and they hyped it up they're super excited about it but then they they developed it they got it all ready they tested it and now they had to make the massive investment of putting it on CDs I think it was back then maybe DVDs and then they had to ship it out now once that image was committed to that CD or that DVD similar to that Tombstone example there was no changing it it became an absolute nightmare if oh crap we got a bug in this software what are we going to going to do about it now Nightmare and that's that's where obviously they started coming up with the the internet updating so they could start changing this and now like nobody's heard of a DVD for installing a new operating system anymore so it times have changed but here's the thing uh viewing e-commerce and e-commerce launch project as uh we're it's going to be 100% perfect on day one one is a bit of a oxymoron because uh for many uh manufacturers using or e-commerce is a new channel it's a it's a new it's an experiment it's it's something that we see the benefits we're excited about them but at the end of the day there's really not we don't know exactly how it's going to officially look even five years you know there might be a five products out of your entire catalog that represent 90% of your and th uh trying to accommodate everything of what we think we will need in 5 years right now is a bit of a problem what ends up happening is scope creep in in other words bigger budgets spending basically all your money before it's launched as opposed to getting something launched minimum viable product is what we like to say get something out there start getting success get wins and then iterate in the direction that you see those wins happening yeah I love it so you know big I I love the analogy brought us back in time a little little history lesson there let's keep it moving forward we have a ton to cover what's another culprit here that we wanted to cover yeah so so tackling too much before the launch this is where that those scope creep this uh come starts coming in uh so we need our Erp uh integration to be perfect uh we we need uh you know XYZ configurators done before launch uh pick it could be any a myriad of different things but trying to BU those in before the launch just to ensure this perfect customer Journey uh is is also is is kind of ignoring the fact that e-commerce represents a huge step ahead already for your visitors so uh basically I like to I've referenced this here before the ad20 rule I a huge proponent of it uh you can get 80% of the value with 20% of the work and so if we take that same analogy and apply it here if we if we do get that 80% of value with 20% of the work forgetting or well being okay with that last 20% of value for customers but that represents 80% of the effort so keeping that in mind is it's a generally A good rule across the board but that is a that is a big help to give us budget and something that can actually work we can then work with the website later can you move to the next slide yeah um because the other then what happens if we invest that 100% of budget before we go live and then we don't have anything left for after so as we do see those opportunities we see the website moving in a certain direction we see a certain segment really picking up and catching on well then we kind of already spent all our money previously and then it becomes really hard to invest in the future yeah that's right and so you know covering a lot there and so as far as you know uh you know investing too much too little what's you know and we're not going to get it perfect right but what I love what I admire how you approach things and your dear friend John guess who's a rockstar on your team is taking that phased approach you guys do a phenomenal job of that mvp going in phases now we also talked about you know you get that website up there and launched and you're still the best kept secret right and I can't tell you how many clients I've worked with over the years like I mentioned before new website turn on the SP it what do you what do you got here for us Joseph absolutely this is a this is a big deal so it would be like uh going and building a bies in the middle of uh off just off of a Texas Highway like a two-lane Highway out in the middle of the back 40 uh I mean and not saying anything about it nobody's going to find it you might have the most beautiful convenience store literally in the world and nobody's gonna find it so uh being able to have again that budget saved aside for ongoing uh paid media uh ongoing search engine optimization content development and that's where somebody like Kurt uh Anderson here is is really good with that understands manufacturers and your needs inside and out and then he's he's able to help grow this content marketing this this piece of the business which is never should never stop uh it's it's absolutely critical to keep that moving uh and so it's this is a very very important part so e-commerce is not once and done it's an ongoing investment because we see the return on that investment that's right and just for a quick plug you know what we're doing right here Joseph one thing that I am just super bullish on and I'm just really encouraging clients is what we're doing right here putting out a video live stream just getting yourself out there showing your your subject matter expertise and what you and I love sharing is how do you outte the competition just be that Fierce educator yes so hey we've got a ton to cover we did The Once and done let's dive into number two what's mistake number two how do we get these products online is really what the comes down to so we erps are great how that's you know that's how you as a business functions is keeping everything in uh track of everything that's happening that your Erp enterprise resource planning kind of like your accounting system and planning system Etc like it's it's all right there the problem is just saying okay well we can take a dump of those products drop them online and guess what we're going to start having sales it does not work like that and so uh as much as I would love to just say yeah you can take your Erp data just dump it on online and you're going to start making sales I'd be lying and the goal of this section is to talk about at a very high level what does it take to actually get your Erp data ready to go helping customers browse it intuitively so uh in this next slide we had I have two examples of this is hypothetical but uh values that or product titles might actually come from an Erp uh both of these put online is bad from an SEO perspective Google doesn't know what a hydraulic interface system is uh unless somebody's actually searching for it it I will say the one thing that is slightly good here is if this zx2000 is act is more of a Manu is is more of a global part number or maybe a part number that there could be some compatibility searches for likely not in this case but that can be a good thing Universal tools rubbish right I mean we all have those Universal Tools in our Arps I mean they're they're there but it's it's absolute rubbish nobody knows what it is so in this in this slide here we have our the old name here at the top what I would say is bad but on the bottom side we have two position solenoid with check valve maybe we can improve it depending on the use of the zxt 2000 in there the skew number the manufacturer part number maybe that could go in there as well but in this case this is a very a much clearer description of what this is this is searchable terms this is terms that are intuitive to customers there your buyers are going to know what a solenoid is they're going to know what a twoos solenoid is uh this is going to help your customers understand what's going on with this product so very important to think about it from a customer perspective in customer terminology all right let's run through another example Joseph yes this one again we have these Universal Allen wrenches in our our uh repertoire of product named uh instead of just saying this what about putting a six saying the the the size of it what about putting the compatibility types in there now depending on how far you want to go maybe down the road you can pull out that for all M XYZ machines whatever machines it is and put it into a list on the actual product page of what compat machines this is compatible with that's probably an improvement but this right here is not bad it is a significant improvement over Universal on wrench all right perfect let's keep the party rolling another thing uh this is a big difference between erps and what your customers want to see imagine going to a category page a category page meaning you have all your products listed let's say uh the category title is red paint for lack of a better lack of a better title and you have all of these part numbers in here so it's one is red 1832 paint 5 ounce or one gallon five or 70 172 paint five it's it's very hard to tell as a consumer or a buyer why or what's the difference between these products whether you want a 5 ounce or one gallon in your Erp it makes perfect sense right you have a 5 ounce bottle on the on the Shelf you have a one gallon uh can on the Shelf like that's no problem that's how you're that's how you internally work but that's not how your customers want to browse your website what your customers are likely wanting to see is on this next slide here let's say if I can throw my name in there Max will best coat powder coat paint so that's our registered trademark name on this it's searchable people will see it based off of that now we have a two drop downs here we have the size do you want 5 ounces or one gallon or do you want the color red 173 or whatever the other one was this is very easy in fact then you can also have color swatches in here you can put additional information about why you'd want to purchase a 5 O versus a one gon container the price automatically updates we here we have a link says log in to see your price this is a rough mockup but the idea is we as we can group these products into one those four products end up taking one products real estate on this paint category page so we might have best coat powder coat paint uh Next Level powder coat paint whatever your other options are all of those take up much less real State on the category page AG leading to so we can avoid decision paralysis helping customers get to a next level of their decision they don't need to make that decision on the category page they can make it here on the product page yeah that's that's fantastic so you know uh breaking it down is and again it's really difficult to do what you could you know have a customer come in buy him a cup of coffee buy him lunch sit them down get on you know if they're at a distance put them on zoom and just watch how they purchase you know uh I my e-commerce business 100 years ago we you know if somebody's spouse or family members came into our office we'd sit them down and be like staying over their shoulder like Hey try to buy this and so you where are the barriers where are the road bumps you know so we want to make it again EAS e and e-commerce stands for easy Commerce what do we have here Joseph yeah so in this this situation again from an Erp perspective we often think of it by we often think of how customers well we often think about products as oppos as relation to their category so is this paint is this uh is this processing whatever like there's there's a whole bunch of different categories that we would apply to it it's usually by product type now customers might browse according to product type which is great however they also are likely to think about it more in relation to the application of this and so you should consider having or accounting for at least Pages by how this is going to be used so if it's going to be powder coat whether this is going to be car parts or uh or uh part exposure like you know to the elements that sort of thing like there's whatever area that you're going to be utilizing for this how are people going to want to use these products the benefit is it's also going to give you insight as far as search engine optimization what people are looking for as well so application is a really powerful but overlooked way for people to navigate to products yeah absolutely what do we have here uh I just lost my headphones one second here uh there we go we're back on cool yeah uh again category structure uh this about thinking about how customers are going to browse are they going to have to go five levels deep in this hierarchy to get to this product or uh on the other hand maybe it's just one category and there's a thousand products in there and how are they going to be able to click through and find those products it's a it's a balancing act and so uh you're never going to get it perfectly right and and that's kind of a key point I'm trying to show here is this on website websites are living breathing thing you're going to get customer feedback hey there's too many products in this categ I cannot find what I'm looking for okay great well how are we going going to split this up you might have too many categories from the get-go well let's start merging some of those together find out that sweet spot for customers yeah I love that and and again back in my e-commerce uh when I had my e-commerce company every time our running joke was how could we get the phone not to ring and how could we get the email not to ding meaning every time there was a question we'd stop and say okay why did they ask that what information did we not provide if somebody sends you an email that's an opportunity call a timeout and look at it because if they had a question think of how many people had the same question but then send in the email so again I love the direction you're going here we have much more to cover let's dive in we're hitting mistake number three missing relevant product details Joseph curious minds would love to know what are we talking about this is a big one uh and it kind of it dubils into the last one here uh if we think about the E Erp as our data source and it kind of is the foundation for what information we're going to put on the website the question is how much are we we going to massage the data once it comes out of the RP uh and and and Kurt your segment there which you just said dove tailes in so nicely because the way I see it is every time a customer has to pick up the phone to call you there's probably 10 others that didn't feel like picking up the phone and they move on to another competitor the goal is to give your customer every bit of information that they need in order to be able to make their purchasing decision if they don't have this information or if it's overwhelming again it's this Balancing Act you can put too much information you could literally copy the contents of your MSDS put that on your product page and then customers like I can't find anything on here or you don't even have an MSDS on your product page okay well either one of those is a problem and so providing customers with this relevant information a good product description good information about it is absolutely critical the other thing to not forget is search engines also use this information so this is not like we're just helping our customers out that's great we need to help our customers out this is also helping yourself out getting yourself higher in these search rankings uh by providing by helping search engines get what they o need to provide to find this information yeah I totally agree and you know with that said you know it's a global market that we're in and so another tagline I love to share when we do these little Jam sessions together how do you help that ideal customer make a buying decision on a Friday night at midnight before you have you even open up your door on Monday morning so how do you help that customer make that buying decision at whatever time zone they're in where they don't have to pick up the phone Joseph let's go here what do we have understanding who is using your website is really important I think this also cons would classify as a mistake and but that's why it's good to understand that put this here it is not just the end user per someone just going to your website making a purchase who's going to be using your website there are some very important other groups of people who are going to be on your website for example Architects and Engineers they're looking for technical information again that's where this MSDS the cad drawings uh even installation instructions if we think about after this product has been purchased and is being utilized they're going to come back to your website and view this as the hub for all things about this product Architects and Engineers are very important because as they find your website easy to use as they get the information that they need well then they might be recommending your products are put into this this new project or this new building that is going in they're going to be recommending that and that's really important end users easy they're going to want specific information like pricing and they're going to uh maybe some de details about uh how it's used Etc they're usually not as technical maybe you have dealers uh dealers are also similar to your internal uh customer service teams or your sales team they're going to need a place to get some of this information so Double Down utilize this product page to to present everything necessary then there's that side component of search engines as well so these are a few of the key elements that should be found on your product page is there manufacturer part number is there other part numbers that maybe this is an equip part that you are building that's a replacement part for this other part number include all of that on there Google will see it and will pick it up uh data um safety data sheets CAD drawing installation applicate anything that you can put on there that's going to be relevant to other markets or to help other people find this product that's absolutely critical yeah I I couldn't encourage that more I couldn't love what you just said more I think that's phenomenal uh you know again just providing all that helpful information and one thing that I was I want to hit before we move on is speaking to that ideal Customer because if it's purchasing Paul or purchasing Patty maybe they they just need higher level information they're not the architect the the engineer the D you know deep dive right maybe they just have from the engineer hey just go buy this product you know but now when you are speaking to the architect the engineer and you want to get down and dirty geeky you know speaking the language all of this information is just so let's assume what I love to do is not assume but let's assume that people know have no information provid it all you've got a great example here what's this what's a slideshowing yeah so I put a QR code there feel free to scan that uh it's Eastman's website um I'll be honest Eastman's website would is not going to win any Design Awards but because it doesn't have to these in these type of environments people are not overly concerned about how beautiful a website is how well formatted it is they're worried about functionality and that's what Eastman does so well in providing here um there's you can see this safety data sheet uh we have the specifications we have warranty in fact I'm actually going to reference them again here in the next uh mistake but them doing something right here really well so this is this is good information again maybe not formatted the best that's fine it's the information people need and I love seeing that yeah great chob job there okay so we just wrapped up on number three the missing relevant product details now we're going to dive into no value proposition Joseph what are we discussing here why why do customers want to purchase from you it is this is probably the most import one of the most important of I would say the second most um uh critical of these mistakes that is to be made and fortunately it is on very few websites it's on every website that build uh here's the thing your customers might need some help figuring out why you are better than your competition and I'm not talking about cheesy statements that don't mean anything I'm talking about things that are concrete and pro provable we'll talk about that here in a second um we need to make sure that these are incredibly prominent on your website but you are telling your customers why they should purchase from you don't let them or don't rely on them to infer after visiting five of your competitors and now you what what sets you apart because well maybe they have their marketing games on better than you do and they'll then end up purchasing from you so this value proposition is why should I buy from you and it should be incredibly prominent on your website Kurt if we can go a couple slides forward yep there you go thank you um here's a couple of examples just and I'll have another one coming up here soon um we designed both of these the first one is in a business to consumer context but I still like it a lot uh basically why buy from Pleasant Hill grain they huge competitor to Amazon everybody knows Amazon trust Amazon these are some key points that actually stick uh if nothing else you have the Google customer reviews almost 4 point almost five stars 4.9 that's really really powerful egrandstand absolutely critical to their customers these things matter and they live up to them these points must be concrete and provable not marketing BS that who who cares about like these are things that you live up to things that are meaningful ideally they connect to the heart put an about us page on there put your founder story on there that's not a problem in fact it's really good thing keep it short and sweet you saw the grand stand and the Pleasant Hill Grand examples like those are uh a couple of words three four five words maximum short and sweet and meaningful the other thing is it doesn't have to be unique to you so uh you I think a very powerful value proposition is made in the USA yeah there's a whole bunch of other manufacturers here in the USA but you're setting yourself apart from the foreign competition in that way uh back to Eastman here so this is their product page and again I'll be honest from a user experience perspective there's probably some things that can be done to improve this however I absolutely love it from a functionality perspective could you jump to the next slide here Kurt uh because this is their value proposition and it's disguised you wouldn't necessarily see it as a value proposition but it is first says questions talk to an expert a link to their phone numberb so you literally click it and it calls them to talk through this bright signal red this paint if you have any needs there we have a warranty that's included on this and a 100% satisfaction guarantee with lifetime tech support that is a very powerful value proposition right there that they're willing to put on their product pages yeah so yours might not look exactly like this you might not have a satisfaction guarantee or be in a space that you actually can provide something like that that's okay there is plenty of other opportunities for this type of verbiage on there and again that's something that Kurt is really really good with being able to help you figure that out well I you know since 1978 this is phenomenal and just kind of recap a couple things here Joseph you know we're talking about you know having that street cred you know creating social proof you know you've show reviews 100% satisfaction since 1978 you know that is just powerful that's a powerful statement right there you know there's a great line that I love to share you know and I I shamelessly borrowed this stole this you know uh facts tell stories sell and so you know you've talked about you know as we're going through these mistakes like you know share that story share this proof share since 1978 there's this you know in I I do a I have a client that's doing live streaming and he's in the apparel business and he talks about what's your brand promise and how do you just live eat drink and breathe and sleep by That Couldn't Love That more that slides right into number five we're going to talk about poor customer communication what do we have here Joseph not connecting with a customer is a big problem so so they're going to have questions they're going to need support obviously we just spent the last two mistakes if you will uh talking about what we can do to a actually three technically to avoid those conversations but they're still going to be inevitable somebody's going to miss something somewhere how can we ensure that we are providing good service to them uh through this so in other words how do I as a customer ask you a question is your phone number easily accessible and we have there's a there's three primary ways to do this live chat I absolutely love live chat um it's it's it speaks directly to the younger Generations as they are coming into being buyers at or these organizations they are expecting uh these type of digital tools phone is never going to go away um email if you can even provide uh faces and an email address that provides that personal connection people I'm like I'm not just emailing this I don't know black box I'm emailing a person with a title understand a face I see and I'm going to ask them a question about this problem I'm having or whatever yeah I I couldn't love this more we had on on our live show manufacturing e-commerce success we just had a gentleman who's just a fierce advocate for us manufacturers he offers a live chat uh solution incredibly powerful he showed us all sorts of demos on how sales and conversions of gone up through the roof for clients by utilizing live chat and we actually just booked a guest coming up on actually message marketing which you know I'm like boy are manufacturers going there well as you just said as young you know this new generation is just you know coming into the workforce we've gotta we've got to communicate where our customer is at you know that's crial here so that's right okay Joseph is we uh we're gonna wind down and we're gonna let's how about a quick recap on the five mistakes that you commonly see what do we have absolutely so the first one is once and done no it's not we're not building a tombstone we are building a living breathing being if you will uh an e-commerce Channel sales channel for our our company and in this type of a situation we need a to have to reserve budget we need to reserve me mind space for being able to view it as a minimum viable product that's going to start growing wings and start uh developing and growing on its own but as we continue to feed it and so once and done very very important to think of it as once and now continuing um internal Focus products so where are we getting this information from our Erp great well what does the Erp data look like is it something that is it is it in a format that customers want to browse or is it still very raw very usable for our internal needs but very unusable typically speaking for our customers needs number three is uh relevant product details again customer at uh midnight on a Friday night are they going to have have what they need to answer this question maybe they're an emergency their production lines down they are trying to figure out how they can get this problem solved as quickly as possible they come across your website they're going to see all the specifications all the information that they need to say yes this product is a good compatibility that we can immediately swap in place an order and it's going to be on their doorstep next Wednesday because you have such an efficient uh production line to be able to get that out the door number four is our value proposition again as your customer is comparing you against four or five other compan companies what stands out are you telling them up front why they should be purchasing from you then number five tying it all together having that really really good customer communication I I love it so all right as we wind down uh first off hey how about a big round of applause for my friend Joseph at Swift otter so Joseph ABS phenomenal information we have a QR code here folks how can folks find you reach out to you obviously we're here live on on your channel what's the best way to to connect with the folks at Swift otter we're on here on LinkedIn uh LinkedIn and actually I meant to put I was going to put a our LinkedIn links on here and I got sidetracked so uh both to you and me so yeah make sure to also follow Kurt Anderson B2B tale uh he's he's a huge advocate for us manufacturing I absolutely love to see the work that he's doing there helping support helping in um boost uh their their sales which is absolutely critical it's the foundation for any business to sale so that's really important so yeah that's right you know our manufactur are the heroes of our economy just it's an honor and privilege just to be in this in this space Joseph any parting thoughts words of wisdom that you want to share as we close out thanks for joining it was it's been an absolute pleasure uh having you on thank you uh Kurt for being here and uh sharing your thoughts and wisdom as well absolutely guys have a great incredible rest of your week and we will see you next time thank you Joseph