D2C Brands: Dip Your Toes Into E-Commerce Without Upsetting Your Distributors - 020

Howdy marketeers and digital lovers, welcome to?issue?020?of?Swipe & Deploy.

Hope you've had a great week and?are looking forward to the weekend. (for some the England game Sunday too)

Now enough of the pleasantries, let's get straight to the good stuff.

??????????????

D2C Brands: Dip Your Toes Into E-Commerce Without Upsetting Your Distributors

If your business manufactures products regardless of industry, then chances are you rely on a distribution network to sell to consumers. Whether that is either online outlets or bricks and mortar stores.

A regular feature that we as a WordPress agency we implement is a 'where to find us' or a 'stockist locator'. A feature that after dropping your postcode in will display local stores close to your search.

This feature is used if you are trying find local depots or branches for nationwide brands for customers to collect purchases or physically make orders too.

However with the pandemic many manufacturers who have products that can be sold online have began exploring trying to establish a direct connection to the end customer by setting up e-commerce stores.

Amazon is easy.

We are working on a project at the moment and the company have several online stores selling their other product lines, and they are fully aware of the investment for creating an online store, but as they are introducing a fairly new product range, they want to test the market as to whether consumers would actually prefer to buy direct from Amazon over purchasing via their website.

Amazon is the market leader in e-commerce, people buy with trust, they don't need to add card details and sign up (most people are users already) any concerns over returns they have faith that Amazon will have their back.

This is an extremely difficult objective to overcome for any brand website to try and encourage a user to buy directly from them. So working with this might help establish a connection for customers to begin the purchase journey with the brand.

Faux E-commerce - The Low Risk Entry

Now objective one, is to have a Faux E-commerce store, which lists product and product information, delivery information and everything you would expect from an online store, yet without the heavy lifting, payment and order processing.

The add to cart or buy now button simply triggers the Amazon PDP (Product Detail page). You instruct the user that the purchase is made via Amazon before they click.

But this is the dipping the toe aspect. Your order is via Amazon, on the storefront that is run and managed by you (so indirectly an e-commerce sale for you).

Not rocket science, I know, but now I am sharing this weeks tool to explore.

Risk of Cheesing Off Your Distributors?

With D2C brands cannon-balling into the pool and selling online could have consequences with upsetting your distributors. Selling online is the dipping your toe to test the water, the investment is far lower than the full e-commerce solution, and providing an option to bring distributors into play, can please everybody.

The Duracell website provides a modal / popup using a platform called Channel Sight. This works well because it allows your Amazon store to be visible, but also provides your online distribution partners too.

This gives the user choice over where they wish to buy it from.

Other benefits are that you can link stock and display which products are available at which stores, making it even easier knowing where which products can be purchased from. (Won't go into too much detail), you can take a look at Channel Sight for more info.

Another provider of this service is Adimo, also worth checking out.

Bricks & Mortar Brands Still In Up Roar!

Yes, before you say it, I know your bricks and mortar distributors might still be having hissy fits that you are choosing to bypass them. Problem is, they are probably considering moving online too, so it's inevitable that this is going to happen, but you can still add a piece to the journey to keep them happy.

Adding that option in the journey, if the user wants the product today or prefer to look at the product before buying then they can view stores for collection, alternatively they can choose online from any of the online retailers.

What's To Swipe & Deploy?

Today's key takeaway is simply; if you're looking at selling online and don't want the initial risk and outlay, then the above mentioned strategy can help you understand that:

a) Your users will know they can buy from you - even if it isn't directly, but they have to come to your website, not initially to a partners.

b) You can keep online distributors happy, by including them in this journey.

c) You can also keep bricks and mortar stores happy by also not excluding them.

The long game is testing that water. If visitors and online sales continue to rise, you can review whether the investment into e-commerce is going to work and slowly transition with introducing a buy direct button (taking the order online) whilst continuing to show the options for users to buy from distributors.

Trying to keep everyone happy is hard, but if you have relied heavily on a distribution network for many years, it can be a difficult step to jump straight in at the deep end.

_

That's a wrap for Swipe & Deploy 020 this week. Join me next Friday where I will share another insight or inspiration piece from around the web.?

Until next week - have a great weekend.?

If you want more great content be sure to follow?Impact Media??on Linked In and if you're interested to know more about what I or the team at Impact do, take a look at our website.

www.impactmedia.co.uk