The Bandman’s site was brought to us by one of our marketing partners, David Hanley at DH Imaging Group.
While working the background of this company, David had pointed out the immense amount of direct ordering they receive from their physical catalogs and newsletters, but their online orders had been lacking. It was very obvious that they were ready to make the shift to a more automated way of handling things and a new site would be needed to facilitate this.
After reviewing their current online presence, the goals for this became very clear. We had to get this ready for the future Bandman users while also keeping a focus on and making things smooth for their current customers that weren’t necessarily ready to make the leap to huge, bulk, online orders through a webstore. But would hopefully be there in the future.
For the current customers conundrum, we simply focused on making this site a resource. A place to where they can get their new catalogs, browse new products and check pricing. Most importantly, this was our place to build trust in the online environment.
We set this up so all of their needs can be met by just getting to the home page. Everything is laid out for them. The current catalogs are downloadable, saving Bandman’s potentially thousands of dollars on shipping costs. Also added was an area to request a physical catalog. Not only was this a great resource for their clients, it’s a fantastic tool for their internal team.
The 2nd part, the future users. This was old hat for us, our wheel house. Working with David made this a breeze. Where we would typically spend hours/days pouring over past sales data to determine not just the highest selling items, but products that weren’t necessarily moving as should be, David was able to help lay everything out for us.
The obvious part is getting the highest selling and most popular items right out in the open. On the home page. Quick orders for users that know what they need each and every time they come to the site. Easy to use, clear navigation for customers to find what they need within seconds.
The majority of their customer base operates on annual orders for schools. While the orders may vary in size, the products ordered remains relatively the same. Setting up customers with their own user profiles to save past orders, and in just a few clicks, reorder everything from the previous year felt like the most efficient way to keep the bulk reorders seamless.
To solve the issue of customers potentially missing items that they might not of considered until their order was placed and received, we integrated cross and up selling into their platform. So many times users overlook smaller items associated with the products they order. It is our job to make sure the orders placed are sent out with everything a customer expects, even if they may have over looked it themselves.
