What Will Make a Website Successful in 2022?
Learn what can help make your website successful in 2022.
Episode 137: If you sell heavy-duty parts, then your website is a big part of your digital sales channel and will impact the level of success you have. A website that works well for you is like another salesperson, which is going to facilitate lead generation and conversion of customers.
In this episode, we review the trends for 2022 that will make your heavy-duty parts website more successful.
Would you like a free consulting session with Jamie Irvine? Visit HeavyDutyPartsReport.com/Consulting to learn more.
Watch the Video
Disclaimer: This content and description may contain affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, The Heavy-Duty Parts Report may receive a small commission.
Sponsors of this Episode:
- Want to look up parts but don’t have a part number or the VIN? Download Diesel Parts for free on Desktop or on your Apple or Android device.
- Looking for high-quality fuel injection for heavy-duty applications? Visit AMBACInternational.com/Aftermarket
Buy Parts:
Want to buy any of the parts mentioned in this episode? Visit HeavyDutyPartsReport.com/BuyParts.
Transcript of Episode:
Jamie Irvine:
You are listening to The Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine. And this is the show where you get expert advice about heavy-duty parts that keeps trucks and trailers on the road longer while lowering cost-per-mile.
Welcome to another addition of The Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine. Today we are talking about what is going to make a website successful in 2022. If you sell heavy-duty parts, then your website is a big part of your digital sales channel, and it is going to impact the level of success that you have. A website that works well for you is like another salesperson that is going to facilitate not only lead generation, but also prospects rather converting into customers. And then those customers becoming repeat customers. So it’s not just about the lead generation component, the marketing side of a website. It’s not just about the e-commerce side or the order fulfillment side of the website. It’s about bringing these two elements together and making them work for your customers so that they get that frictionless buying experience where it’s just easy to do business with you.
And they’re going to come back and buy parts from you over and over again. Now, how much of an impact can a well-built website with a good eCommerce platform that’s working for you have on your business. Some data says that we can see a cost reduction in accepting orders on an eCommerce store by about 30% over the traditional distribution model, where people are either phoning in, emailing in, or coming to the parts counter and ordering the parts directly. So one benefit is any e-commerce order that comes in you could actually see a 30% reduction in the cost of accepting that order. Another thing that is huge for a business is the opportunity to attract net new customers, which is going to have a positive impact on your parts reselling business and is an important part of sustaining long-term growth. So what trends are we going to see in 2022 that are going to help us to be successful and to make our website successful?
Well, I wanted to review some of the trends that I see coming. And let’s talk a little bit about one of the things that you have to keep in mind is that trends online, they are cyclical in nature and 2022 could very well be a breakout year in many ways where a new cycle will begin, because we are seeing that in 2020 and 2021, the things going on related to the pandemic supply chain issues, they have really supercharged a lot of the adoption of digital technology. And so we’re going to see in the truck parts industry and the heavy-duty parts industry for the trucking, we’re gonna see a continuing of this adoption of digital inside of commercial fleets and repair shops, business models, which is only going to make the need for your website to be up to date and to really take into consideration these trends in order to be successful.
So let’s review a few of them right now. One of the things that I think is very important on the lead generation side, the marketing side, is something that is called sharing, not telling. So in the past, we would create marketing messages that were very ‘buy from me’ in nature, right? So ‘I sell this part, buy for me’, ‘we sell this part, buy from us’, those kinds of marketing messages, and really the modern-day buyer is expecting a lot more from their suppliers than that. Back when I was learning how to be a sales account manager, and I would take training, there was this real push for what they called a consultative sales approach. In essence, this is where the salesperson would come in and would, instead of just trying to get an order, would really look for opportunities to solve problems on behalf of the customer and to use and leverage the solutions by the company that they were representing in order to help the customer to create greater business results for themselves.
And so this is kind of the essence of where I see the websites of 2022 and beyond needing to go. We need to share valuable information that moves customers from being a prospect to becoming a customer and then to becoming a repeat customer. So what you really want to do is you want to ask yourself what information do I need to share on my website to provide prospective customers with everything they need to know about the problems that we solve and the solutions that we offer to make the decision to become a customer in the first place. Then from there, what information do we need to share in order to encourage customers to come back and repeatedly purchase from us and make us part of their business as an ongoing service and solution provider to problems that those customers have? And so that’s the mindset that you need to develop when you’re thinking about your website and you’re taking this sharing, not telling approach.
We’re gonna take a quick break. We’ll be right back. Don’t have a heavy-duty part number and need to look up a part? Go to parts.diesellaptops.com or download the app on Apple or Android to create your free account. Looking for high quality fuel injection for heavy-duty applications? Having one supplier for fuel injection allows you to better serve customers by providing them with a complete line, which increases your sales and profitability. Learn more at ambacinternational.com/aftermarket.
Another thing that I think is very important for 2022 is simplicity. I once heard someone say that if you could get your grandmother to go on your website and take the desired action without prompting her on what to do, then your website is simple enough. And I’ve also heard another saying that is one of my favorites. Keep it simple because simple is hard enough. So we’ve adopted that in 2022, on The Heavy-Duty Parts Report.
If you go to heavydutypartsreport.com, you’re gonna notice that our top menu has been dramatically simplified. We’ve removed a lot of things. And now we have, if you’re on the desktop version, you will see that we have icons for listening to the podcast that say, Listen, we have an icon for watching videos that we’ve produced for watching videos and we have an icon for reading to get to our blog. We have a button for our consulting service, and then we have a follow the podcast button. So we simplified this. If you’re on mobile, you’re going to see that those three hamburger lines, when you click them, those options will drop down. Listen, Watch, Read. Now why is that? Well, we looked at where people were going on our site and we tried to make it as simple as possible for them to engage with the content that we have and the services that we offer.
So if you’re a heavy-duty parts company, you need to think about making your system, your website, as simple as possible when it comes to navigation. What is it that people are there to do? They’re there to buy parts. So you need to make it very, very simple for them to do that. Okay, moving on. Safety, this is going to be a growing concern year after year, especially as things become more complex overall with what they’re calling the version 3.0 of the internet, which is also called the metaverse. So we are kind of in a transition period right now where we’re exiting version 2.0 of the internet. We’re moving into version 3.0, this is where things like augmented reality, virtual reality are going to become much more dominant in the experience online. And as this technology develops, there is going to be the growing demand for additional safety.
So you need to look at your privacy policy. You need to look at the security of your site, your SSL certification. You need to look at those things and make sure that people feel comfortable providing the data that they do to you. They understand what data they’re providing and they can very easily find out what you do with their data. All of this is a very important part of creating a safe environment for users of your website. Now, another trend that I think is going to become really solidified in the heavy-duty parts industry is the eCommerce side of doing business and having an eCommerce site on your website. And this provides a couple really big challenges for heavy-duty parts companies. For example, do you have a B2B site for your customers who have an account with you, a net 30 account, and how do you handle B2C customers who are gonna buy with a credit card?
How do you integrate your ERP with your eCommerce platform? Does your eCommerce platform provide you with enough integration with other apps in order to make your system work properly? You know, these are big, big questions, but I think in 2022, if you haven’t started down this road, you are being left behind by your competitors. And you are now getting into a situation where this is a significant threat to the very existence and future of your business. So it’s time to take some real hard looks at what you’re doing, and if you have an eCommerce platform, but the experience is poor or you’re missing a lot of data, or if you don’t have one at all, this is the time to take a serious look at that and make the investments necessary to bring your site up to the level that it needs to be at to provide your customers with that frictionless buying experience, where it’s very easy to do business with you.
And your website is not only a great lead generator, but also once it converts customers, it keeps them coming back over and over again to buy from you. And they find it so easy that they just start to buy more and more products from you. That is the goal. If you would like to have some assistance in any one of the things we’ve talked about today, head over to heavydutypartsreport.com/consulting. We are marketing consultants and we help our clients to build a marketing message that stands out. We help our clients to build an experience for their customers that is both appealing, draws them in and is easy. Once they get there we help our clients to help their salespeople to make the transition from the traditional distribution model to a model that is a hybrid between the fundamentals of the traditional distribution channel, like good customer service, fast delivery, quality products, things like that, combined with a digital experience that is easy to use and creates that frictionless buying experience for the customer.
So if you’d like to learn more about our services, head over to heavydutypartsreport.com/consulting, I look forward to providing one free consultation with you and seeing if there’s an opportunity for us to help you with your heavy-duty parts business. My name is Jamie Irvine. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I look forward to talking to you soon.
