With the downfall of the dot-com bubble, the demand for a demonstrable ROI has become even more critical to those investing in new technologies. Believe it or not, though, the first graphical interface for the Internet as we know it today (outside of a university or government facility) is only about seven years old. In some ways, it seems like the World Wide Web has been around forever. It certainly has taken a prominent role in our businesses.

NWSA members have generously shared their Internet experiences with the NWSA Journal. Many are good and profitable; some challenging. Distributors report getting queries from potential customers 20 states away, even from foreign countries, but not locally. Others report doing lots of online sales with local customers.

NWSA members are investing time, energy and money to optimize the Web's potential, enhancing their company's ability to communicate with customers and employees, in order to improve their bottom line. Is the Web fulfilling all of its promises? Has it made customer service more efficient?

The following pages highlight a variety of distributor websites, each with something unique that may improve the efficiency of your company's website, its look, leads and lengthened visits. You are just a click away from some great websites with ideas that work for NWSA distributors.

Online Catalogue Puts Sales and Parts Departments on Same Page with Customers

“Our website is probably the closest thing we have to a printed catalogue of everything we sell,” says Russ Lidbury, vice president of EWS Welding Supply in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. “Products are efficiently organized and marshaled together. In addition to providing the customer with more information and arming the salesperson with a useful, all-inclusive brochure, the website also supports our counter people who answer the phones and take orders.” And from a manager's point of view, “We know that everyone is on the same page. Before, we were never sure.”

Cataloguing products turned out to be a well-received customer service. Says Lidbury, “Customers can find what they're looking for, when they want it. Even if they're not sure the product is what they need, enough descriptions and information are provided to help them make a decision.” To explain, Lidbury uses the example of a torch. “There are perhaps a thousand different kinds of torches. Hopefully, we have the description and the organization good enough that the customer actually orders what he or she needs.”

Programming is done with Perl, and content is updated daily. The site is integrated with the company's software, so updates generally occur automatically. Eight hours per week is devoted to updating the site's content.

Some product photos come from vendors, though Lidbury is often unsatisfied with the quality. “Vendor brochures don't always have great artwork, and we often have to digitally edit, change backgrounds, sharpen images, etc.” To compensate, some of the photographs online were taken by EWS employees.

Lidbury is aiming for a new twist on the website. EWS is in the process of developing “recommended products” based on items previously ordered. “Perhaps the customer never bought a welding glove from us, but they bought a torch. We want to guide them toward purchasing additional product.” Lidbury hopes to have this feature up and running by winter.

Online Sales Break all Records

Three years ago, Robert J. Goodliffe, president of J.W. Goodliffe & Son, in Linden, New Jersey, knew that the Internet would play some part in his business. At the time, the company did not have a website, but Goodliffe expected that someday it would.

“I was thinking about domain names, and trying to come up with a catchy one that someone could type in off the top of their head as they were searching online for welding equipment.”

TECH TIP Measuring Website Traffic — Understanding the Measurement Terms HITS - A “hit” is simply any request to a Web server for any type of file. This can be an HTML page, an image, a sound clip, etc. Viewing a single page can account for several hits: the page itself, each image on the page, and any embedded sound or video clips. VISITS or VISITORS - A “visitor” is defined as a visit from a particular location occuring within a time period. PAGEVIEWS or PAGE REQUESTS - A “page” is defined as any file sent out by a web server that would generally be considered a web document. This includes HTML pages, script-generated pages and plain-text pages. Image files, sound files, video files, and other non-document files do not count as pages.

Eight months prior to developing a website, “cyberweld.com” was purchased and registered to J.W. Goodliffe & Son, Inc. Once it was registered, another company tried to grab it, but Goodliffe had staked his claim.

When asked why the website domain name varies so much from the company name, Goodliffe responds, “The Goodliffe name means nothing beyond a 20-mile radius of our store. Besides, our company's name, address and telephone number is on every page of the website.”

The site currently receives 3,200 page views per day; 600 of these are visitors. Goodliffe purchases pay-per-click advertising to increase the number of visitors coming to the site. Before the pay-per-click campaign, there were 400 visitors per day.

“We're a little company doing a lot of business on the Web,” says Goodliffe. May 2002 broke all online sales records. June broke that record; and July established yet another new record. Goodliffe says it wasn't always like this. “When the site went live in June 2000, sales were zero for the first six months. It took a while to get ranked and positioned with search engines, but after two years, online sales now account for 12 percent of our total sales volume.”

Goodliffe attributes cyberweld.com's online sales success to a few factors. First, he hired a web designer who had experience working in the welding industry. “He built our site from the perspective of a welding guy, not a computer design guy. You can look at distributor sites and often determine that the person who designed it has no clue about what kind of customer is coming into the store, what they're looking for, what the key items are they will want to click on, or what the search-engine terms should be.”

He insisted on keeping the process simple. Goodliffe admits that he makes many online purchases, so he knew what he liked and disliked about the process. Laughing he says, “I built cyberweld.com's site for myself. I built it so that I would be happy buying from me!” He is proud of the fact that a customer can find any item, buy it, and get out of the online store within four clicks.

Another thing he did was place the site with an application service provider that assists by driving visitors to the site and providing the electronic store and ancillary functions, such as credit card services and order processing.

Finally, he suggests that distributors take the initial, tentative step. “Some companies believe that their manufacturers should be helping them build their websites, in order to save costs. We decided to do it on our own. It turned out to be inexpensive, and we learned an awful lot about what works and what doesn't.”

Cyberweld.com is selling products to customers in all 50 states, Canada, Japan and Saudi Arabia. Equipment sales account for 90 percent of these online sales; on the brick-and-mortar side, equipment makes up 65 percent of the total sales.

Goodliffe is still uneasy about Internet territory lines, or the lack of them, citing a code that friendly competitors would never cross swords. “I never competed against an NWSA member in my zone.” He predicts that electronic commerce has the potential to change the dynamics of how NWSA members do business.

Exploded Views and Purchasing Authority Add to “Wow” Effect

“Everyone loses their instruction literature,” says Wayne Bacon, president of Mills Welding & Specialty Gases in Buffalo, New York. So on the company's shopping site, Bacon placed a scroll down menu, listing products by vendor and number. Clicking on a product brings up an “exploded view” of the product, with part numbers and descriptions. Bacon talks about one of the advantages for customers: “A customer is working on a project and develops a problem. He can lay down his tool, go online, see the equipment broken down to its smallest detail, and know exactly what is needed.”

TECH TIP “An outside sales rep can sabotage e-commerce faster than you can say 'gases' and 'welding supplies',” says Indian River Consulting Group's Michael Emerson. Read his online exclusive article, Ideas For Compensation, in the NWSA Journal Online by clicking here.

Bacon makes sure that the purpose of www.weldweb.com is customer service and education. The website contains a tool bar, “Industry News & Events,” which includes safety tips and other news. Most recently, the site contained articles on heat stress and welding safety. “This type of information is not always readily available to customers,” says Bacon, “so providing easy access is a way to partner with our customers. The site also links to NWSA's website and vendors' sites. Customers and potential customers sign up to receive e-mail news and notices about special sales.Bacon developed a proprietary tool he calls “Purchasing Authority.” It works like this. “Suppose a customer has 14 employees in 3 states who have authority to make purchases. The customer decides which vendor to use. He knows what he wants those employees to buy, but he doesn't want to handle the paperwork every time a purchase is made. Mills Welding & Specialty Gases establishes a master account, with only the items his employees are authorized to buy and how much they can spend.” Bacon indicates that customers using the Purchasing Authority feature are realizing money-saving efficiencies.

“I think the best thing about the Internet,” says Bacon, “is that it simplifies our lives, even a little bit. It also sends the message to our customers that we're serious about the future. If they like what we are doing, our relationship with them goes up a notch. Some customers don't care about our presence on the Web, but when we show them our website, they still find it interesting.” Bacon calls it the “wow” effect. “It's like showing a customer a new product they may not need today but may need in the future. You don't want anyone else to show it to them and then have them think they want it. Better let the customer know you have it before they decide whether or not they want it.”

Sales Manager's Data Drive Site Content

When Ruth Mibaum, president of Rochester Welding Supply Corp. in Rochester, New York, put the company's sales manager in charge of the website, interesting things began to happen. Sales Manager Jim Biegas' forte is sales, not technology. So he did what any successful sales professional would do...focus on selling more products.

Working with an outsourced company that programs the site, Biegas carefully oversees the content. He analyzes the traffic on the site and knows what pages people are looking at and how much time they're spending on them. The data tell this sales manager what products and services people may want to purchase from Rochester Welding Supply Corp.

Biegas provides pricing and product updates to the programmer, moving things around as much as he can. “I like to change the look of the site by adding different products and tracking how they are being received by website visitors,” he says.

To date, 20 to 30 orders are filled online each month. A “Monthly Special” added to the home page accounts for 30 percent of these orders. Most of the monthly specials are overstock items, offered with an attractive discount.

Biegas indicates that many customers call with questions about gases. “Many don't know the different types of gases or how to use them.” So he added a gases page to the website which contains easily understood explanations to help customers differentiate among gases, cylinder sizes and pressures. A section called “Tech Tips” links to vendor's chat rooms. He also added a “Feedback” page for customer comments. There hasn't been much traffic on that page, but Biegas, salesman at heart, always asks customers when he visits them what they think about the site. Then he tells the programmer what to do to continue to make Rochester Welding Supply Corp.'s customers very satisfied.

Get Help from Those Who Know

“We have to find out what AWESCO customers want, and we have to make it easier for them to get it,” says President/CEO J. David Mahoney. In the rush to have a presence on the World Wide Web, Mahoney believes that many companies, including his own, made some mistakes. “We wanted pictures, movement, lots of information, pretty graphics, even though most of our customers didn't know what to do with it all.”

Mahoney is currently in the process of updating his Albany, New York company's two-year-old website. He wants to make it easier to navigate and faster to load, and he wants it to contain information that customers are looking for. He also wants to figure out a way to market the site to customers, so they are buying products via the Internet. “We spend money to get our customers to purchase online, but hardly anyone's doing so! Why not?”

A software provider referred Mahoney to two companies that seem to have the answer to his question, and he is in the process of learning what they are doing to make e-commerce acceptable and easier for their customers, and profitable for AWESCO. With tips from these experts, Mahoney plans to develop a marketing campaign for the company's e-commerce capabilities. The first order of business will be to get the sales staff comfortable with online sales. The second step will be to teach the sales staff how to get their customers comfortable with online sales.

“We want to make it easy for customers to do business with us,” says Mahoney, “and we want them to be able to do business with us 24/7. We need to talk to our customers and find out what THEY really want on our website, and then make sure it's there for them.”

Three Clicks and You're In

The main purpose of Weiler Welding's website is to make money. So says Systems Manager Earl Gregorich, who designed the Dayton, Ohio-based distributor's website. “Of course we want to sell product, make a profit, and use it as another marketing avenue, but it's probably not going to be the sole means of doing business any time soon.” A systems guy with his eye on the bottom line!

Weiler Welding's brick-and-mortar success is built on catering to customers and holding their hands when necessary. “Customer service is key, and we carry that mission over to the Internet.”

When a customer does something interesting or unusual with a product purchased at Weiler Welding, photos, usually of artists' works, go up on Weiler's website. “We appreciate our customers and like to help them in any way we can,” Gregorich says.

Gregorich believes in keeping a website as simple as possible. “You listen to the customers, hear what they want, see what product is moving, what product is not, what presentation styles work, which ones don't, and then you go to work.”

Weiler Welding's team believes that the customer still wants to feel “at home” when purchasing via the World Wide Web, especially with more expensive products. “Most people don't dial up, put in a credit card number, and walk away. They want to talk to somebody.” So Weiler Welding added things to give them that feeling of comfort, things like expanded product descriptions, a vast amount of contact information, even personalized, password-protected pages for regular customers.

Gregorich believes that the most functional, easiest presentation style for customers is the “three-click rule,” and he works hard to stay within that limit. “If a customer can't buy a product within three clicks, you might as well hang it up.”

Website Integrates with Back-Room Operations for Real Time Ordering, Less Paperwork

Linweld, Inc., headquartered in Lincoln, Nebraska, has two websites. The first, linweld.com, contains a listing of branches, contact information, a general overview of products and services, and a listing of company divisions. Doug O'Dell, Linweld's director of e-commerce and strategic sourcing, calls the site “ground-level, purely informational.”

The company's second site, linweldonline.com, is a password-protected website designed for existing customers. Registered users can place orders, review account information, check cylinder balances, customize ordering systems, and check the status of back orders, all in real time.

Both websites are hosted by an Internet Service Provider, who provides usage tracking, counting both “hits” and “users.” During the last week of July, linweld.com had 17,462 hits. O'Dell says there were weeks in March when the site was in excess of 40,000 hits a week. Much of this activity comes from links to Linweld's vendor websites. O'Dell's tracking reports show that the most activity takes place Monday through Friday. User sessions during that same week in July averaged 20 per day, a good amount.

Other customer services include a “News Feature” button on the menu bar. Linweld's director of marketing is responsible for contributing news about company events, promotions, new hires, etc. At “Ask the Expert,” questions are e-mailed to division representatives, who respond within 24 hours. An average of 12 each week are received.

O'Dell believes that the best feature of the website is its ability to integrate with Linweld's back-room operations. “When a customer places an order online, the site prints a ship ticket right at the branch for delivery. The order doesn't have to be handled two or three times before it hits the system. When a salesperson is on the phone with a customer looking at a cylinder balance, they are both looking at the same numbers, in real time.”

It took almost 12 months for Linweld to fully integrate the website with the company's operations, but O'Dell says the time was well spent. Customers know that the website is a major source of information and service, and Linweld knows that the site's content motivates visitors to return often.

Online Alternatives to the E-Commerce Dream

When United Welding Supplies of Houston, Texas developed its website four years ago, hopes centered around a place for customers to get information. “As one of the first in the industry to have a website,” President Carolyn Johnson says, “we envisioned customers placing orders for product online.” But it didn't happen. Few orders came in via the website, and like many other companies, the Internet lost some polish and received less attention in the day-to-day operations of the company.

TECH TIP Improve your Placement on Search Engines To improve your ranking on search engines, make sure you include key phrases a buyer might utilize in a search on your web pages. Single words are rarely successful. Use phrases with three or four words. Once you've made a list, try them out on several search engines, such as google.com, hotbot.com, and aol.com. Review the first few pages on the list to see how they are placing information on the page. Now you are ready to improve your website's placement. Follow these steps: 1. Review your own website's pages to see if the phrases you identified appear. If not, consider adding them. 2. Make sure every page has a title relevant to that page (this is not the title shown when you view the page. It is a title enclosed within the tag in the page's html code). 3. Make sure that every page has a description within the html meta tag “description.” 4. Make sure that every page includes the keyword phrases you identified (and are relevant to that page) listed within the html meta tag “keywords.” 5. Finally, ask your key suppliers to provide a link on their website to your website. Virtually all search engines now consider a site's popularity (as evidenced by links from other sites) as a key determiner of a site's position in search result listings.

Debora Yawn, data processing manager, was instrumental in developing the site, and she is eager to see it succeed. “Most businesses now have websites, and our perspective has developed along with the ups and downs of the dot-com marketplace.” Yawn realizes that United Welding Supplies' customers want information, so she gives it to them. Changes are made quarterly to parts listings, product lines and vendors. Contact changes are made when needed.

Currently, an average of eight specific requests for information about product pricing and availability come in each week. Sales literature and salespeople direct customers to the website's address. The address is also listed on every piece of company stationery.

To draw more visitors to the site, Yawn also updates the meta tags for search engines. One trick she uses is to list the name of the company in a variety of ways. She explains, “The words 'company profile' come up higher on an alphabetical list than 'United Welding Supplies.' So I make sure the company name is listed several different ways.”

Despite the reality that most UWS customers order directly from the field via telephone (no access to computers), Yawn has not given up the original hope of e-commerce. United Welding Supplies is developing strategic partnerships with purchasing agents hired by large businesses. To make it easy for agents, UWS is developing a program to do specific ordering and ticket printing. Says Yawn, “This will be more efficient for the customer—no phone calls and no questions about what they ordered in the past.”

Another strategy is a partnership with other distributors on a site devoted specifically to information about welding supplies. Says Yawn, “We advertise on the site and if a potential customer does a search—for example, a Lincoln welder—we come up before those that are not a Lincoln welder supplier.”

“There are options,” says Yawn. And while the website did not meet all of the goals set up for it at inception, it has proven to be a strong and viable way to service United Welding Supplies' customers.

David or Goliath? Internet Levels Playing Field

“We don't want to show product, we want to show process,” explains Mike Massinople, Jr., vice president of Mabscott Supply Company in Beckley, West Virginia, explaining the design of his company's website. “Customers are thinking about their entire welding process, not just individual products, and that's the message we want to show on our home page.”

TECH TIP Got Milk? A Cookie is a small file kept on your computer that stores information about your previous visit to a site.

“As an independent distributorship,” says Massinople, “we're always looking for ways to improve the way we do business with our customers. This goal was the driver for our website design and content.”

The first step to designing the website was to ask customers what they wanted. Says Massinople, “After the dot-com fallout, we knew it was critical to develop our site to benefit our customers, and we learned that they were most interested in the status of our inventory. They were interested in knowing what was available in real time, how many were on order with the vendor, and when they would arrive at the dock. They also wanted clear product descriptions.”

Massinople and the Mabscott team gave it to them. “Our website empowers the customer by putting everything we know about our business in their hands.” Customers can check inventory status, review their purchase history, consignment usage, download pricing, track shipment via UPS tracker, and review monthly specials on items they have purchased in the past. E-mail links go directly to the customer's salesperson.

When designing the site, Mabscott Supply Company wanted it “clean” and “modern-looking.” Massinople says, “We wanted something simple, with limited text. We also wanted fonts that looked modern. And we wanted content and information that would really help our customers do a better job with their own businesses.”

Massinople describes himself and his team as “just a bunch of guys trying to figure out which way to go with this thing, looking for ways to serve our customers.” And as an independent distributor, he wanted an edge. www.mabscottsupply.com gave it to them.

Sales and Techies Work Together to Improve Online Sales

TECH TIP Tracking online activity. . . Great marketing tool or invasion of privacy? Look for the full story in the next issue of NWSA Journal.

The sales department at Roberts Oxygen Company is heavily invested in the Rockville, Maryland-based distributor's website. Working in conjunction with IT Director John Stanko, the sales department pays close attention to all sales generated online. Stanko tracks the volume of online sales, and the sales department watches the numbers.

When developing the electronic commerce component of the website, Stanko asked the sales staff to group their customers by gross margin. Then he did an analysis of which customers placed the largest number of phone orders. “The sales staff then asked these customers if they would like the opportunity to order those products online, at their convenience.”

Many did, and Stanko continues to follow the numbers, designing reports detailing e-commerce transactions, both EDI and Internet. Several customers report that 90 percent of their purchases are now taking place online, rather than by telephone.

Some sections of the site are maintained by the sales staff, who also update the online sales flyer. Inventory Reduction Sales list item photos, descriptions, available quantities, the regular price and the sale price.

By mid-summer, ten orders a day were taking place online. Stanko developed an “order pad,” making the process easier for customers. “With relatively few keystrokes, they can select an item off the list. They don't even need to know the item numbers.”

Website Reduces Advertising Costs

Like many other distributors, Prest-O-Sales & Service of Long Island City, New York, is not making a lot of money from online sales. But Jim Madison, president, has figured out a way to save money in conjunction with his company's website. Madison recently removed most of the verbiage from the company's Yellow Pages listing. “Now the print ad lists only our company name, location address, phone number and web address,” he says, emphasizing “web address.”

Cutting down the amount of space has not only saved money for the company, but increased access to company information. Says Madison, “Most people in business have access to the Internet. After looking at a small ad in the Yellow Pages, they can go online if they want to see more of what Prest-O-Sales & Service offers.” Information online is clearly more detailed and informative than a few inches in the Yellow Pages. Adds Madison, “And you can control the content, so the customer gets to see what you want him or her to see.”

Prest-O-Sales makes a concerted effort to direct potential and current customers to its website. The address is on all trucks, invoices, packing lists, paperwork and stationery.

Currently, Prest-O-Sales receives about six online inquiries a day. If they are located out of his trade area, Madison directs the potential customer to an NWSA member in the appropriate area. Madison views this networking as an important benefit of NWSA membership.

Partnership Provides Link to Online Industrial Sales

“What is important to our customers is what is important to us,” emphasizes Mark Haun, president of Haun Welding Supply in Syracuse, New York, describing the plan for the re-design of his company's four-year-old website. “We wanted it to be easy to navigate, attractive, and contain information and tools to make their businesses more efficient and more profitable.”

A lot of information is available at Haun Welding Supply's website, and all of it is organized and arranged in a logical, clear and uncluttered format. An outsourced design company helped put it together. Tool bars go to product information, MSDS, industry links, training programs, upcoming events, job openings, delivery information and safety tips. Information is updated weekly in-house.

TECH TIP Mentor UP Knowing that the World Wide Web was changing the way business would be done, then CEO Jack Welch in 1999 asked 600 of General Electric's global leaders to reach down into the ranks and pick younger, “webified” employees to teach them the ways of the Internet. Welch believed that E-business knowledge was generally inversely proportional to both age and height in the organization. Mentoring up was intended to change that equilibrium. Find yourself a Net Coach.

The Haun Welding Supply team put together a list of Frequently Asked Questions, based on questions most-often encountered in the daily course of doing business. Says Haun, “Often, we hear the same questions again and again, and it made sense to list them—with the answers—on the website.”

These questions include: Why does my welding machine keep shutting off after I've been welding for 5 to 10 minutes? What do the numbers on welding rod mean? What do the terms TIG and MIG stand for? What is the difference between brazing and welding? What shielding gas should I use? How many balloons can I fill with my helium tank?

Haun points out that the answers to the questions can be found almost instantly. “Relevant information for the customer with easy access is not a given on some websites,” and he knows that if it takes longer than 15 seconds to find an answer, the person leaves the site and goes someplace else.

If the customer wants more answers than FAQs provide, he is encouraged to e-mail a question to the Haun experts. In a section called “Tech Support,” Haun employees respond to technical questions e-mailed to the site. “One of the keys to the success of this section is a prompt response, so we check these e-mails regularly,” says Haun.

Online sales are coming in from across the United States and Europe, though Haun doesn't believe the small demand for online ordering justifies the return on investment—yet. “I think a business must have a presence on the World Wide Web, because if you're not, it sends the message to a customer that your business is not quite up-to-date. That wasn't the case three or four years ago, but now the expectation is that you are online and have some services and products for sale.”

To meet that expectation, Haun Welding Supply contracts with another website that provides a link for customers to purchase industrial products. Currently, over 500,000 items are available for online purchase. Haun pays a monthly fee and a percentage of the online sales. He expects that as demand increases, Haun Welding Supply's Internet presence will continue to grow and develop to meet customers' needs.

MSDS and Down-and-Dirty Pricing

“When people buy products online, they want down-and-dirty pricing,” says Tim Flak, MIS director for Minneapolis Oxygen Co. of Minneapolis, Minnesota. “People don't come to our site because it looks cool, has exciting graphics, or nice sounds. We sell outside the market area only because of price.” So company President Mark Falconer made the decision to highlight “good-buy,” competitively priced items, on the website. During the last 12 months, online sales averaged $1,000 per month.

The website is linked to eBay auctions. Flak also positions the site to pull traffic from other websites by advertising on these sites.

While working on a project to automate the MSDS process, Flak came up with the idea of making a Web-based database for use by Minneapolis Oxygen Co. to customize MSDS for customers. While most distributors' sites enable MSDS transfer, Flak believes that his company is one of the first to offer customized MSDS.

Flak is in the process of converting the MSDS to pdf files, and thenediting them to include Minneapolis Oxygen Co.'s name. When the clerk finds the appropriate MSDS in the database, the customer's name can be added. Then instead of printing it out and faxing it, as is currently done, the customer can pull it up online and see it. It can then be e-mailed.

Flak realizes that automating the process will get MSDS to customers faster and more efficiently, as well as get them online (viewing “good-buy” products in the process) at the company's website. Both ways, the customer wins.