Building product manufacturers have an online user challenge. Simply put, you don’t know who’s visiting your website. I mentioned in my last article that we consistently hear from your customers – the architects, specifiers, engineers, contractors and owners that select your products – that they don’t like to register on your website to give contact information for fear of being bombarded with emails and phone calls from you. But they also tell us that, if given a good reason to register, they will.
These good reasons should include powerful tools that enhance your customers’ user experience. These tools need to encourage users to return to your website and compel this captive audience to register, thus providing their contact information. Let’s look at two online tools that will provide this nudge.
Projects, Specifications, and Submittals Automation
Your online customer community would like an easier experience when it comes to selecting and organizing products and digital documents. Providing the ability to create named projects with grouped products that your users can save and review is the solution. Additionally, providing the ability to download all digital content together, rather than one document at a time, saves them time and effort.
Architects, engineers, and contractors (AECs) will often work on similar projects over time, and offering the ability to refer to past projects will keep them from having to duplicate product searches each time they visit your site.
If you help your users organize projects and allow quick download of comprehensive specification and submittal files, then you will be rewarded with contact and project information.
Sustainability and Rating Reports
Green building is no longer an ambition, it’s a necessity. Today, AECs are asking for sustainability rating information about all your products. Look at your website today: Are sustainability qualification and credits easily available, or do your users have to search through your website or even go to a different website to find this information?
Searching for sustainability data one product at a time is clearly slow and laborious for your online users. You need to use projects, like those mentioned above, to provide complete LEED and other sustainability rating system reports for whole groups of your products.
Conclusion
Building product manufacturers must listen to the needs of their online users. Taking their needs into account will get your products specified more and result in better sales.
Moreover, providing the tools that create a great online experience goes even further. These tools serve as a reason for AECs to return to your website and provide contact and project information. Think what your teams can accomplish with this flow of real-time data. In my next blog, we’ll explore how sales and marketing can appropriately act on this new knowledge.