Integrating E-commerce in Manufacturing: 5 Tips for Business Success

Integrating E-commerce in Manufacturing: 5 Tips for Business Success

The manufacturing sector has been one of the most prominent sectors when it comes to embracing technology. It has been integrating technology, IoT, and e-commerce into its practices at a rapid pace. This has allowed the industry to produce smartly and include customer input in the process at every stage. The Internet of Things (IoT) alone in the manufacturing sector was evaluated to be worth 50 billion dollars in 2021. It’s growing at an impressive pace of 11.9 CAGR. 

As the industry continues to grow, entrepreneurs need to be on the lookout for new technologies to improve their productivity and serve their customers better with e-commerce practices.

We’ve come up with five practical tips to help you integrate e-commerce into your manufacturing processes and set the path for business success with ease. 

Provide a personalised catalogue to your customers

In 2021, a whopping 98% of manufacturers are actively using or are in advanced planning to implement an e-commerce strategy. Manufacturers are embracing technology and the many benefits it brings to their business. 

It has a plethora of benefits, such as:

• Bringing ease and efficiency to production processes by including customer input.
• Allowing you to connect with your customer base in a more authentic and meaningful manner.
• Significantly improve your sales performance by attracting customers better.
• Improving brand recognition and enjoying a digital presence.
• Helps you reduce costs by improving productivity.
• Improves the security of your processes and data.

One of the most palpable ways to adopt your manufacturing business for e-commerce is to personalise the catalogue you present to your customers. Now, you may have an extensive catalogue that can overwhelm customers if presented bluntly. 

Personalising the catalogue eases the variety you offer to the customer. Solutions for E-commerce for manufacturing businesses allow you to present varying prices for the same services depending on the needs of the customer.

This way they get an accurate idea based on what their needs are. Moreover, you can make use of the cloud software to integrate with your ERP and tech stack effectively. This keeps the processes running with real-time updates and reflects availability more accurately.

Suggest products to customers based on their needs, usage, and preferences. Customers are more likely to interact with a business that remembers their specific needs and tailors their catalogue accordingly.

This shows them that you care about your relationship with them and are offering them products they would need and appreciate. It not only increases your chances of making sales but also provides upselling and cross-selling opportunities:

Here are the steps to follow to personalise your catalogue:

1. Collect data about the users who visit your website in terms of the categories they explore and how long they spend on different pages.
2. Customise content based on traffic groups such as — new visitors, returning visitors with purchases, returning visitors with purchases, etc.
3. Present dynamic content to different traffic groups based on past activity.
4. Allow users to determine the price based on their specific needs.

Equip your processes to incorporate e-commerce with ease

Manufacturing has traditionally been associated with all things analogue. This was because it was felt that the production of goods doesn’t necessarily need to be connected with the outside world.

That has changed over the years as entrepreneurs experience the many benefits of digitisation.

However, an important aspect manufacturers often don’t pay much attention to when adopting e-commerce into their operations is to equip their processes to be compatible with it. This is especially important if you’re not digitally inclined in general.

Your processes will not automatically adapt to the add-on integrations that will record their workings for further processing. You will need to make sure that:

1. They support the new add-ons in their systems, and 
2. Be compatible with the new way of operation.

The goal is to make manufacturing processes more efficient by putting customer input into play. Some machines don’t support a lot of digitisation. With them, you’d have to work manually and make them connect with the other steps of the process.

Some machines can be updated to support digitisation. While the newer machines are more adapting to digitisation. Make changes to your manufacturing processes accordingly to support a smooth transition to incorporating e-commerce.

It helps you achieve maximum productivity and an uninterrupted, smooth flow of operations. It also keeps your manufacturing space primed to add innovations in the future with ease. 

Make the most of the data your record.

Integrating e-commerce with manufacturing processes is all about making the most of the data. We already discussed creating a personalised catalogue for clients based on your collected data. You can do so much more with it to grow your sales and maximise profit.

Now, you’d be collecting data about three aspects primarily:

1. How manufacturing processes perform at any point.
2. Customers and users who come in contact with your digital presence.
3. How your online spaces perform.

Various KPIs will measure these three aspects. Your job is to use the analytics you gather to the best of your advantage. 

For example, record the time taken by a machine to perform a task with a particular equipment as an add-on and without it. See which method is quicker and more efficient in terms of the quality of the final product.

This will help you pick the most optimised route to produce goods and stock them up for customers to purchase. Similarly, use the data you collect about a customer’s purchase history to cultivate a meaningful relationship with them.

Here are a few ideas to use data to your aid:

• Study your audience’s behaviour to create content that they’d be interested in.
• Set up different KPIs to ensure consistent collection of data and that there are no loopholes in it.
• Look for different patterns in the data pool you collect and organise to identify opportunities and tap them.
• Focus on customer experience statistics to know how users respond to your services. 

Decide what to put up online.

While it’s tempting to put your entire catalogue online, it might not be the smartest decision because:

1. Maintaining an online space requires resources.
2. It can backfire by making your space convoluted and overwhelming your customers.
3. Some products and services are simply not suited for e-commerce. 

The ideal solution is to carefully craft your online store to maximise user engagement. This means you’d need to decide what you will put online and what will be shown to what kind of user. 

The first step is to simply determine what will be put up online. Some goods and services are simply not possible to be sold online. These are:

• Products that require specific instructions to be made
• Products that cannot be shipped to far-off locations as they’re perishable or deteriorate with time.
• Services that can be only provided locally.
• Products whose price wildly varies depending on the needs of the customers. 

Listing these products will only take up space as customers cannot purchase them anyway. Or they will hesitate to buy them. It’s better to leave them out of your catalogue or mention that you do provide these products and request users to engage in a personal conversation regarding them if they’re interested. 

Once you’ve put up your catalogue online, show products to users based on their purchasing and browsing patterns, as discussed above. 

Focus on developing relationships with your customers.

One of the most prominent benefits of including e-commerce in manufacturing is to cultivate long-lasting relationships with your customer base. This was a challenging task prior because manufacturers lacked the tools to create a communication flow with their customers.

However, with the integration of e-commerce tools, you can keep track of your consumers’ purchasing habits to communicate with them accordingly. You can interact with them through:

• Email campaigns
• Social media
• Messaging
• Chatbots on your website

There are various ways to interact with your audience through these mediums. For example, you can send an email that could be newsletters, reminders of abandoned carts, simple greetings, helpful tips, guides, and resources.

This allows you to interact with your audience outside the buyer-seller arrangement. By striking up a casual conversation with them, you’re able to understand their pain points better and in turn serve them better.

You can provide them with more personalised options for products as well as recommend related products. This also helps you increase your brand loyalty in your customer base. Your consumers are more likely to choose you again for the personalised experience they get from you.

Focus on providing positive customer experiences to boost your manufacturing e-commerce venture.

Manufacturing has emerged as one of the industries that has embraced innovative technology with open arms. More and more manufacturers are adopting e-commerce in their operations to optimise customer interaction for increased sales. 

To make the most of the integration, focus on providing your customers with a positive experience with your digital store. Provide them with personalised catalogues, make processes easy for them, and try to develop long-lasting relationships with them.

Author bio A. Chowdhury

Atreyee Chowdhury is a professional content and copywriter with more than 10+ years of experience. She’s passionate about helping SMBs and enterprises achieve their content marketing goals with her carefully crafted and compelling content. She loves to read, travel, and experiment with different cuisines in her free time. You can follow her on LinkedIn.