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Tamara Sutton – VP of Product Experience & Operations
Digital adoption in distribution is often assumed to be a slow climb. In reality, it’s already reshaping how buyers choose who to work with. For independent distributors, the question is no longer whether to invest in eCommerce, but whether your digital experience is winning that business, or quietly sending it elsewhere.
The good news: cloud-based platforms have made eCommerce far more accessible than it used to be. You no longer need an enterprise-sized budget or IT team to compete. What you do need is a clear plan for where to focus first.
Customers have come to expect 24/7 access to their orders, pricing, and tracking information. But it’s not just about access; it’s about the ease and speed of finding what they need. An engaging, user-friendly website should be easy to navigate, responsive, and appealing to your target audience. It should present your product and service offerings in a way that’s easy to understand at a glance, on any device.
A poorly designed website can deter potential customers. In an industry built on long-term account relationships, a clunky first impression can make customers question your reliability before you’ve had the chance to prove otherwise. A well-designed one provides a seamless self-service experience and reinforces your reputation for quality service. It’s worth the extra time during setup to get the user experience right.
Whether you’re launching a new site or upgrading an existing one, here are some key elements and best practices to help you get started.
Show the Product Clearly
High-quality images and videos can showcase different angles, close-ups, and special features of a product. Check whether your vendors already have a product catalog with images you can use, to save time setting up your site.
Videos can also enhance the customer experience by demonstrating a product’s features and benefits. To test effectiveness, start with a few videos for your top-selling products, then track sales to see whether they increase engagement. If you see positive results, invest more time in creating videos for the rest of your catalog.
Make It Easy to Read
Typography (fonts and text size) should be easy to read, consistent, and supported across common web browsers. Keeping fonts consistent throughout the site helps customers focus on the product rather than the design. Make sure the contrast between text and background colors is high enough to read comfortably, especially on a mobile screen in bright daylight.
Visual hierarchy matters just as much as the type itself. Use size, weight, and spacing to guide the eye toward what matters most on a page, like the product name, price, and Add to Cart button, before secondary details like specifications or related items. If everything on the page competes for equal attention, customers have to work harder to find what they came for.
Guide the Customer to Action
Call-to-action buttons (CTAs) should use clear, concise language like “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” to encourage immediate action. Give explicit direction about where a click will take someone: “Check My Account Balance” is far clearer than a generic “Account” button. CTAs should use contrasting colors, appropriate sizing, and consistent placement across the site.
Honor Your Account Relationships
Unlike a consumer storefront, your buyers are often contractors, dealers, and procurement teams buying repeatedly and in volume against negotiated terms, not a single shopper paying a public price. Your site should reflect that. Account-specific pricing, tiered catalogs by dealer or contract level, and role-based visibility (so a buyer only sees what they’re approved to purchase, at their negotiated price) have gone from an enterprise differentiator to a baseline expectation. Getting this right protects your existing account relationships instead of creating pricing confusion or disputes when you move a customer online.
Build for Mobile Access, Not Just the Office
For customers placing orders on-the–go, a mobile-friendly experience, with fast load times, simple reordering, and easy access to order history and tracking, isn’t optional anymore. If checking an order status or reordering a common item takes more than a couple of taps, customers will find a distributor whose site makes it easier.
Listen and Adjust
Feedback is essential for improving your eCommerce site and adapting to customer needs. Adopt a growth mindset and look for opportunities to improve or adjust your strategy. There are many ways to collect and analyze data from your site, from analytics to direct customer feedback. Use what you learn to make ongoing improvements that enhance the customer experience and grow sales.
The Bottom Line
To build a successful eCommerce site, prepare, plan, and maintain it with the customer experience at the center. Independent distributors don’t need to match the scale of national players; they need to meet customers where their expectations already are: fast, simple, and available whenever and wherever the customer needs to buy. Get that right, and eCommerce becomes a growth channel rather than a defensive move.
If you’re evaluating where to start, the DMSi Agility Commerce Cloud platform was built specifically for distributors. It works with our Agility ERP to give customers the self-service, 24/7 ordering experience, without having to build and maintain it all from scratch.
This article originally appeared in the publication Building Products Digest.