The global electronics and maintenance distributor relaunched its ecommerce site in order to build a more customer-centric business
RS Components (RS) is the trading brand of Electrocomponents PLC, the world’s leading distributor of electronics and maintenance products serving over 1.6 million customers worldwide. From relatively humble beginnings as Radio Spares nearly 75 years ago, Electrocomponents now has operations in 32 countries with distributors in a further 37 markets. From 17 distribution centres located across the globe, the company distributes over 550,000 products from 2500 suppliers.
The problem
RS launched its first ecommerce website in 1998. Stocking just 100,000 products it attracted half a million visitors in its first year, generating two per cent of the group’s sales revenue. Fast forward to 2011 and its ecommerce site has grown to become one of the biggest in the world generating more than 53 per cent of group sales revenue. And this is set to rise further as the company delivers on its strategy to build a £1 billion-plus ecommerce business.
With customers expecting more and more from their online experiences, in terms of website design, functionality and performance, RS needed to ensure that its ecommerce site was in good shape for the future growth of its online business.
The solution
Two years ago, RS took the decision to transform its ecommerce website both in terms of site design and how its customers searched for products. Since then, the company has learned a lot about what its customers want.
The company now recognises three personas: buyer, inexperienced engineer and experienced engineer. Extensive research among these key groups across the UK, Germany and Japan, in addition to a wealth of anecdotal feedback, helped the organisation to better understand its customers’ needs and expectations. RS also learned how it should enhance the search and browse functionality on its website.
The research enabled RS to understand what the three different sets of customers wanted and how they wished to work with their distributor. Customers stated two key points: they wanted to view and select products in a way that suited them; and from a product perspective, they wanted accurate information and technical data, as well as relevant accessories.
These two critical elements were the guiding principles behind building a new customer-centric ecommerce website that launched this summer. This involved:
- Transforming the search and browse experience by catering for the different users who visited the website.
- Delivering a step change in on-site product search so that when the name of a product or a product code is typed in, the exact product comes up straight away.
- Changing the product descriptions and advertising on the site, enabling RS to deliver targeted messages or offers at the relevant point in a customer’s
online journey. - Enabling the website to act like a trusted sales advisor, who knows information and can offer advice. For example, if a customer buys a certain product, a related accessory will also be proposed.
- Introducing best-in-class SEO so that RS appears at the top of the search results returned, regardless of the original search term (RS, RS Components, specific product number etc).
The results
With over 550,000 products in its current offer, RS has an availability rating greater than 96 per cent. Over 45,000 parcels are now shipped every day at industry-leading service levels.
RS learned the importance of the data generated by its ecommerce function. It represents a rich mine of information on customers’ purchases and more interestingly when their journeys fail and they don’t buy. Is it price, quantities or did they type words in the search box for products that weren’t available? RS is learning from these failed journeys – whether it’s related to stock numbers, positioning of that stock or product lines that need to be introduced. In effect, RS knows what its customers would have bought if the products were in stock – so-called ‘true loss demand’. The data derived from its ecommerce platform has enabled RS to combine real demand with true loss demand and genuinely service its customers in a game-changing way.
Keith Reville, GM ecommerce at Electrocomponents comments, “Demand-shaping is a key driver for us. If we don’t have enough stock of a particular product, how do we persuade customers to take a product that we do have in stock? If we’re running low on stock, how do we make that more profitable? Or if we have too much stock how do we promote that to our customers? We want to better manage our offer and our new website is a perfect vehicle for this, that’s why ecommerce is at the heart of our strategy.”
