Automotive parts companies used to operate locally more than anything else. This was because they could service the buyers in their communities and wouldn’t have to transport parts for long distances.
But as the eCommerce world has evolved, automotive parts companies are moving online, giving them the opportunity to expand to other regions without owning a physical store in those areas. While this means you have the opportunity to expand your customer base, it also means that you have more competitors than ever before. Here is everything you need to know to succeed in the automotive parts eCommerce industry and remain competitive in a growing market.
What Is eCommerce For Automotive Parts Companies?
eCommerce for automotive parts companies is the ability to sell to buyers in the online space, rather than in-person. This means fewer salespeople on the floor, or in some cases, no physical storefront at all.
Buyers can be assisted, have their questions answered, place their orders and schedule deliveries through the eCommerce store. Convenience is now an attribute that buyers don’t just want, they demand, and eCommerce is the best way to bring buyers the ultimate convenient experience – to shop for what they need without leaving their couch or desk.
Why Is eCommerce Important For Automotive Parts Companies?
With eCommerce taking over every industry slowly but surely, convenience is the name of the game. Buyers don’t want to go to physical stores to shop for their automotive parts, but instead, browse through online catalogs, place their orders, and schedule delivery through the online space.
Automotive parts companies need to hop on the bandwagon to get ahead of competitors that are already making moves to set up their eCommerce solutions. If you’re not planning your online store already then you could be left behind.
How Automotive eCommerce Makes You More Competitive
There are many ways that eCommerce benefits the automotive parts industry. Keep reading to find out just how your business can take advantage of eCommerce in the automotive parts industry.
1. Digitize Your Operations
Using an eCommerce store is not only about the convenience that it provides for your buyers, but also about the ease it can bring to your business operations. Because all transactions and delivery information are being logged online, integrated backend software logs payments, when deliveries need to take place, and even keeps track of your stock.
This means that all the business information you need is being recorded in real-time, with little to no human interference. This way, your business operations can run smoothly, and your buyers can be kept up-to-date with the delivery process every step of the way with automated messages and access to an easy-to-use customer portal.
2. Cut Costs While Streamlining Operations
Many companies in the automotive parts industry have moved to an eCommerce business model. Instead of stocking each outlet with all the automotive parts their buyers could want, they are letting people browse catalogs online and pick the exact part required. The buyer can then place their order and have it delivered to their nearest automotive parts dealership or have it delivered straight to them. The buyer may even opt to pick up their items curbside at their convenience.
3. Create A Personalized Customer Experience
The experience a buyer has with you is crucial to whether or not you will make the sale. Luckily, with eCommerce, it’s not too hard to create a consistent and personalized experience for your buyers, to keep them coming back again and again.
You can do this using a customer portal that contains all the client’s details and order status, but you can even take it one step further. Adding a personalized catalog to your eCommerce store allows you to use your buyer’s purchasing habits to create a customized catalog that displays products that reflect their wants and needs.
For instance, if they buy an automotive part for a 2006 Ford Fiesta the first time they visit your site, you know that this is likely the car they own. The next time they visit your site you could show them the range of automotive parts that you stock for that particular model, or even showcase some of the accessories that you have that fit that car.
4. Sell To A Larger Customer Base
Moving to an online store means you will be able to sell to a much larger customer base. Instead of only servicing those in your local community, you could aim to sell to your entire region, country, or even internationally.
The only limit to your customer base is the ability to physically ship the item(s), and whether or not it makes financial sense for clients across the globe to buy parts from your eCommerce store. Now that eCommerce is becoming the preferred way to shop in many industries, finding a shipping company to transport your goods at an affordable rate is becoming easier and more convenient.
5. Simplified Product Search
Searching for automotive parts on an eCommerce store can be tricky for those that work in the industry, never mind buyers that are looking for parts for their own car. This should be taken into consideration when creating your automotive eCommerce store.
Search needs to be simplified to make it easy for your average Joe to find exactly what they are looking for without too much stress. Your search function should incorporate a filter that allows users to filter your products for the exact make and model of their car to narrow their search down substantially.
If a user logs into your website a second time after making a purchase, the catalogs shown to them should be for the same make and model of vehicle that they previously bought parts for. This type of personalization will keep a buyer coming back to your site rather than going elsewhere – after all, you already know so much about them and their purchasing habits, it would be too much hassle to search through other automotive eCommerce stores.
6. Improve Your Customer Experience
Providing a seamless customer experience for your buyers will keep them coming back to your automotive parts eCommerce store. Make sure that there are no parts of your site that are difficult to navigate or lack clarity on what next steps need to be performed.
Make sure that your shopping cart icon is visible at all times on the website so that no matter where a user is looking, they can always head to their shopping cart and check out. Your site search, as mentioned above, should make searching through vehicle parts easy and not create further confusion.
Once a purchase has been made, the customer portal should keep buyers up-to-date with their delivery status so that they never have to email or call your business for updates. This makes things easier for both the business and the buyer as it requires fewer human interactions.
7. Eliminating Human Error In The Order Process
By digitizing your entire process from the sale and payment to the shipping and delivery, there is no room left for human error. Barring the fact that the buyer enters the wrong shipping address, you know that the item they ordered will be delivered correctly.
Every party that needs to be aware of the purchase (warehouse staff, shipping companies, etc.) will be aware of what is happening with the item every step of the way. This means that no miscommunication can lead to an unsatisfied customer.
8. Easy To Implement Cross-selling
Having an eCommerce store means that you have all the data you need about what a buyer is interested in. Not only do you know the make and model of their vehicle from their previous purchase history, but you can track what kind of products they are looking at most frequently on your eCommerce site.
This means that you can cross-sell items that are relevant to the items in the client’s cart, with a pop-up such as “frequently purchased with xyz item” to try to increase the price of the client’s cart before they check out. You should also aim to decrease cart abandonment to convert all potential buyers.
How To Increase Sales Through Your Automotive Parts eCommerce Webstore
Now you know exactly why you need an automotive parts eCommerce store to continue thriving in your industry. But here are a couple of tactics that can be used to increase the sales being made on your eCommerce store.
Digital Ads
If you want to make more sales, then your website needs to be in the eyes of those already looking for your products, and using digital ads is one of the best and most targeted ways to do that. If you create a Google Adwords account you can create an ad that will be displayed at the top of Google results for specific keyword searches.
These are also known as PPC ads (pay-per-click ads), which means that you only pay for your ad being displayed if a user clicks on it. Which can make it very economical, especially when you are selling high-ticket automotive parts.
Sell Through Other Marketplaces
Your eCommerce store is not the only place that you can make sales online. You can list your products on other marketplaces that are already established, making it a little easier to get your products in front of people who are already searching for them.
Although the marketplace will do the heavy lifting to get people to the website, you should still SEO-optimize your product descriptions on the page to ensure you are displayed above competitors on the website.
Gain Customer Reviews
If you want your site to look more authoritative and become more trusted by those that visit, your goal should be to get positive reviews from customers. It’s best to have positive reviews on Google, as well as product reviews on the website to gain authority in the automotive niche.
These reviews act as social proof that the products that you stock are of good quality because other buyers have been satisfied with both your products and your service. If you want to incentivize buyers to leave reviews, offer them a discount on their next purchase if they leave a positive review.
Implement SEO Best Practices
SEO is the act of trying to rank for keywords that are relevant to your niche and optimizing your website to appear as close to the top of search engine results pages as possible. Having a specialist optimize your product pages so that they rank in SERPs means you will get more traffic to your site, and more users purchasing your products.
Search engine optimization also has a long-term payoff because once you are ranking in Google SERPs, you won’t need to pay to get traffic, you will accumulate in organically.
How commercebuild Can Help Automotive Parts Companies Create eCommerce Solutions
If you want to get started in eCommerce, we can help companies using Sage 300, Sage X3, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, and Netsuite ERPs to drive new revenue streams with automotive parts eCommerce.
We Can Help You Build The Automotive eCommerce Store Of Your Dreams
The demand for online shopping has spread rapidly through the automotive parts and accessories industry—which is expected to triple by 2027! To stay ahead of your competitors and leverage online sales, you need a turnkey, cost-effective eCommerce solution specifically designed for auto parts and accessories.
At commercebuild, we have helped dozens of automotive companies improve their digital experience and find success online.
- Build trust in your brand – Give your customers the ability to quickly purchase your products, check their account, and review order details at any time, anywhere.
- Drive more sales and revenue – Increase average revenue by 20-30% within 12 months by adding online sales capability with commercebuild.
- Create order processing efficiencies – Sync data and manage your entire eCommerce operations from orders and inventory to SKUs and metadata.
- Automated cross-selling – Upsell and cross-sell the right items to the right customers—without human intervention.
- Search engine optimization – Get found quickly and easily with our advanced SEO options including custom URLs and Google Tags.
- Dynamic product search – It doesn’t take long to set up your webstore, start accepting orders, and see the money (and customers) roll in.
Maximize Your Revenue And Margins
Our eCommerce software for the auto parts and accessories industry is easy to use and includes all of the essential functionality you need to stay organized and sell more.
With total control over pricing, inventory, and discounting in a single ERP-integrated platform, you can quickly adapt your business to meet the buying behavior of your customers.
eCommerce In Automotive Parts Industry
At Commercebuild, we know how to make a website that converts in the auto parts eCommerce industry. We would love to help you create the automotive parts eCommerce store of your dreams while helping your business run more smoothly.
If you would like to help with your eCommerce venture, contact us today to find out what we can do for you!
About commercebuild
commercebuild is the missing piece in transforming your ERP data into a truly personalized eCommerce experience. Flexible and frictionless, our turnkey eCommerce solution delivers 24/7 revenue opportunities to you and your customers. Quick to deploy and easy-to-use, we eliminate the need for middleware between the storefront and ERP data to enable seamless online buying and selling.
Our solutions can be live in 30-days and offer complete eCommerce capabilities at a price B2B and B2C businesses can afford.
Drive revenue growth for you, and your customers, while enjoying rapid ROI for both. Go head-to-head with the online retail giants of the world, and win. Experience a solution that integrates with your ERP data and provides automagical cross-sell and upsell opportunities to every customer on your site.
At the height of ecommerce growth, commercebuild offers scalable, reliable, and robust eCommerce solutions for everyone.
If your business is using Sage 300, Sage X3 or Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central ERPs, commercebuild can build a ERP-driven B2B and B2C eCommerce webstore or Customer Portal.