Drive and Convert

Announcer:
You're listening to Drive and Convert, a podcast about helping online brands to build a better e-commerce growth engine with Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow.

Ryan:
All right, Jon, glad to connect today. We've got some cool stuff to talk about. You've got some really fascinating notes about this, and it happens to be an area that I've been talking about over the last few weeks with some of my bigger partners.
We're talking about today optimizing websites for both D2C and wholesale, which honestly I hope you come with examples because I have not actually personally seen this unicorn in the wild that does handle both D2C and wholesale well.

Jon:
I do have some examples. I have a couple we can talk about.

Ryan:
Good, because I already see it happen all the time to myself even, but just getting frustrated, getting to a website with the expectation I'm going to get the right product or the right solution to what I'm trying to fix. And then I land on a wholesale site, or even kind of the one I direct people to a lot would be Uline that is mainly set up B2B but allows me to buy a couple at a very high price point. But it's still even they don't do a great job of handling D2C and wholesale because they're really trying to sell it wholesale.

Jon:
And they still send you a really generic order confirmation, all this stuff. Actually for when I ship books, we use Uline's packing envelopes because they're the only ones we could find. They have every single type of shipping option. And you're right, it's expensive for consumer to go in and not buy 1,000 of them at least. If you're just buying a couple hundred or something, you're going to pay a lot more. But you're right, I've always been kind of shocked by how they just treat me like a wholesaler.

Ryan:
Yeah. They send me multiple catalogs a month because I have multiple business entities and each one gets their own. They're so thick.

Jon:
Yes, it's like the new phone book, right? You're kind of like, "I didn't need this. Thanks, though."

Ryan:
Don't need this, Uline. Sorry, you wasted your postage.
Okay, but this is going to be fun because you've told me in the notes that you have some step-by-step approach of how to do this. I haven't seen them all yet, so I'm going to learn along with everybody else. I assume this is the case. This is a common problem that happens across the internet that you've seen. It's not like, oh, this happened three times in my life. It's constant.

Jon:
Well, usually if we're talking about it today on the show, it is because it's a common issue that we've seen or something we've run into. I know you've told me, "Hey, the more I talk to people, especially on big commerce, they're having this challenge." So that does not surprise me at all.
But yes, it's a common problem. We see this a lot for e-commerce brands that have a direct-to-consumer and a wholesale operation. I think that's really what we were talking about when we say B2C and B2B because most brands are one or the other. They have a site for direct to consumer and maybe a site for wholesale, but they're selling to shoppers who are purchasing for personal use and wholesalers who are then potentially going to resell their product or it's part of their product, like Uline we've talked about with shipping materials. It's a great example. So, glad you brought that up.
I think this is a common problem, but it's also a great opportunity for the brand to expand its reach and maybe diversify some channels. But the challenge really comes down to the fact that the two audiences are just completely different when it comes to their customer journeys and it makes it really difficult to create a digital experience that delivers to both audiences.
I know that in the past we've done entire episodes, we've gone really deep into how to manage and prevent channel conflict between two groups, but there's still something that I feel was left unsaid, and that's how brands can specifically optimize their experiences for both.

Ryan:
No, and I think that is the goal of most brands is to keep it simple and I want one thing to handle it all, but there doesn't seem to be, at least that I've seen, some good examples of a company that's doing this. If you're only selling D2C, likely the goal is eventually to have some type of retail channel or be able to sell B2B and let other people market it for you.
And then the inverse is always true. Okay, I sell B2B, but I want to be able to sell D2C and it sounds painful and frustrating, so I ignore it. And so as they're straddling this line or we're trying to move to one side or the other, is it safe to say that you have to really understand your audience first?

Jon:
Mm-hmm.

Ryan:
You can't just be like, "I want to sell to everybody because my total addressable market is humans." That seems like a bad place to start.

Jon:
It seems like every junior startup's investor pitched. Yeah, for sure. I think it's necessary to understand both audiences, and you should start really by, guess what it's going to come back to every time, the data. The first thing you really want to do here is just check your analytics. There's three main areas that I want you to check into.
The first is reviewing your audience by page. So take a look at the distribution of your audience across different sections of your website. What you would do here is analyze your page specific data to really just identify where you have both B2B and B2C, and then where you can engage one maybe more than the other. So you're really kind of looking for what are people already doing to some degree.
The second here is review traffic source by page. Traffic sources play a pivotal role in shaping user intent. How people got to your site and what they were expecting they get to your site makes a big difference. So you really want to review how users arrive at these specific pages, whether it's B2C or B2B pages, so you can better align the content on your site with those expectations that they're coming to your site.
The third analytics item I'd really expect you to dig into is to review the revenue source by audience. Now, this seems pretty basic I would say, but I think you have to identify where the majority of revenue is coming so you can really make informed decisions on prioritization and resource allocation for each audience.
For instance, you talk about Uline, I would assume the majority of their revenue is coming from wholesalers. It's not coming from you and me buying a couple hundred book envelopes, right?

Ryan:
Yeah.

Jon:
Because of that, they're sending me the generic business formatted emails that are plain text and look like a purchase order or something because I'm not their priority necessarily, but they are allowing me to go in and purchase. So I think that you really got to understand these three data points to help you determine the traffic and revenues B2C and B2B.

Ryan:
Now, is it something you advocate for if you have a site already that you want to use the same PDP for both wholesale and direct to consumer? Or do you advocate for separating it out if it can be and having a wholesale section where all of that traffic supposedly goes to?

Jon:
I actually have some examples of how some brands have done this with the navigation, but I do think you're going to eventually have to speak to the individual audiences. So I think you're going to have to outline the customer journey of those two main audiences, which really is going to help you make some informed decisions about when to prioritize one over the other. And then you're going to treat each unique once you've done that.
I think there's a few good questions to ask yourself if you are getting to this stage. The first is do you actually have a primary audience? The data should have told us that, but if you've established that one audience generates significantly more revenue than the other, or that there is one always shopping online while the other generally prefers print or in-store, like Uline, it's obvious that they make a lot of money from that catalog, so they must-

Ryan:
You would hope.

Jon:
You would hope, or they're killing a lot of trees for nothing. You look at all of that and I think you need to prioritize. The first thing you're going to have to do is do some prioritization around primary audience.
The second is really where do you need to have messaging and content that speaks to both audiences? This helps identify key touch points where messaging and maybe your content needs to resonate with both. There's a lot of sites that do this, but you have to be a little bit careful because you're going to give them context so that they can prioritize themselves, oh, I'm in this bucket or I'm in that bucket. But you also need to prioritize and then understand where you're going to put your resources.
You may need to update content to be more generic, which experience would say, best practices would say that's going to hurt your conversions, to be more generic. The idea here is start at a higher level and then get people down into the right funnel right away so that you can start getting more specific.
And then the third question to ask yourself is where in the customer journey do you divert B2B traffic to a different section of the site? As I've been saying, if you look at that customer journey, you can really pinpoint where diverting that traffic makes the most sense, and usually you're going to uncover specific touch points through really just redirect that traffic to a more tailored experience.
This ensures that users encounter content and features relevant to their needs. And really what you're looking to do here is just optimize that journey for each and increasing that likelihood to purchase. Now that you have all that context, you're really set up to start hypothesizing areas for improvement on your site, which most brands just jump right into. I think you need to take these two steps.

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You're listening to Drive and Convert, a podcast focused on e-commerce growth. Your hosts are Jon MacDonald, founder of The Good, a conversion rate optimization agency that works with e-commerce brands to help convert more of their visitors into buyers, and Ryan Garrow of Logical Position, the digital marketing agency offering pay-per-click management, search engine optimization, and website design services to brands of all sizes. If you find this podcast helpful, please help us out by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and sharing it with a friend or colleague. Thank you.

Ryan:
Okay, so you are advocating that there's going to be two separate experiences for most brands.

Jon:
Correct.

Ryan:
You're going to have that D2C and B2B, and what you'll have to do is figure out where that split is best. If you only have one product, period, okay, get the information and then you need to make sure that, hey, do you stay in a D2C site where they started and go to wholesale or do you keep them in wholesale and then separate out B2C traffic to another [inaudible 00:11:24]?

Jon:
Right. Now, there's plugins and apps for almost every major e-commerce platform that help you to add wholesalers onto your DTC site. And the nice thing about those are that if you're on BigCommerce or Shopify or I think even Magento has this, their commerce, right?

Ryan:
Mm-hmm.

Jon:
They have the ability to allow you to use one checkout for both and collect the additional information that you need for that wholesaler. I know there's a couple of apps on Shopify that when you add to cart, if the quantity is over a certain amount, then they can get a discount. Basically, before it shows them the price, they have to log in as a wholesaler.
And so really you have to have that other journey, or you can ask them to log in to see the price if it's over a certain count because most DTC, they're going to order one, maybe two of something. Most of the time you're not looking at a large number, but a wholesaler is going to want to order obviously multiple quantities, sometimes larger.
A lot of these apps, you could say, "Oh, if somebody orders five or more, then they're probably a wholesaler. We're going to offer them a price break, but I need them to log in to see that price because we don't want to tell the public what the margin is for a wholesaler."

Ryan:
This brings up a great point and a big challenge honestly, that I have with a lot of the B2B brands that we talk to or the B2B sides of businesses is they always want to gate their B2B pricing. There's multiple reasons for it. I think there's positive. I think there's some negatives.
But a lot of it has to do with, well, I don't want distributor or retailer A to know about my better pricing I've given to distributor or retailer B, and so I have to keep it behind the hidden doors so they can't see it, which I get. But there's also the flip side of Uline puts it out there for everybody. I know if I'm a big brand exactly what I would pay to Uline for this box, but I'm not big, so I get to pay this price point. As a business owner, I conceptually understand that and it's okay with me.

Jon:
But I think you have to look at it, Ryan, as with Uline's products, it's very rarely people are going to buy them for resale, right?

Ryan:
True.

Jon:
So I'm not going to be buying that product and adding any value by applying my brand to it or my store. Really what I'm going to be doing in that case is using it as packaging most likely or intangible to the customer for the most part, right?

Ryan:
Mm-mm.

Jon:
Now, if I am a company that does custom packaging, and maybe all that means to me is I'm buying envelopes from Uline and I'm printing on them and then shipping them to somebody, that consumer probably isn't going to Uline and looking at how much it is to buy 1,000 envelopes. Maybe they are, but they expect that somebody's adding more value along the way. So it's not a one-to-one comparison.
So I think you have to think about what you're selling. If you're selling a T-shirt and that same exact T-shirt could be sold at Urban Outfitters, now, Urban Outfitters does not want you to say how much that is at wholesale because Urban Outfitters is probably charging two to three X that at least. So it really becomes more and more of an issue.
I think that's where the Uline analogy really kind of breaks down here, that example, because most people aren't adding additional value to the product they're buying from Uline, so it doesn't matter if the end user sees the price.

Ryan:
That is a wonderful clarity that I can use now even in some of our sales org and say, "Hey, if you're B2Bs exclusively, which Uline is presenting themselves that way, but if somebody buys one unit, they don't care if you're not a business. They're still going to send you a unit, you're just going to pay more in shipping."
It allows that pure play B2B, not the focus of this podcast, pure play B2B to leverage Google Ads and shopping and a lot of other channels they use to drive traffic. Don't worry if somebody buys one unit from you at a higher premium price point, even if they're not your target market. Sell it, charge them a lot in shipping, and if they want it bad enough, they'll take it.
So if your product is not for resale, then it's a little different, but for the focus of this podcast and most of the challenges of companies doing B2B, B2C, they have buyers that are selling it and reselling it through retail channels.

Jon:
Yeah. You brought up another good point, which is brands wanting to gate that price so that multiple wholesalers don't see what they're being charged so that they don't say, "Oh, so-and-so's getting a better deal." I would argue that as a small brand, just from a pure business strategy, why are you messing around with that? Just tell everybody, "It is what it is. Here's the price," instead of letting a wholesaler talk you down in price so that you have to set up all this complicated mess.
I would argue in 90% of those cases, I've seen companies went through all this effort to gate this pricing and make it so that it's unique to as wholesaler, et cetera, when that wholesaler that made them make it a unique price isn't giving them enough margin and revenue to make it pay off on the other end of all the work they've done to set up all these systems and pay for these extra apps and do all this other stuff. So I agree-

Ryan:
And you can't even go get new customers using Google Ads, which is one of the more powerful ways to acquire new sellers.

Jon:
Yeah.

Ryan:
Okay.

Jon:
Yep [inaudible 00:16:51].

Ryan:
But back on the actual topic where we want to talk through both instances on the same site, what are the areas that a brand needs to focus on the site, the specific, I won't say channels, but specific maybe pages that a brand should focus on first when they're trying to do both on the same site?

Jon:
Yeah, there's definitely some areas that are pretty common, and I think let's just start high level. Biggest is homepage. Serves obviously as a crucial touch point for both audiences. So I think that you really want to find ways to guide users to the intended pages below that with consistent design and maybe instead, unique content, unique stories that resonates with both.
For example, you can showcase similar messaging and content that both B2C and B2B customers can appreciate while still providing a clear call to action for potential wholesalers or partner. Ways you can do that are calling out the quality and saying, "We also sell through high quality retailers, and if you're interested in becoming one, click here." Now you've gotten two messages across in that same content that a consumer is going to be pretty interested in, I think as well.
But a wholesaler knows, oh, well, okay, I like being [inaudible 00:18:08]. I know that I want to be a quality retailer, so this makes sense for me as well. So you have to give it a little bit of thought.
Further down, a little bit anyways, it's still on your homepage, but it's on every page, is your menu navigation. I would consider sections that cater specifically to each, B2B and B2C. I think that the best place to look for this if you're an e-commerce company is from SaaS or software as a service. They do a great job with taking segments and having distinct functionalities that are more appealing for each of those audience segments.
I think that SaaS companies are great at this because they try to get you down that funnel that's best for you right away in the menu. There's a good example of this one where you can share specific use cases for products right in the menu and also highlight who that use case is best for by grouping the products by that audience.
Staples office supply company, sticking on that office supply of Uline, and Staples is very similar, has a dedicated for business section prominently displayed in their navigation. If you click on that, it expands and shows users an option to explore wholesale or B2B programs that Staples offers. They're really pushing you down that path, but you know where to go. Hey, I'm a business, I should get business pricing.
Amazon even does this now. They have an Amazon for business that's in every navigation, whether you're logged in as a consumer or not. It's even happened to me several times, they must know I own a business and I buy off Amazon for that business because a lot of times I'll be looking at products and it'll pop up and say, "Save 5% by opening a business account." Opening a business account on Amazon is nothing more than creating a unique login that only takes you to the business pricing. That's it.
It's interesting. A lot of folks have this in their navigation, and I think that there's a lot to be learned from SaaS companies on that.

Ryan:
But I also know that you're not going to advocate for just adding a bunch of new buttons in your navigation.

Jon:
Correct.

Ryan:
You still got to stay within the Jon MacDonald best practices of five navigation things at the top, period, right?

Jon:
100%. Now, Ryan, we wouldn't be having this conversation or people wouldn't be listening to this episode if this wasn't a big concern for them, meaning obviously it should be one of the top six things that are happening on their website to the point where it makes sense to put it in that main navigation.
If it's not one of the top six that you're concerned about on your website, then put it in your footer and just let it be there. Wholesalers will know. They'll scroll down there and look for it if they don't see it in the main navigation. But what we're talking about here today is this would be a significant portion of your revenue and something that you really want to optimize that customer journey without alienating your direct to consumer customer.
So 100% it should be in your main navigation, and I'm not advocating for adding a whole bunch of extra stuff here just for business. I'm advocating for one extra link that has a dropdown or takes you to a whole separate section of the site, something of that sort. But I don't think that you're going to be adding a, "Are you a business customer? Click here," buttons all over.

Ryan:
Yeah. In some instances, if you're D2C adding wholesale or wanting to do more in wholesale, it could be as simple as just add a wholesale button that takes you to the wholesale instance of become a wholesaler, know that there's volume pricing and discounts, et cetera. Okay.

Jon:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. The last, and I think this is where you really got to give this some thought, is on your landing pages. We've talked a lot about what landing pages are, but it's any page you want somebody to take an action on. This could be your product detail pages. It could be further down from the homepage, but really the idea here is that you're going to want to segment because segmentation, it's just going to be your most powerful tool for tailoring the website for these different audiences.
I would consider creating distinct landing pages based on these user profiles. Again, SaaS companies are amazing at this. You go to most footers and SaaS brands and they're like, "Our product for X audience, our product for Y audience, our product for Z audience," and then that landing page just hits all the use cases for that specific audience.
I think they do a great job, and I think that's a good place to look for some inspiration here. But again, this just really allows you to prioritize that segment and contributes the most to your revenue without neglecting it any other segment. I would craft messages that resonate most to the distinct needs of each of the audiences, and individual landing pages is your best place to do that.
A good example here is maybe altering your CTA buttons to be different between these audiences, because you could have apply now versus log in on a B2B landing page if you need people to log in to see that pricing, for instance, or even buy now versus log in to see pricing. These are all options that you have. So really want to be thinking about that.

Ryan:
No, I think that's great, and I think as you think through landing pages, your PDPs for direct to consumer are likely not your landing pages that you're going to focus on for both things. You're thinking category pages. If you sell shoes and your blue shoes, like, okay, on my category page that may rank higher in Google for somebody looking for blue shoes, maybe there's an opportunity to get them over into the business side of the website.

Jon:
Yep. Yeah, there's a couple places to do this. One is I think we've talked a lot about what we call quality tiles. This is on those category pages.

Ryan:
Yeah, I love quality tiles.

Jon:
Yeah. On the category pages where you have your category images or sections, replace one of those images with a call-out that says, "We love wholesalers. Click here for more information." A DTC customer is not going to click that. They're like, "I'm not a wholesaler," so they're just not going to go to that page.
The other place to do this, I've seen on PDPs, it work pretty well to actually have a box or call-out. If you have all of your quantity and selections on the right-hand side, below all of that, below add to cart and everything else, you could have stacked in there a little CTA, it could be a button or a little image, that just basically redirects people who are interested in wholesaling to that correct area.
So you can let them know, yeah, here's all the consumer experience, but if you want to be a wholesaler, we have something. Again, not going to bother consumers. They're going to ignore it. They're going to be like, "That's not for me," and they're going to move on. So it really doesn't hurt to do anything of that sort.

Ryan:
I like it. And so you haven't seen distractions happen as long as you keep it subliminal to kind of [inaudible 00:25:06].

Jon:
Keep it once on the page. If you're a wholesaler, you're looking for these things. If you're a retailer, you're looking for what speaks to you. Again, we talked about earlier, some brands are like, "You have to log in to see the pricing." Well, the problem with that is, as a consumer, I'm not going to create an account and log in. That's where you've gone too far. You want to make sure it's still easy, all the core tenants apply for DTC, but then also have a way for these wholesalers to take the steps they wanted to.

Ryan:
Love it. I honestly forget too often about quality tiles. Reiterate that more.

Jon:
Yes. That's a great one.

Ryan:
Okay. Other than quality tiles, any last tips you wanted to leave the listeners off on?

Jon:
Sure. Let's see here. Again, I would prioritize based on revenue, but consider the unique needs of each audience. So make sure you're not really just saying, "Oh, well, I sell more through wholesalers, so that's all I'm going to do." You could take the Uline approach and say, "You know what? If you want to buy, that's great. I'm going to let you do it, but I'm not going to overly customize for you."
I think wholesalers are okay with that. If you go heavy on the DTC side, wholesalers are not expecting as great of an experience, but doesn't mean you can't give them one by any means. I think you should strategically divert that B2B traffic at critical touch points and that customer journey. So we've talked a lot about how to segment that. Part of that is once you've segmented them, I think you need to give them tailored messaging. You need to do design enhancements that specifically impact user engagement for each audience.
Lastly, I would just say that as always, regular testing and validation are going to be essential for refining these strategies and ensuring ongoing success. I wouldn't be a founder of a optimization firm if I didn't recommend that you continually optimize.

Ryan:
Always test and measure. I think for some of the small brands, it's important to realize that just because your competitor seems to be selling a lot on wholesale doesn't mean that you're automatically going to do that if you put wholesale on the site. I would be careful that you don't ruin a good experience just trying to move into wholesale.
If you're really good at DTC, keep that going and maybe start with a whole separate instance to start and gradually trend into that, but don't ruin really good high converting product pages by blasting wholesale because you really want to move into wholesale.

Jon:
Yeah, that's a really great point.

Ryan:
See that would be bad.

Jon:
The first thing you should be doing is validating the wholesale marketplace before you do anything with your website. Don't invest in adding wholesale to your website until you know that wholesalers are looking for your product on your website.

Ryan:
Yeah. I would even say start with something like a Faire and get your product on there. Have that be your testing ground. Do smaller shops who want your product. If you've never sold wholesale before, that's an easy place to start. It doesn't cost you anything. You just go put your product on there, see if there's any demand.

Jon:
What's that called again?

Ryan:
It's called Faire, F-A-I-R-E dot com.

Jon:
[inaudible 00:28:09].

Ryan:
It's like the Etsy for B2B.

Jon:
Nice, okay.

Ryan:
We put Joyful Dirt on there, had some great experience there. Wonderful place to get some exposure on that before you go throw a bunch of wholesale stuff on a really successful D2C site.

Jon:
Well, there you go. I mean, that's the valuable tip of the show, right? I mean, I had no idea that existed.

Ryan:
And quality tile.

Jon:
Yeah.

Ryan:
Dang, Jon, appreciate this. This was really cool. I've got personally a lot more ammo when I'm talking to brands that want to straddle that line of D2C and B2B. Appreciate the time and you letting me pick your brain.

Jon:
Yeah, of course. If I can give value to you, then I'm sure that other folks listening to this will find value as well. So thanks for chatting today.

Ryan:
Thanks, Jon.

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Thanks for listening to Drive and Convert with Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow. To keep up to date with new episodes, you can subscribe at driveandconvert.com.