As our industry shifts with resources going digital and customers going online for information and interaction, it’s becoming critical to develop your web presence beyond the simple “we exist, call us.” We all must meet our consumers’ desired experience of fast and low-hassle, yet informative. This takes resources, however, and you need to ensure a return on investment. The good news is there are measures you can take now to improve the impression you leave on current and potential customers.

The power of your website lies in the message it presents to site visitors. The narrative of your business will build customers’ preference to visit your parts store over others. Relaying this message effectively and continuously will positively impact the results your website contributes to the business. And, by reducing friction for customers to contact you via the website, you can drive more leads into your business. We recently assessed the web presence of our distributors and found these to be common hurdles across our channel, so we are offering the following insights to help you grow your business.

Communicating With Your Website

Your parts business offers competitive value that keeps customers coming back. Your parts website can help drive that repeat business by intensifying customers’ desire for your competitive value. The first step is choosing a differentiating message that is true to why customers choose you. This is the narrative that all your parts-related content should be built upon. Ideally, the first place to leverage it is the webpage that highlights your parts business.

By delivering this message to customers regularly, you can win their business more often. Building this pool of customers who regularly visit your website will require you to produce fresh, new content often so people have a reason to visit. However this does not have to be a time-consuming effort. Posting content related to company news, industry involvement, or promotions are all topics that you are familiar with already. By integrating your competitive, differentiating narrative into all the content you post, you will increase how often customers choose your parts business.

Staying Connected With Customers

You know that regularly-updated website content is essential for engaging customers and prospects, and having a consistent message that differentiates your parts business will keep your audience tuned in. Applying this to marketing tactics like social media or email newsletters will extend the interactions your parts store has with customers, ensuring you stay top of mind.

Once you begin generating content regularly for your website, you can multiply its reach and impact by republishing across social media and/or email newsletters. In order to build audiences for these, make it easy for customers to “follow” you on social media or opt in to receiving email communications. This can be done by prominently displaying social media follow buttons and email registration forms across your website.

Enhancing Lead Generation Online

For parts distributors, websites can generate leads, but only when customers face low friction in the process of contacting you. Contact Us forms are commonly used in the HVAC industry but are often hidden with their own, distant webpage. Furthermore, Contact Us forms often ask more questions than necessary which is a primary reason why more than 95% of customers abandon form submissions, depending upon the amount of information requested.

Enticing customers to contact you is more effective when forms request the least amount of information needed and display prominently across websites. In fact, the top three questions that prospects are willing to submit are full name, email address, and phone number. Other form questions have been found to receive 98% less submissions. So, by streamlining the process for customers to contact you via the website, you may drive more leads into your business.

Getting Started

Overall, the purpose of your website should be to educate and retain customers’ knowledge of your business in a way that inspires them to take action with you over competitors. This starts by integrating the differentiating value of your business into all parts-related content. You will see the best results from this effort when you give customers and prospects a reason to visit your website continuously.

This can be achieved by distributing fresh, new content on a scheduled basis through email newsletters, social media, and your website. Finally, be sure that when customers or prospects are ready to contact you, there is a Contact Us form displayed requesting no more than full name, email address, and phone number.

To receive an assessment of your parts website, please email partsmarketing@daikinapplied.com.