What should any customer expect when they load up the website of a building materials manufacturer?
Value.
Websites for any industry are about more than having a digital presence – in fact, they are rapidly becoming a key part of a consumer’s purchase decision. Delightfully crafted copy and strong calls to action all result in one thing: a valuable marketing tool for lead generation and follow through.
For many building material manufacturers, increasing the conversion rates between audience traffic and final purchases comes directly down to the Where-to-Buy webpage tool (otherwise known as “Dealer Locator” pages).
What Are Dealer Locator Pages?
Dealer locator pages are intricately designed software programs that are able to provide your audience with the much-needed information for progressing throughout their sales journey by connecting them with local contractors, dealers, or retailers.
Their purpose is to get to the core of what your audience really wants, whilst also impressing your dealers and fuelling essential conversion rates.
In this article, Joshua Rich and his team at Bullseye Locations, provide 5 simple tricks to improving your dealer locator page.
First, let’s take a look at what exactly makes these web tools so impactful on your company’s bottom line.
What Makes A Dealer Locator Page So Important?
Imagine you’ve done all the hard work.
Your website is flawless, and your marketing content strategy, or SEO research, has brought an interested prospect right to the dealer locator page of your website.
For a moment, put yourself in your customer’s shoes, and imagine how they might be feeling. They know what they want – just not where to get it. That’s where your web tool comes into play, allowing them to explore dealer options near their zip code and connecting them with the best provider for their needs. Only, the sad reality is this: many dealer locator pages are missing key features that could help them improve their conversion rates.
After all, what does your customer truly want?
A convenient, personalized shopping process with absolutely no hassle.
71% of consumers feel frustrated when a shopping experience is impersonal, and that’s why it’s so important to optimize this seemingly simple tool.
Your Where-to-Buy page needs to be the bridge between eager customers and their final purchase.
A zip code locator is a common upgrade for locator pages that allows you to customize someone’s purchasing process, whilst also stopping your users from trawling through hundreds of options – a feat that is likely to both overwhelm them and make them click off your site.
Additionally, there’s plenty of “behind-the-scenes” value that a great locator page can offer to both the manufacturer and dealer. Key insight into where leads are turning will inform your business decisions and improve your overall return on investment… long into the future.
5 Simple Tricks To Improve Your Dealer Locator Page
1. Clear Stock Availability
There’s an elephant in the room.
Many manufacturing materials customers find themselves directed to websites only to find out what they want is out of stock.
This is not a good look.
Not only do you have a frustrated ex-customer who gets tired of looking for options, but you’ve failed at converting their interest.
So how do you stop this?
By getting it right the first time. Listing stock availability through your dealer locator tool is a great addition to improving the functionality, as well as your bottom line conversion rates. Buyers who are ready to spend don’t want to “connect their own dots”, so you need to make sure the options they are provided with are ones they can actually purchase from.
A Metapack and Research Now survey showed that 54% of consumers say “clear, accurate inventory tracking is an important consideration for the majority of their purchases.” Having inventory transparency for your Where-to-Buy pages is bound to please your customers and show you value their time for greater customer satisfaction.
2. Provide The Best User Experience
When you’ve pulled people onto your website, you need to make sure your offerings are high-quality and designed for function.
A brilliant dealer locator page should be easy to use and navigate. As mentioned earlier, no customer wants to spend hours browsing through thousands of dealer options to find the one option local to them. Comfortable user experiences play a huge part in retaining attention and improving conversion rates.
Your Where-to-Buy pages should load quickly and clearly, and provide a clear navigation path for buying your products. Research shows that the average time a consumer spends on a website is a mere 45 seconds. That means you have less than a minute to impress and connect them with the right dealer in order to not lose a sale.
For quicker loading times, you need a page that’s professionally designed with no over-the-top elements (such as large, unnecessary images or title text). Remember: your dealer locator page should make the process of buying your products easier, not add to the hoops your customer needs to jump through.
For example, let’s look at Honeywell’s Where-to-Buy page:
When a customer lands here, they’re presented with short sentences that clearly outline the purchasing process.
This “Where-To-Buy” page understands that the customers already know what they want, and are now looking to purchase. Once they’ve chosen the product they want, for example, “Productivity” solutions, they are then taken to a second web page – the Productivity Partner Locator.
This new page features a world map that instantly establishes countries of operation and a clear entry field for browsing local options. After entering your location, the tool then reveals a list of local retailers specific to you, related to the service you selected.
It’s a simple yet brilliantly effective program that guides its customers right along the purchase process.
Another great example of a Where-to-Buy page is provided by Fox Blocks. They encourage people to “explore their dealer network” and find the 10 closest options.
After entering a location, the user is shown a list of clear contact information, as well as driving directions to local depots. FoxBlock has nailed an efficient design that transforms users into customers without any delay – something a lot of manufacturing companies can take note of.
3. Make the Process of Finding Dealers Frictionless
We’ve covered a little about how fast loading speeds are part of a customer experience. However, there are a few other “extras” you can do to improve how quickly customers can find a contractor, dealer, or retailer.
Plus, they’re really simple to incorporate.
Consider this: how many times have you logged onto a site and received a targeted message? Perhaps you go on a website and see your tiny town listed back at you.
If you’re a frequent web user, cookies and location-targeted adverts are no stranger, but have you considered using them for your own business?
Geolocation Detection
Instead of having your customer type in their location, having software that automatically detects it can help you provide the right information for their needs – right from the get-go.
Geolocation detection is a perfect solution to give instant answers (as long as your users haven’t disabled it). When your prospective customers land on your site, they can immediately be launched into the right purchase journey… with just a few clicks
Internal Search Bar
According to research by EConsultancy, on-site searchers are 1.8 percent more likely to convert than regular users. Internal search features are vital to improving your conversion rates, through:
1. Customization for a better user experience.
2. Improved relevance for queries.
3. Increased content discoverability and problem-solving.
Internal search bars are directly customer-focused, allowing them to navigate the website in their own time and find the right product for them.
Once they’ve browsed through their options and selected a material, your site can link customers to your customized Where-to-Buy page revealing stock availability in their local area.
For building material manufacturers, internal search bars reduce the number of queries they have to process and user-friendly functions are always a plus for any software and website.
4. Use a Design That Encourages Website Traffic Through Local SEO
The optimization of local keywords, such as, “Quartz Countertops Atlanta, GA” or “Steel Siding in Houston, TX” on dealer locator pages can improve your organic traffic and connect you with targeted leads.
High-intent searchers with a credit card in their hand are the perfect target audience for any building manufacturer, and making their purchase decision easy through improving your web tool is bound to make more than a few smiles.
Bullseye Locations is a perfect example of a tool that makes local SEO optimization easier to bring new prospects onto your site. In addition, the dealer locator software also offers:
- A collage of photos per dealer, so leads instantly recognize the store (and even friendly faces) when paying a visit.
- Implementation of all great local SEO standards, including interactive local maps, dynamically-generated page titles, meta description tags, and keyword-rich page URLs.
- A place for links to each dealer’s social media profiles, so you can build on your relationship with them by helping improve their brand presence whilst also providing local searchers with all the materials they need to make enquiries or purchases.
For any manufacturing business, standing out to your audience by ranking high on Google Search will help increase your competitiveness and brand awareness. In case that isn’t enough, an increase in SERP rankings “also increases the degree to which your audience sees your business as authentic.”
“Free leads” is a celebratory phrase for any marketer, and it’s an important investment to make sure your dealer locator page is adding to the value your website brings to you, as well as your audience.
Plus, 66% of consumers are more likely to shop locally – making local SEO the perfect solution to improving your Where-to-Buy page.
5. Route Leads
Another trick to improving your dealer locator page is to use them as a way to collect data for your dealers. Instead of providing dealer information and having the lead leave your control, have software that allows your customer to fill in an inquiry form that collects their email and phone number, which you can pass along to an appropriate dealer.
Providing your dealers with new contacts will prove beneficial to your company, as the dealer will then be more likely to sell your materials to the customer rather than a competitor’s.
Consider this CTA button on Honeywell’s website:
The button launches a form which prompts customers to fill in their details for a partner to contact them.
Getting your customer to submit their information to you personally not only makes it easier to follow up on leads, but it also allows you to compile new contacts for your mailing lists. In turn, you can keep prospective buyers informed with deals on the product they are interested in.
This can help improve your conversion rates through “repetitive marketing”, just in case your customer gets distracted from their journey and forgets to purchase, or their original interest falls flat.
Embrace Increased Conversion Rates Using Your Improved Dealer Locator Page
When it comes to purchasing building materials, the process shouldn’t have to be difficult. Key differences you can make to the industry are likely to have a huge impact on customer perception and retention times. Simple upgrades to the tools you offer on your website can affect your customer’s overall experience as well as increasing your lead conversion rates.
Why shouldn’t everyone be happy?
If you’ve been looking for ways to add value and customer satisfaction to the purchase decision journey, there’s one clear and simple focus: your dealer locator page.
About The Author
Joshua Rich, is the founder of Bullseye Location, a Dealer & Store Locator Software for Building Material Manufacturers.
Bullseye lets you create lead forms to collect data whilst also adding value to your customer’s purchasing journey every step of the way. Additional key features are:
- Form builders that let you create custom fields and capture specific lead information, giving you a 360-degree customer view.
- Agile API that allows you to port data to HubSpot, Salesforce, and other leading CRM tools for lead nurture and follow-up.
- Lead portal management that empowers you to track the customer journey without leaving the Bullseye system, if you so choose.
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