Running a Successful eCommerce Strategy for Your Equipment Rental Company
It's pretty safe to say that since the start of the internet a lot of things have changed. New technology, software, and digital inventions are happening on a near-daily basis, causing change throughout virtually every professional industry throughout the globe. However, one of the greatest examples of change caused by the internet has been the birth, growth, and dominance of eCommerce.
eCommerce refers to the buying and selling of goods or services using the internet, and the transfer of money and data to execute these transactions. Essentially, the concept of eCommerce accounts for any kind of business transaction that takes place digitally and online.
As mentioned above, technological innovations like eCommerce have shaken up virtually every professional industry from around the globe. Although sometimes slow to catch up with innovative trends, the construction industry has clearly been affected by eCommerce.
So, as a heavy equipment rental company, why should you care?
As its adoption is still in its early stages, eCommerce is a practice that has not yet been fully utilized by the industry, but it should be. The widespread use and popularization of eCommerce within the construction industry is inevitable, and being an early player will have its upside to growing your business. For example, the advantages of implementing eCommerce into your equipment rental business are: to help establish your online presence, to create more exposure and accessibility for your business, and lead to a better reputation among future customers.
This means that having a way for your already-existing and future customers to rent equipment straight from your company's website is not only going to benefit your revenue in the short term but will also set your company up for long-term success in the industry.
All that said, it can seem quite daunting to use eCommerce as a part of your business model. And that's for a pretty good reason. Although powerful in its own right, properly harnessing the full potential of eCommerce technology takes time, effort, and a bit of technological expertise. However, being prepared, doing your research, and formulating a proper strategy can help alleviate these roadblocks.
As such, here are a few tips on running a successful eCommerce strategy for your equipment rental company.
The Components of Your Strategy
When it comes to creating and implementing an eCommerce strategy, there are several components to consider. Depending on your industry, products, services, and business model, this could look different from company to company. And although dozens of eCommerce strategy components will appear with a quick Google search, there are really only three main elements to the eCommerce strategy that your already-established heavy equipment rental business should be focusing on. These three components of your eCommerce strategy are:
Let's get into each one below.
Building & Maintaining a Professional Website
While companies in the construction industry aren't exactly focused on presenting themselves with glamorous and luxurious looks, having a high degree of professionalism in your company's appearance and presentation is still important. Sleek trucks, professional uniforms, a clean headquarters, and a friendly team are all hallmark qualities of the best companies within the industry.
Your company's website should present the same values.
All great corporations, big or small, have clean, appealing, and professional websites for their audience or customers to visit. So, in order to properly begin your journey in the world of eCommerce, the first priority of your strategy should be to build and maintain a professional website. That said, and depending on your technical knowledge and skill with computers, building a professional website isn't very easy. Although it's simple enough to use a popular online website builder, having your website be as aesthetically pleasing as it is functional is a challenge. For that reason, we recommend that you hire a website developed who can do the job, outsource the job, or work with DOZR WebStores to create a branded eCommerce website
All that said, here are the aspects of a professional website that you should keep in mind.
Design
First, let's start off with an extremely valuable fact from the marketing company Blue Corona: 48% of people determine the credibility of a business by its website design.
This means that slightly under half of your potential customers will be driven away from your business because of the poor design of your website. That's a lot of lost people, but more importantly, lost revenue. When you’re building your website, you want to make sure that it represents who you are and what you do. You want to make a great, lasting impression on your visitors since your website is an indicator or reflection of who you are as a company. So, what should and shouldn't you do when designing your website?
The first thing to remember is this: keep it simple. You want to make sure your website is appealing to the eyes of your customers but not overwhelming. This means that having impressive but equally crazy amounts of design features isn't always a good thing. Instead, focus on having a sleek and clean look to your website that won't overwhelm or distract your customers.
Next, and equally as important, focus on branding. This is your website, and its visitors should know that. For example, make sure that your company's logo is somewhere on the header of every page, and that the colors and fonts on your website are consistent with your company's branding scheme. That said, DOZR WebStores takes into account your company's branding when creating your custom site by adding your logo and color scheme.
If you need some inspiration, it's a good idea to take a look at some professional examples.
Helpful Product Descriptions
Another immensely important aspect of your professional website is the descriptions of your rental equipment. This is a necessary element of eCommerce because it is realistically the only way for your customers to become informed about the product that they are viewing.
Make sure that your descriptions provide relevant, useful, technical, and detailed information. Your product descriptions should be outlining exactly what a particular piece of equipment is, what that piece of equipment does, as well as provide information about the specifics of the machine. This will not only help your customers confidently make a decision about renting equipment from your company but it will also help build more trust and act to create a good reputation.
Navigation
Next, navigating your website should be easy, simple, and straightforward for your customers. Nothing makes potential customers more annoyed, less likely to continue spending time on your website, and less likely to rent, than a website that is difficult to navigate. You've probably experienced this kind of difficult website navigation yourself, and it's not fun.
If anything, your website should be designed to actually guide your visitors through the process of renting a piece of equipment. In order to do this, the setup of your entire website should be organized in a particular fashion that might be worth the help of an expert.
Mobile-Friendly
Although the title of this sub-section is "Mobile-Friendly" it may as well say "Mobile-Oriented". That's because having a mobile-friendly or mobile-oriented website is crucial to the success of your eCommerce strategy. Even though you're most likely going to be building and organizing the basic elements of your website on a desktop computer or laptop, your website has to be optimized for use on mobile phones. This is crucial for a couple of reasons.
First, it simply looks unprofessional when a potential customer visits your website on their mobile device and it's unoptimized. When a website is not optimized for mobile devices, the elements of the page can be scattered everywhere, the text could be in improper sizes, the navigation of the page could be skewed, and it could just look confusing to the visitor. So, when building a website, there are essentially two websites in the making. One for desktop and one for mobile.
Second, the growing number of individuals who use their phones to browse the internet is steadily growing. Although owning and using a computer is still obviously very common, mobile phone usage is now the norm when it comes to internet consumption. In addition to this, the targeted advertisements that will be discussed in the next section are most likely going to draw in visitors on mobile devices.
Another great feature about DOZR WebStores is that this step of the process is automatically done for you! When setting up a WebStore, the Mobile-Friendly experience is already programmed into the software.
Executing Digital Marketing
Although building a clean, sleek, and professional website is a great first step in your eCommerce strategy, it won't get very many visitors unless you actively drive online traffic to it. And how do you get internet users, and particularly your target market, to visit your professional website? You need to execute digital marketing.
eCommerce marketing, otherwise known as digital marketing, is the practice of using promotional tactics to drive traffic to your online store, converting that traffic into paying customers and retaining those customers post-purchase.
In general, digital marketing can be very effective in driving specific yet widespread online traffic directly to your company's website. Even if your equipment rental company only operates regionally, digital marketing can deliver your company's logo, rental services, and mission statement directly to a wide variety of individuals in your area who may not know about your business yet.
Logistical Control Over Your Operation
Now that you've got a professional website and digital marketing campaign up and running, chances are that you're going to see some eCommerce business coming in. That said, it's very important to remember that your company has to remain a cohesive unit. Essentially, this means that your online eCommerce sales must be connected and in sync with your in-person and over-the-phone sales. In other words, you must unify the online and offline aspects of your company. After all, you don't want to double book any equipment and be met with upset customers.
This part of your eCommerce strategy is crucial for tying in your new online sales leads with the rest of your already-established business, as well as maintaining a high degree of organization over your rental fleet.
So, how do you do that?
Well, other than hiring a computer scientist to make your company a custom software from scratch, the only way to do this is to invest in specialized software made for rental companies. Since you're already at the right place, finding this kind of specialized eCommerce software for your equipment rental company has never been easier.
At DOZR, we offer an eCommerce solution for your equipment rental company that will not only help your business operate more smoothly but will also give your customers a flawless experience when renting equipment online. Our solution is called WebStores; a fully customizable and dynamic way to display your fleet online and change your rates on-the-fly. Operating with WebStores unlocks full e-commerce capabilities for your rental company including online checkout with credit card payments, customer verification, preferred rates, and credit account handling. In addition to this seamless software, you can also approve or decline incoming orders via SMS, email, or the Order Manager Tablet at your rental counter.
To learn more about WebStores, we encourage you to directly contact our friendly team to request a demo!
If setting up this kind of stand-alone website isn't your company's current goal, then consider joining the DOZR Marketplace! Our equipment rental marketplace is a free and easy way to connect with local contractors looking for equipment online.
