When Sam Jones went to design a Web site for Seals & Packings Inc., the goal was fairly straightforward: Create a simple site offering contact information and an online survey (the latter to meet ISO certification requirements about customer surveys).

The result—www.sealsandpackings.com—met those goals, says Jones, the director of information systems and technology for the O-rings, polyseals, packings and custom rubber products distributor. But in hindsight, a more rigorous examination of the company's online needs and goals might have resulted in a site that does more to advance Seals & Packing's business, Jones says.

“At this point, the only reason for a customer to visit our site is to find phone numbers or an e-mail address. Once they have made contact with us, they usually don't go back [to the site],” he explains. “This is something that we need to change. Fortunately for us, we are not exactly behind the eight ball because industrial clients are just coming around to [Internet] technology.”

But as the industrial manufacturing sector climbs the Internet learning curve, the window for distributors to stake their online claim grows smaller and smaller. Jones' experience points to an important factor businesses looking to establish a Web presence need to consider: The point is not just to have a Web site for the sake of having a Web site; rather, the point is to use the Internet as a tool to reach potential customers and help your business grow.

“[Looking back], I would have done a lot differently,” Jones says. “With more planning up front, I feel like we could have possibly cornered our market with an effective e-business [strategy]. … There is, fortunately, still time to do this, but I feel like the window is rapidly closing.”

Steve Epner, founder and CEO of the Brown Smith Wallace Consulting Group, which advises companies on technology issues, says distributors often lose sight of the forest for the trees when developing their online strategies.

“For small distributors, the most important thing is to decide why you want a Web site to begin with,” Epner notes. “If you understand the reason for the Web site, then everything else falls out of that understanding.”

As an example, he cites an imaginary small distributor selling building materials to the construction industry, one who probably doesn't need e-business capability.

“The foremen that buy from me aren't looking to be online yet. That's coming, but not yet. Right now, most foremen are going to call on the phone and tell me what they want and that they need it yesterday,” Epner explains.

Then there are the businesses seeking to establish themselves as “thought leaders,” the leading resource for knowledge and information about their product lines in their market. For those distributors, the Web strategy is entirely different.

“If my purpose is to educate, it almost doesn't matter whether I've got the fanciest, funkiest, jazziest site out there. If people know I'm the source of basic information in my industry and if they know I have the latest and greatest articles, so that they know this is the place they want to be, it doesn't matter how fancy [the site] is,” he says. “There are other people who run businesses that have a very high value add. They may not want to have online purchasing because that just creates a commodity perception. … Rather, [use the site to] educate people. It's not sales generation but lead generation.”

But what if you do sell commodities? For those distributors, a vehicle for online sales could be a crucial part of their Web strategy.

“Some people go online to find the lowest cost. If I am doing commodity-type stuff and I want to sell to anybody, hey, a site that makes it easy for anybody to buy from me online is great, especially if it doesn't detract from my other sales efforts,” Epner says.

Mike Marks, managing partner of Indian River Consulting Group, led a seminar on Web strategy at the Power Transmission Distributors Assn.'s Annual Summit last year. During the session, he pushed distributors to consider themselves from the perspective of a potential customer to get a sense of their Internet presence.

“Go online and look for yourself as a prospective purchaser and see what you find,” Marks counseled. “After you get over this shock, start doing it with discipline for each customer segment.”

That means asking whether it's easy for customers to find what they want on your site and evaluating how you stack up online against your competitors.

Marks advises distributors to set aside $20,000 to $30,000 from their marketing budgets to develop their online resources. Asked about smaller distributors that might not even have a marketing budget, let alone up to $30,000 to spend, Marks says the return on investment (ROI) makes the expense worthwhile.

“It's a good ROI and they need to do it or get left out,” Marks says. “It's actually more critical for a little guy than a big guy. It's less than the cost of their weakest inside sales rep.

“You have a marketing budget or you need one, so aside from being hostage to history, shouldn't part of that be invested in Web technology?” Marks asked during the PTDA session. “This is not about spending money to fix a problem or need. Rather, it is about a recurring annual spend to exploit evolving opportunities. You should think about where the money comes from because it is not extra or new money. What could you do with the recovered costs from your two weakest sales reps?”

With both sales and marketing in mind, Freeman Robbins, president of electrical, safety and MRO distributor J. Supply Co. of Rome, Ga., planned an April rollout for a new “shopping cart” feature on his company's site, www.jsupply.com.

“Within the next month we will have a shopping cart that will work off the back end of our software,” Robbins says. “Hopefully we can get out there and market our Web site name and people will go to it and purchase. Really it's just going to be word-of-mouth, through customers or our guys going out in the field and letting people know [about the shopping cart feature].”

Visitors to the site will be able to purchase items with a credit card, rather than having to set up an account. Robbins says the move comes in response to customer requests and to his fear that some customers aren't aware of all the lines J. Supply stocks.

“Some customers that we're currently selling to may not know the depth and breadth of our inventory. It will all be [on the site], so hopefully new sales will be picked up from that also,” he notes. “Some customers might see us as an electrical house and only buy electrical from us and some might see us as a safety house and only buy safety products. [But] we sell just about everything in the industrial MRO business.”

Robbins says there's no set goal in mind in terms of Web-driven sales.

“I hope it opens up new areas for us, as far as new customers. That would be great, to be able to sell to people that we're not having to go out and visit on a daily or weekly basis. I think it's just going to be getting out there and marketing our name to people that aren't used to buying from us.”

Epner says there are five principal considerations for distributors when developing a Web strategy.

The first is to be customer-focused. A site that focuses too much on you, rather than on how you can meet the needs of a visitor, is doomed to fail, he says.

“Nobody cares that you have a fancy building. What they want to know is what you are going to do for them,” Epner explains, referring back to the example of the small building materials distributor.

“[You want your site to say], 'If you are in the construction business in our service area and you ever need emergency support, we're the ones to come to,'” he says.

The second point is ease of contact—don't hide your telephone number or the e-mail addresses of salespeople or other key employees.

“If I found you on the Web and I want to do business with you, don't make me look for your number,” Epner says. “It should be on the top and bottom of every page of your Web site—and if it isn't you're a fool.”

The third item is making your site easy to find “in a virtual sense,” he notes.

“If I sell in a region, list the major cities that are in that region so that people can find me if I'm the one who can service them. You can't be everything to everybody, so go ahead and focus on the people you can [help],” Epner says.

An ancillary point is ensuring that every piece of business literature you produce, whether it's your business cards, your invoices or even the sign on your vehicle, contains the address of your Web site, he adds.

The fourth point is making the site easy to read.

“This is so simple. Use 12-point type at least—not everybody can read eight-point type. Use high-contrast, dark letters on a white background or light-colored letters on a dark background,” he says.

Finally, be easy to use.

“Make sure that the person coming to your Web site can get to the critical areas they need in three clicks or less,” Epner advises.

“Having a Web presence is actually extremely easy. You can have a basic Web site up in less than a day, including the time it takes to register the domain name,” says Jones of Seals & Packings, adding that the main obstacle is deciding whether to use a hosting company or host the site under your own domain name.

“We host our own. This allows me to edit our Web site in real time without having to upload any files to a remote Web server,” he explains. “There's not much maintenance, because our page is pretty static. I handle it, but I have considered outsourcing so that we could have more dynamic Web content.”

But going that route likely means outsourcing your Web development and maintenance, Jones adds.

“If you are expecting an over-abundance of Web traffic, you may want to pay for remote hosting, or possibly co-location, unless you want to deal with procuring bandwidth. Hosting companies and co-locations already have the bandwidth, which they buy in bulk, so it's less expensive than self-hosting,” he explains.

Jones says his own experience building the Seals & Packings site taught him about the value of planning ahead of implementation.

“I shouldn't have tried to take everything on myself. Hiring a firm to come in and design our e-business plan would have been more advantageous,” he says. “I consider it a lesson learned.”