Website, drop ship type of question
Discussion
I run a B2B business selling products (lets say it's nuts and bolts) that have huge variations and hence lots of skus.
This works well to drop ship as it's near on impossible for online customers to stock all our products.
Currently, we provide images, descriptions, and stock feeds, and then people can create a brand, and website and sell the nuts and bolts sending us the packing slips or CSV's for orders.
I want to expand on this and make life easier for our customers that do not do this yet.
Is it possible to add a 'button or widget' on their existing website 'click here to order your nuts and bolts' which would then take them to a site we manage with their logo and details but we handle everything from there and either pay them a commission or it can add the details to their OWN baskets and check out that way so they handle the paymenst etc ?
I hope I'm explaining what I need! The tech is moving pretty fast in this space so it's hard to keep up when trying to run a business!
This works well to drop ship as it's near on impossible for online customers to stock all our products.
Currently, we provide images, descriptions, and stock feeds, and then people can create a brand, and website and sell the nuts and bolts sending us the packing slips or CSV's for orders.
I want to expand on this and make life easier for our customers that do not do this yet.
Is it possible to add a 'button or widget' on their existing website 'click here to order your nuts and bolts' which would then take them to a site we manage with their logo and details but we handle everything from there and either pay them a commission or it can add the details to their OWN baskets and check out that way so they handle the paymenst etc ?
I hope I'm explaining what I need! The tech is moving pretty fast in this space so it's hard to keep up when trying to run a business!
There's several ways of doing it. The most simple is for them to link to a whitelabel page on your site with their logo/branding on it.
This has the disadvantage of customers leaving the site for yours, but it's by far the easiest option for them to add to their site (although it could be disguised somewhat as a subdomain of their site, eg shop.theirsite.com)
You could provide a page that gets embedded on theirs with an iframe. Their visitors never leave their site, but the whole purchase process is still looked after by you.
This is very common for integrating 3rd party booking systems, eg hairdressers wanting an online booking system on their site for customers.
To integrate with their carts alongside their own shop, you're probably looking at providing API endpoints for their backend to query yours in real-time, and they'll need the tech knowledge to be able to use it.
This has the disadvantage of customers leaving the site for yours, but it's by far the easiest option for them to add to their site (although it could be disguised somewhat as a subdomain of their site, eg shop.theirsite.com)
You could provide a page that gets embedded on theirs with an iframe. Their visitors never leave their site, but the whole purchase process is still looked after by you.
This is very common for integrating 3rd party booking systems, eg hairdressers wanting an online booking system on their site for customers.
To integrate with their carts alongside their own shop, you're probably looking at providing API endpoints for their backend to query yours in real-time, and they'll need the tech knowledge to be able to use it.
The correct way to do this is to expose a webservice (API) that your clients / resellers etc can utilise. We have provided webservices for many different businesses, but mostly in the Car Leasing space. The goal is to allow the selling website to quickly show products seamlessly, which they can brand / theme their own way.
The downside is your clients will need to know what they are doing to make use of it.
As mentioned above, the alternatives for white label will possibly make it easier for them if they dont have an web development resource. The risk with things like iframes is the end client can very easily see the main source of the products (i.e. you and not the reseller).
You can pm me if you want to talk through the options, so you know the best direction to pursue.
The downside is your clients will need to know what they are doing to make use of it.
As mentioned above, the alternatives for white label will possibly make it easier for them if they dont have an web development resource. The risk with things like iframes is the end client can very easily see the main source of the products (i.e. you and not the reseller).
You can pm me if you want to talk through the options, so you know the best direction to pursue.
Edited by andyb28 on Sunday 4th February 07:40
As a non-tech person who works in ecommerce on the customer side of your business, I would consider just making it as easy as possible for new customers to add your product catalogue to their website and provide way(s) of them keeping stock accurate e.g. API, csv stock file.
Imo that is a low barrier to getting your products on their existing site, iframes, white label sites, new subdomains will require more dev work than your average customer may want to get involved with.
Imo that is a low barrier to getting your products on their existing site, iframes, white label sites, new subdomains will require more dev work than your average customer may want to get involved with.
Gassing Station | Business | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff