How to Sell Wholesale Catalogs Online

When your customers go to order your products, what does their journey look like? Traditionally, wholesalers have used specifically tailored paper or emailed catalogs for each category of customer.

This leads to a long wait for customers.

First, they have to wait to receive the new catalog and then take time to browse it. After that, they contact your sales representative with questions and send an order by email, phone, or fax. These traditional sales and order management processes are no longer enough, and recently, customer preferences have begun to change.

Today, online ordering is common throughout our daily lives. Accessing product information and ordering with just a click is no longer a special feature. It will soon be the standard for competition.

Updating your product lists every season or quarter isn’t enough anymore. Creating a dynamic catalog for each customer is a great way to spark interest in your new products.

It can help you earn more revenue from your current customers. Plus, it makes your internal order management process easier. You can make this catalog fully available online through your website.

Still unsure about digital catalogs? Consider the following questions about your customers’ ordering journey.

If you answered "no" to any of these questions, an updated online catalog can help. It can solve the problems you face and help your business earn money faster. Plus, it can create a better experience for your customers.

Most companies see immediate benefits to online ordering:

• It’s easy to update and share information with your customers. This is much simpler than creating a whole new catalog. This means you can do micro deals, special promotions, or even “low on inventory” sales.
• Pricing for regions or company size is no longer a nightmare for your sales team. If your customers log in to look at your product, the system can automatically show them the correct price for their company. You can avoid awkward questions about pricing, and push specific deals on subsets of your customer base.

• It makes ordering easier for your customers and sales team. A catalog that lets customers order directly can help your sales team. This way, they can focus more on finding new ways to make money.
• You can link your inventory to your catalogs. This way, you won’t have awkward orders. You will always have enough products to meet your customers' needs.
• You can send orders from your catalog directly to your ERP or accounting system. This means you won't need to manually transfer information between systems.
• Your sales team can check orders and send them through your order management process. They won't need to spend a lot of time typing in new information. This means fewer order errors from clerical mistakes, and a faster time to shipment for each of your orders.
• People find online catalogs simple, easy to understand, and familiar. Your company offers a clean experience for customers. This makes it more enjoyable to browse products and easier to place orders.

To give your customers a great ordering experience, you need to improve your catalog information for online orders. Everything your customer needs to place an order with your company should to available and easy to understand. By reviewing and improving these areas of your catalog, you can boost sales. This will also make it easier for your customers to order from your company.

Optimizing Your Online Wholesale Catalog

If you want to try online catalogs or improve your current one, there are some ways to make it better. In today's fast-paced B2B environment, understanding the modern buyer's procurement process is crucial. By integrating an online catalog into your strategy, you can streamline the procurement journey, making it easier for buyers to access product information and place orders efficiently.

Here are a few tips to help you optimize your online catalog for the best results. To help, we’ve put together a few categories to focus on that will help you create an ideal online ordering experience for your customers.

Product Information

No matter what’s being sold, people want to see images of your products. Visual elements grab customers’ attention, especially when they’re scanning through your catalog. At the same time, presenting each of your items with images can help your customers notice products they might not have originally been searching for. This encourages them to discover and pull more products from your catalog that they might not have been originally looking for.

Switching to a digital system makes this even easier. It lets you create catalogs that can be updated quickly, while also giving customers a simple way to browse and order directly. Plus, digital tools can help build personalized storefronts, where buyers see the products and prices that match their needs. This not only saves time but also makes placing orders quicker and hassle-free.

Learn more about how a Wholesale B2B app can help you make the switch to a better, easier-to-use catalog.

Product Inventory

Wholesale suppliers often overlook full product descriptions, but they are absolutely crucial to your customers. You should fully describe the product. This includes details like color, size, case quantities, and zoning.

Provide your customers with information about your product they can use to sell it on to their end consumers. For example, you might say, “Soft brie cheese, 12-inch rounds, one case per order, $29.99.” This description lacks reasons for customers to buy. It also doesn’t provide much information for those who want to sell it later. 

Instead, try something like "This creamy brie comes from cows that eat wildflowers. These cows graze in the French Alps. They are watched over by Trappist monks. Renowned for its smooth texture, complex taste, and rind bound in birch bark, this cheese is sure to delight connoisseurs to no end.”

Pricing and Deals

You can use your online catalog to display different pricing to different customers. Each customer must login to view your options. You can group them into specific categories.

Then, you can assign specific prices to each category. This reduces pricing confusion by your sales team, makes sure that everyone is paying what they’re supposed to, and simplifies price book management for your team.

Perhaps more importantly, you can use online ordering to target specific buckets with deals that are interesting to them. Do you have a product that you want to sell more of to mid-market customers?

With an online catalog, you can send deals to specific customers. You don’t need to create a special offer. You don’t need a new flier for this. Just press a few buttons. This lets you expand your sales tactics. You can set up limited-time sales whenever you want.

Faster Order Fulfillment

By integrating your online catalog with your fulfillment processes, you prioritize speed and accuracy. Once orders have been placed, they can move directly into your order management system. Automation reduces the time your team spends processing orders manually, freeing them up to focus on more important tasks such as strengthening customer relationships or identifying growth opportunities.

Inventory Transparency

There’s nothing worse to a customer than building up an order only to find out you don’t have the products available. Online catalogs can connect directly to your inventory system. This means that sold-out products can be hidden or shown as sold out.

You can show your inventory for certain products in real-time. This helps create a sense of urgency for customers to buy.

This can work both ways. Orders from your online catalog can update your inventory numbers directly. This ensures you always have an accurate count of your stock and what needs to be shipped.

Why Online Catalogs Matter for Your Business

By integrating online catalogs into your wholesale strategy, you not only meet, but exceed customer expectations. 

For more information on how you can create the optimal online catalog for your customers, reach out to OrderEase today and book a discovery call about our online ordering solution.