Manufacturing websites, trade orders and quotes
ROISynth builds manufacturers and wholesalers a trade website where quote requests arrive with the specification attached, account customers reorder online at their own prices, and stock and lead times are shown as they really are.
A trade customer emails a reorder: “same as last time, but double.” Last time was in April, by phone, with a discount somebody agreed and nobody wrote down.
Meanwhile a new enquiry sits in the sales inbox — “can you make this?” — with a photo and no quantities, no material and no deadline.
Trade customers reorder the same things on a rhythm, and every new enquiry needs a quote nobody can write without a spec.
Who this page is for
Small and mid-sized manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors selling to other businesses: firms with trade accounts and account-specific pricing, repeat orders, custom or made-to-order work that needs quoting from a specification, and sales teams who spend their days on email.
What does ROISynth build for a manufacturer or wholesaler?
A trade site where account customers sign in, see their own prices and reorder from their past orders in a few clicks, instead of emailing a list. A quote request form that asks for quantities, materials, dimensions, drawings and the date needed, so sales can price it without a round of questions.
Stock levels and lead times are shown as they are, and orders from the site go straight into the same place as orders from the sales team.
What goes wrong for a manufacturer that doesn’t for a shop?
A shop has one price. You have a price per customer, often agreed in a conversation, and the history of who pays what lives in people’s heads and old emails.
And custom work can’t be priced from a sentence. A quote needs a specification, and most enquiries arrive without one, so the first reply is always a question. The businesses that ask for a quote are often asking three suppliers, and the one that understood the drawing first is the one they remember.
How do trade orders and enquiries arrive?
Repeat orders by email and phone from existing accounts; new enquiries from businesses searching for someone who can make or supply a particular thing. The repeat orders are most of the money, and the new enquiries are the growth.
Letting account customers reorder online frees the sales team to spend their time on the new enquiries that need a person.
How does it fit around production and dispatch?
Orders from the website, email and phone land in one place with the account’s pricing already applied, so nothing is retyped between sales and the warehouse. Customers are told when their order is dispatched.
Reports on orders, accounts and quotes arrive on a Monday, and the connections between the site and your existing systems are read-only unless you decide otherwise.
What does a manufacturer own at the end?
The trade site, the order history and every account’s pricing, in the company’s own accounts, and the code belongs to the company.
Who orders what, how often and at what price is the most useful information a trade business has. Held in one place you control, it is something a new salesperson can actually read.
What actually changes, in the order it matters to you.
- An order in one place turns up everywhere else it needs to be, without anyone retyping it.
- Orders arrive without anyone writing them down.
- Everything about every customer sits in one place, and it's yours.
- Reports arrive on a Monday without you asking.
- Your traffic and your sales sit in one place instead of four tabs.
- What you send a customer looks designed, because it was.
- Pages get written for the things people are actually searching for.
The audit will show you what a buyer finds when they search for a supplier of what you make, and whether your site tells them you can make it.
Questions people ask
- Can trade customers reorder online at their own prices?
- Yes. Account customers sign in, see their own prices and reorder from their past orders in a few clicks, instead of emailing a list.
- What should a quote request ask for?
- Quantities, materials, dimensions, drawings and the date needed, so sales can price it without a round of questions.
- Do website orders need retyping into our systems?
- No. Orders from the website, email and phone land in one place with the account’s pricing already applied, so nothing is retyped between sales and the warehouse.
- Why let account customers reorder online?
- Letting account customers reorder online frees the sales team to spend their time on the new enquiries that need a person.
Want to talk through how this would fit your business? Message on WhatsApp, or send a message and it reaches the person who would do the work.