Ecommerce Website

Tender description

ECOMMERCE WEBSITE.Fluid Branding is a market leading, award winning B2B distributor of promotional merchandise. With offices throughout the UK, Ireland and The Netherlands, our company provides branded merchandise to organisations across all sectors. We act as a sourcing and service company, relying on a network of manufacturers, decorators and logistics companies to supply finished product to our customers. Branded promotional products are becoming increasingly commoditised, with online searches being the predominant way for our clients to find and select a supplier. Our customers relationships fall generally within two categories, either Key Account or Transactional. Key Account business involves an ongoing relationship, many discussions and often face to face meetings. Their needs are often larger and more complex than a simple isolated requirement for merchandise. Our services to these customers include advice and selection of merchandise and branding options, warehousing of stock for faster delivery, management reporting along with a dedicated website to manage their merchandise. Transactional customers by contrast will often want minimal contact with us, and will often use online search to find and compare us against our competitors. The ability to purchase online, with clear pricing and complete product information is becoming increasingly important. Millennials now form a large part of our customer base, they expect the 'Amazon experience' every time they shop online. These customers may also look to communicate with us in different ways, eg. Live Chat. Key purchasing factors for Transactional customers include trust, price, convenience, product information and clear communication. While average order values may be low, each product will carry our customer's brand, and therefore has the potential for brand or reputational damage if things go wrong. Therefore price may be an early buying factor, but trust in our products, delivery times and competence is hugely important. The low sales value of these single orders require us to handle them as efficiently as possible in order to retain profit margin. Minimum order values are not currently applied, but may be considered to prevent making a loss on lower value orders. We now require a website catering for both sets of customers defined above; to showcase our capabilities to Key Accounts, and to offer online purchasing, payment and order tracking for Transactional customers. The purchase of this system is part of a grant funded application process and therefore procurement will be subject to grant approval of the project as a whole. We will compare tenders received on a compliance basis only.