Monday, March 03, 2003
www.usplastic.com
Read what Ecom-Ohio has to say about USP
For over 50 years, Lima-based United States Plastics (USP) has been a leader in industrial and commercial plastic products. The company’s website is a good example of its commitment to excellence. For the customer's convenience, the site now contains over 14,000 plastic products and 9,000 safety products with easy online ordering and upfront shipping costs.
USP’s website utilizes Aardvark's commerce server product to manage the front-end of their website, including displaying their online catalog and conducting e-commerce activities. On the back-end, a custom web interface was created that pushes orders from the commerce site to their AS/400 system that manages their business operations. They can also use this interface to view order information, update order status, and synchronize customer information between the AS/400 and the commerce site.
USP developed the site to:
- Increase customer access to product
- Streamline efficiencies
- Create greater return on investment
- Be a leader in its market
- Capture more market share
The primary barriers to developing an innovative e-commerce application were:
- Cost
- Time
- Internal resources to manage project
Some of the new benefits for employees:
- Reduced work load on the call center, so workers there had more time to work with each customer
- Increased sources for quickly accessible product knowledge
USP competitive advantage is:
- Information per product is maximized as compared to competitors
- Ease of use of the site
- Ability to pull information in real time from inventory
- Increase in ability to send orders more quickly
The primary metric that demonstrates success is the fact that sales are running 300+ percent over the previous year for the same period.
Ways Application has Created a New Market
In catalog business, an organization is assigned an allotted amount of space in each catalog. This barrier no longer exists as every product in inventory can be accessed dynamically through the web site...all 13,000 plastics products and 9,000 safety products. An organization could not do this efficiently or effectively through a print-based catalog. Also, information is kept current moment by moment, and this increases customer satisfaction and service.
Ways Application has Transformed its Market
On Wednesday, June 12, 2002, USP was honored at the 17th Annual Catalog Awards and 3rd Annual I. Merchant Awards with a Silver I. Merchant Award in the B-to-B Hard Goods category.
Other winners of awards included L.L. Bean, Orvis, Levenger, Harry and David, Crate & Barrel, etc. USP's web site held its own among very stiff competition with hundreds of websites submitted and only 5 actually given in the category of B to B Hardgoods.
When the award for the site was given, many vendors, customers, and organizations at the Annual Catalog Conference met with members of the USP and Aardvark team to discuss our project development and the success of the USP web site.
How Company is Leading thru New Application
USP's web site was a collaborative effort between the teams at USP and Aardvark, Inc. Aardvark specializes in the design, development, and implementation of business-class web sites that provide database and back-end functionality.
Features on the US Plastics Website
Requesting a Quote
We understand the desire to have a printed copy of a potential order from now and then so we built our system to make it easy to accomplish this task. A quote and an order are basically the same thing short of your method of payment. Here are the simple instructions on how to create a quote out of an order.
- Create an order like you were buying the item(s)
- After you place the items into the Cart, use the Checkout option at the top of the screen.
- Follow the Checkout procedure till you get to the Address Screen. On the Address Screen decide if you would like to make an online account with us. If you choose to, enter a password into the address step.
- Proceed through the shipping and summary page till your get to the Payment Screen
- Finally, on the Payment Screen, select the Request a Quote option as the method of payment.
Your quote will be emailed to you for your records as well as being placed into your order history. The order history is accessible when you log in to your US Plastic online account and a follow-up email will explain the process of logging onto the site as well as contain your username and password.
Quotes processed through this website expire 30 days after they are created.
Ordering a Catalog
Ordering a free catalog only takes a minute. Select what catalog you would like and fill in your address. Once you have completed the form, click on the Send Request button below. You can choose between our U. S. Plastic catalog of over 14,000 plastic products or our Industrial Safety Catalog of over 9,000 safety related products.
- From eCom-Ohio
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