Torrington Supply increases number of orders by 10% with Optimizely's B2B Commerce

With more than 100 years of history, Torrington Supply Company (Torrco) is family-owned plumbing, piping, HVAC and kitchen & bath supplies distributor headquartered in Waterbury, Connecticut.

With 12 trade locations and six showrooms, it serves a variety of customers including contractors, industry professionals, institutions, and end consumers.

Torrco’s digital transformation goal was  – to build an ecommerce platform that its customers would enjoy using, whether for purchasing, researching or as a source of information.

Staying true to its mission, Torrco knew it needed an ecommerce platform that would facilitate seamless research and B2B buying experience for customers, providing customers with an online experience that rivalled brick-and-mortar locations.

The previous platform Torrco used did not have a progressive roadmap for the platform and Torrco as a business to grow. Working with offshore tech support was also challenging for the team.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Torrco knew it needed to upgrade its ecommerce platform to meet the expectations of digitally savvy customers, but its ideal solution would require expertise with best practices and a roadmap of improvements to meet the constantly evolving needs and business models of its customers.

Not knowing where to start was one thing. The Torrco team was also aware that they may not know what they do not know, causing blind spots in the process of building their ecommerce platform.

A holistic view of customers throughout the user journey was also something Torrco wanted to gain insight into through its ecommerce platform. This required multiple seamless integrations.

Despite mostly serving B2B customers, Torrco was also aware that its customers wanted to have a B2C-like online experience. This was an important aspect of its business but was uncharted territory for Torrco.

The search for a fitting solutions provider and partner was on and Torrco landed on Optimizely and Xngage, an Optimizely partner.

With Optimizely’s intuitive and forward-thinking interface coupled with Xngage’s understanding of Torrco’s mission, Torrco’s ideal ecommerce solution started taking shape.

The process started with integrating Torrco’s ERP system with Optimizely’s PIM to provide customers with real-time updates on product data, pricing and inventory availability – both online and at specific Torrco locations. The up-to-date information also empowers employees who are assisting customers via other channels accurately.

A redesign that’s familiar to Torrco’s customer base was implemented for the website to help visitors find what they are looking for swiftly and improve site functionality. This redesign of Torrco’s site navigation ensures a frictionless search experience, drawing on the best practices of leading B2C platforms with clearly segmented categories, rich product information and intuitive checkout.

In addition, customers are able to log in and access account-specific information including order management, purchase history and quick checkout.

While Torrco strives to build and deliver a seamless B2B buying experience to its customers, the team understands that some customers prefer an omnichannel approach to interact and transact. Torrco helps these customers by providing them with the necessary information including physical locations and contact details clearly on the website.

Since Torrco got the ball rolling prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was able to double down on its efforts in improving user experience with the foundation laid out. Torrco’s website served as an integral point of contact for customers who were looking to get in touch, purchase or research products.

The strong working relationship between Torrco and Xngage as well as Optimizely’s exceptional B2B capabilities helped shape Torrco’s new and improved website that exceeds customer expectations.

With Torrco’s customer-centric approach to its website, especially with intuitive site navigation and convenient product search, it came as no surprise that its user experience improved.

Since the new website’s launch using AD enhanced eContent, Torrco’s number of orders increased by 10% while number of lines per order increased by 35%. Torrco customers are placing more orders as well as purchasing more items in each order. 

By partnering with AD eCommerce Solutions, Torrco has an integrated and enforced content strategy with over 20,000 normalized and attributed SKUs. With AD’s strategic partnership with Optimizely, Torrco leverages the AD Optimizely Configured Commerce to aid in the ongoing ingestion of their enhanced SKU catalog directly from the AD Member Product Information Management (PIM).  In addition to the AD enhanced eContent, Torrco leverages the AD member-driven product classification taxonomy to drive the best digital customer experience. Torrco continually maintains their SKU catalog by taking scheduled updates from the AD eContent service on a weekly basis freeing up resources to no longer spend time on classifying products and populating product attributes. 

In addition, Torrco has also seen an increase in customer logins online as customers are provided with more ways to get in touch with the team. Its consideration for varying customer preferences while building the site meant that it also kickstarted an omnichannel approach, allowing customers to easily transition from online to offline or vice versa.

Torrco’s internal teams also benefited from improved work efficiency and cost savings. Xngage’s expertise and Optimizely’s solutions help focus on what they do best – serving the plumbing, HVAC and oil customers – instead of investing resources in building a digital team from scratch.

Optimizely’s seamless and user-friendly solution has also helped Torrco’s internal teams produce and publish content, saving them much more time from their previous solution. As a result, customers are also kept up to date with Torrco’s developments.

The frequent updates and strong support from Optimizely provide Torrco’s team with a clear roadmap to formulate their digital strategies and the assurance that they are on the right track to digital success, improving the business’ data-backed decision-making.

With a solid B2B digital experience in place, Torrco is looking to get a large proportion of its total customer base to interact with the website, whether for research, purchase or as a source to solve their problems.

Torrco also plans to improve their catalog for their site to act as a resource for relevant stakeholders, both internal and external. The ideal outcome would be to shift the search for products from informational to transactional and ultimately, improve checkout conversion rates.

Personalization is also high on their list of priorities so that they can constantly improve product and content recommendations. They want to deliver recommendations promptly through customer behavior insights.

Finally, Torrco envisions a stronger omnichannel presence to empower customers to interact and transact in their preferred manner while ensuring the same exceptional customer experience.