Which Web Sites Work Best for VARs?

We examined a sampling of the Web sites of four players in the distribution and content-aggregation market: CDW, D&H Distributing, Ingram Micro and Tech Data. We asked an informal advisory panel of several solution providers to guide our exploration of features to come up with an assessment of what the best sites should have to make them truly useful to solution providers. (We plan to examine the VAR portals of Avnet, Arrow and KeyLink/Pioneer at a later date.)

All of the sites offer their services free to their existing VAR customers. Looking at the big picture, Tech Data and CDW both offer hybrid consumer/solution-provider sites, providing tools for both audiences. Meantime, Ingram Micro's and D&H's sites are available to only their existing solution-provider customers.

We examined each site in terms of five dimensions: searching, ordering, incentives, customization and training. Here's how the companies stack up in each of those areas.

1. Searching

The ability to search is perhaps the most critical function that any distributor can offer on its Web site. If you can't find what you are looking for, you can't sell it. But tracking down a specific product has a bunch of subtleties that the better Web sites should offer. These include the ability to compare product specifications and get detailed information about pricing, availability and product features. The Web site should also be comprehensive enough so you can view details on competing products and be able to select the superior product based on your customers' needs.

In addition, the search function should be both wide and deep so you can quickly narrow the field and find something of interest, as well as widen the scope or focus on particular technologies, manufacturers and product categories. And the better sites should notify you when products not in stock or not-yet-released become available.

Finally, the results screen should contain product-availability information, links to a photograph and any special pricing/promotion or other details to help users make the most profitable choices.

Searching is more art than science, and the trick is to provide plenty of options so users can quickly examine the products of interest without having to page through dozens of screens.

Of the four companies' Web sites we looked at, D&H's was tops. The company has built in a very specific series of search criteria that are tailored for solution providers. For example, you can search for particular incentives by UPC code, whether an item is in stock at one or more of the six different D&H warehouses, and for price points and technical details. Searching for external CD-RW drives as an example, D&H allowed us to match read, write and rewrite speeds, as well as examine whether the unit had a USB interface.The search-results screen also has links that take you to a detailed product description and a photo of the item, if included.

The other sites were less useful in terms of searching for products, allowing only manufacturer and keyword searches that could take more time to narrow down the field to find the particular product of interest. On the other three sites, to get to the search screen you have to click on several product subcategory pages first. Ingram's searching function was the most cumbersome of the three, and the results page listed other items besides external CD-RWs in our test.

One advantage with CDW's site is the ability to compare up to seven units on a single screen, which isn't found on the other three sites.

Ingram's site does a nice job in providing detailed pricing discounts for government and education customers, and also provides detailed, real-time availability (including both what is in stock and what is on order, and when these items are expected) of each of the company's seven warehouses for each product displayed. Ingram's search results page has an indication (like D&H's site) on the results screen about whether any of the items have promotions or special discounts available.

2. Ordering

Second, we examined the features that deal with the ordering process. This includes the ability to track down open orders, make changes to existing orders before they are fulfilled, track the status of the order and its intended delivery through direct links to package-delivery Web-tracking features, and deal with payments and any returned merchandise.

Of the four companies, D&H has the best set of ordering tools, including pages that summarize open orders, returns and tracking shipments. The pages have a very clean and simple design that makes it easy for users to figure out how to navigate around the site and get from one area (such as orders) to another (such as the tracking pages) quickly.

The D&H site also does a nice job of placing just enough information on a page to be useful,but not overwhelming or crowded.

Ingram's site is second-best at order tracking. There are places to specify drop shipments, you can update a particular order and add additional items before it gets submitted to be picked, and you can easily see product upsells and the full variety of shipping methods and prices. In addition, there are a separate series of screens to track returns.

The CDW and Tech Data sites have less useful tools for ordering functions, and both are designed mainly from a customer's,rather than a solution provider's,perspective. CDW's screens have multiple controls placed in various locations on the screen, and Tech Data's warehouse availability screen is not as easy to get to as D&H's and Ingram's equivalent function.

Both Ingram and Tech Data offer a number of electronic data- interchange options to transfer ordering and invoicing information between their systems and yours.

3. Incentives

The third set of features focuses on incentives for solution providers. Each site offers some benefits in this area, and there is no clear winner. This feature set entails promotional, close-out or new products that a company wants to highlight. It also covers easy-to-find resources for joining various vendor partner programs and taking advantage of discounts and special deals offered by these vendors.

Ingram offers the ability to automatically set the pricing margin rules for a particular customer as part of its quote pages. The interface to do this, however, is somewhat complex. For example, users have to click on links to "update pricing" at several places on the site before actual pricing details are correctly displayed.

Tech Data's site lets you view multiple product promotions, and then incorporate the preferred one into a product pricing quote for a customer.

Ingram's site has a customized "storefront" for a dozen of the major vendors, including Adobe, Cisco, HP, Linksys and 3Com. Here they have collected everything a solution provider needs to find out about product promotions, discounts and other VAR programs that are available from that particular vendor. Having this information in one place is a definite plus, unless, of course, you are looking for information from a vendor that doesn't have a customized series of pages on Ingram's site. Ingram's crowded home page also has a link to search all promotions, which is a nice touch.

D&H's site displays promotional "rewards points" icons directly on its search-results screen, and lets users search for incentives as part of the direct-search screen. It contains clear information about various vendor partner programs, rebates and other promotional items. This information, however, is more confusing on CDW's site, and a user has to click through more links to learn about these items. There are separate sections for rebates and clearance items as well, which require two distinct searches.

4. Customization

The fourth element to a worthwhile channel Web site is customization, which has two different aspects. The first enables users to custom-configure their own white boxes with the right kinds of components and peripherals to match their customers' needs. The Web site should offer a full range of options here, and make it very easy for users to both build their own systems and start with preconfigured systems that they can modify.

Dell was one of the early pioneers in the systems-customization world, but mainly from the consumer end of the business. The difference for the solution provider is being able to load up a system with higher profit-margin items, or be able to see the difference in how various components fit together. The D&H site handles both with ease and is a clear leader in this category.

Neither CDW nor Ingram offers any white-box configurations, though Ingram does have a special section on its site that involves integrating various products together for selling an entire solution.

One interesting feature found on Ingram's, Tech Data's and D&H's Web sites is a walk-through of the complexities of purchasing software licenses for customers. Ingram has the largest collection of vendors and programs, as well as the best set of screens to step a solution provider through the process and requirements. D&H has something similar, but it's limited to just Microsoft's licensing program.

Both Ingram and D&H have encoded numerous business rules so that solution providers will comply with the various licensing restrictions when they place their online orders,a big time-saver in when dealing with such complexities. Ingram and Tech Data both support Microsoft, Novell, Symantec and Veritas; Ingram also supports licensing programs from Adobe, Citrix, Computer Associates, Macromedia and Network Associates.

The second part of customization features lets you set up your own complete e-commerce retail Web site, bypassing the need to pay a Web designer. There was no clear-cut winner here. For its part, CDW offers CDW@work, Tech Data has SupplyXpert and D&H has Rite2u.com (for more on D&H's site, turn to "D&H Brings Web Storefront 'Rite2U,'" on page 78). As for Ingram, the distributor offers a very limited version of this feature only for its government and small-business VARs only. Each company has a different process to qualify users and assemble the site.

5. Training

Finally, we looked at the sites in terms of training and education. The Web sites should offer links to a wide variety of content, including instructional videos, white papers and vendor Web sites. There should also be places on the site that offer help and contact information within the company's organization, along with phone numbers and e-mail links to sales representatives. All four sites we examined have basic contact information, but both CDW and D&H go the extra mile and actually include pictures of its sales representatives, along with links to connect a Web user directly with the representative,live.

Tech Data's Web site provides a way to search through the company's very extensive in-person course offerings by location and vendor.

Ingram's site contains links to descriptive information about the distributor's extensive training and education features. However, the resources that are directly available through the Web site (vs. in-person live events) is very limited.

And the Winner Is%85

All in all, D&H's Web site is the best of the four we examined, with features in all five areas that are well-done and easy to use. That's where we suggest you head first. Ingram's search routines are the poorest and get in the way of using the site for other tasks, but for automated software licensing, this is the place to be. Finally, while each has its individual strengths, CDW and Tech Data are both geared more toward end-user customers and less to solution providers,probably not your best bets.