Explore Mayflex’s journey to digital transformation and learn how they improve the findability of products across 30 brands and 4 digital channels with FACT-Finder.
“With FACT-Finder, we feel supported – it feels more like a partnership than what we‘ve experienced with other providers,“ says Samantha Lynch, Digital Product Owner at Mayflex. Mayflex is a leading distributor of converged IP solutions including infrastructure, networking and electronic security solutions. Unlike other B2B distributors, Mayflex offers a wide variety of products across multiple markets, from cables to security hardware, providing a complete selection of equipment to their customers. Additionally, Mayflex offers extensive training and technical support to help clients achieve success in their projects.
In 2017, Mayflex placed their trust in FACT-Finder to digitally transform their B2B business and create a seamless experience across customer touchpoints – whether customers make first contact online or offline. Mayflex is continuously expanding operations online, and FACT-Finder is there to support them every step of the way in providing the best online experience.
Making e-commerce work in B2B
Historically, Mayflex‘s customers have gone directly through the sales team to make orders. They appreciate the experience of speaking to someone personally, especially compared to leafing through long, technical catalogues. Customers could even send an email to a sales associate and let them sort out finding the right products for them, which of course isn‘t conducive to scaling the business. When Mayflex decided to make the move to e-commerce, they needed to make sure that customers clearly recognized the value of shopping for these products online versus traditional methods. This was one of Mayflex‘s main struggles: bringing customers who normally speak with a sales representative to make the jump to ordering online via the website.
With FACT-Finder, Mayflex achieved “a seamless multichannel experience. You can start a quote with sales and then order it online or go the other way around and request a quote online and then carry on with sales to get the order processed,“ remarks Samantha. And customers are clearly recognizing the benefit and ease of purchasing online: in the 12 months leading up to March 2020, Mayflex achieved a 19% increase in the number of accounts ordering online per month.
With FACT-Finder, suggestions can be customized to show images, brands, and more at a glance.30% growth in online sales
Thanks to FACT-Finder, it is now easier and more intuitive than ever for Mayflex‘s customers to find what they‘re looking for at any time. On their transactional site, Mayflex provides over 10,000 products across 30 brands – which could quickly become a nightmare to find without the proper digital optimizations. Additionally, each brand categorizes their products in different ways, making it extremely difficult for customers to have a consistent way to search and browse for products. To remedy this, Mayflex created their own online names and descriptions for products based on model, resolution, etc. These features appear in FACT-Finder‘s suggest function, along with helpful product images. This makes it easier for customers to see at a glance what products are available and quickly get to the best results.
A seamless multichannel experience
Mayflex uses FACT-Finder to manage their four online channels: one for the Mayflex shop website, and three channels for their own brand, Excel, which is available in English, French and Spanish. The Excel sites serve mainly to educate clients on the products offered and provide lots of content to improve the customer journey and help clients find the perfect products for their professional projects.
Dynamic filters only show the most relevant options for each product category to help customers quickly find what they‘re looking forDisplay only the most relevant products and filters
Using FACT-Finder‘s ranking rules, Mayflex can easily adjust the order in which products are displayed based on their own business objectives, availability and relevance to the search query. Mayflex also optimized their filters to help customers narrow down their search results to only those products that match their unique specifications. Previously, Mayflex had hundreds of filters on the sidebar that were overwhelming to navigate and often proved more difficult to use than just scrolling through pages of search results. FACT-Finder‘s dynamic filters allow Mayflex to refine these filters down to only those that are appropriate for the given search and push the most relevant filters to the top. In this way, online customers are quickly provided with useful filters to help them find exactly what they are looking for – which is key in technical projects.
Intelligent recommendations and personalization, powered by AI
B2B clients have come to know and expect a certain level of quality in e-commerce shops from online shopping in their personal lives. Mayflex recognizes this and uses FACT-Finder to recreate one such powerful experience: recommendations. Using three levels of tailored recommendations, there‘s sure to be something online customers are interested in buying additionally, making cross-selling and up-selling a breeze.
The first level of recommendations suggest products that complement the item shown as well as an alternative. The second level shows various alternatives, in the same price range, less and more expensive. And to make things even more interesting, there‘s a “compatible with“ section that shows additional products that would work well with current one being looked at. For example, if purchasing a security camera, Mayflex suggests a mount that will fit perfectly.
Personalization takes the experience even one step further. Using data from a customer‘s current session, along with their purchase history and information on overall customer behavior, FACT-Finder is able to provide a personalized experience to each individual customer. Using AI, personalization recognizes preferences for brands, price ranges and categories to show the most relevant products, resulting in higher conversion and a more intuitive shopping experience.
Easily switch and promote brands
B2B distributors often add or change brands they sell, and making this transition smooth for clients is critical. To achieve this, Mayflex uses FACT-Finder‘s merchandising campaigns to promote new brands introduced to the market with hero products and special banners. It also serves as a great way to inform customers of new promotions being run. The campaigns are very quick and easy to set up – no programming or technical knowledge required.
With FACT-Finder‘s easy-to-use back-end, merchandising campaigns can be set up quickly – and without any programming knowledge.“I find it very easy to use. You don‘t need to have any particular technical knowledge to be able to use the settings and configuration within it – it‘s quite self-explanatory,“ remarks Samantha. “There‘s also a lot of support, so if we have an issue we can easily go through the Customer Service Desk to help improve some of the settings. Speaking with the FACT-Finder team regularly has made us aware of what else we can do with the system whereas with other providers, every time we wanted support we would have to pay for a separate package. With FACT-Finder, the support is there and they are quite willing to do training and point out areas of improvement. It feels like more of a partnership I‘d say.“
How FACT-Finder supports Mayflex: