What Makes a Reliable Online Ordering Lab Supply Website
Online ordering is one of the most popular ways of ordering laboratory supplies in the 21st century. It is important to associate your purchasing with suppliers that are continually adapting their online platforms to give you a faster and more hassle-free experience. In this article, we look at important features of a laboratory supply website to assist you with identifying suppliers that are moving with the times to give you the ultimate experience!
Ultimate Uptime
A good lab supplier has consistent Web uptime which assists in increasing reliability and dependability. Consistent uptime means it is very little or no failure in the server hosting that website. While it’s almost impossible for a website to guarantee 100% uptime, a good website should offer 99.5-99.9% uptime. Companies that see the importance of uptime for their customers will invest in their own services or associate themselves with recognised service providers that can guarantee 99.5-99.9% uptime. From a customer’s perspective, it is a major inconvenience if your regular supplier has a website that is unavailable, due to maintenance or server issues etc…
Simplicity
A great laboratory supply website is simple and easy to navigate. A supplier that cares about your experience online will continually study analytics and adjust the site to make it simpler and easier to use. Measures will be taken to ensure you can find your object in the shortest possible time. Great websites will display core products and services very simply, to help you as a customer get straight to the point. They will treat each product page as real-estate so that the most important information whether it be an image, video, or text is given priority position at the top of the page.
Quality Content /Resource
A great lab supply website will be fully resourced with current information and kept up to date daily. They take pride in their images and videos so that a customer can see exactly what they are getting with sharpness and clarity. A great lab supply website has an abundance of resources available such as downloadable PDF specification sheets and SDS’s for reagents.
Fast Loading Times
Fast loading times are important for customers on the move. Loading time can be partially affected by the receiver’s internet speeds but a great site will continually look at increasing speed of key pages to ensure a fast and hassle-free experience.
Related Products
A great laboratory supply website makes it easy for you to view and order-related products and either picks up this detail based on live data from customer visits or intelligence from personnel who are able to provide data on what products relate to one another.
Visual Stock Levels
Accurate and visual stock levels are important for customers looking for speed and convenience. Look for delivery guarantees for in-stock items, for example…If you order a stocked item at www.westlab.com.au before 2.00pm EST, goods are guaranteed to leave the same day. This gives great confidence to customers that need their goods immediately.
Easy Account Set up & Payment Process
A great site will allow you to set up an account quickly and effectively and will have a very simple and secure payment gateway. The process will be very self-explanatory so you, as a customer can self-navigate and complete your order efficiently. A great site will often incorporate an automated fast credit application process for a new customer like the Westlab “EasyApply”. This allows you to set up and have a 30-day account approved in 24 hours.
Speed Chat Function
A great lab supply website will have a highly responsive chat function but it’s not the chat function that makes it great, it is the team behind it! The Westlab “Speed Chat” for example, has an average response time of 42 seconds. This is great if you don’t have the time to pick up the phone and have some simple questions relating to products, accounts, operations etc…
