A review of one of the top B2B eCommerce sites on the market, Quill.com. If you are looking for a case study or best practices, this review will walk you through the great experience on Quill.com from Search and Navigation to Account Management.

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BEST of B2B
ECOMMERCE
Quill.com
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This is not a scientific examination of the site but
I think it is a good representation of B2B
functionality. I have chosen to focus on the
good, instead of criticizing any flaws of the site.
-Justin
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Notice the F-shape for usability
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B2B TOOLS: REORDER FAST
Reorder fast takes you to your past orders
for quick reorder (as it implies).

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B2B TOOLS: QUICK ORDER
If you know your part number and quantity

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CHAT & PHONE
Conversion can be a phone call or a live chat
session. When you do call or chat, you get a
consistent experience

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SEARCH
Search box is front and center and in the F
zone for usability. Screaming to be typed into.

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SEARCH: TYPE AHEAD
Type ahead shows products, key words, categories and
even does merchandising in the type ahead with image

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NAVIGATION
Traditional placement of the category
structure in the F zone. Using either
navigation or search, you get to the
exact same pages. Consistent!!

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NAVIGATION
The fly over navigation is
extremely robust and
detailed

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NAVIGATION
This flyover is interactive,
allowing you to put in a search
term

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Once you search or navigate…

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NAVIGATION
Refinements are specific to the
search made. In this case, only
paper refinements appear

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NAVIGATION
Search within results

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SEARCH RESULTS

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Change Relevancy
Ranking

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Product Detail
Snapshot

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Volume Pricing
Ratings & Reviews

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Compare

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Using guided navigation

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Navigating shows the
product catalog
taxonomy

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Quill recognizes this statistic for their own site, and it is
apparent that they have invested into their entire
search and navigation experience. Search and
Navigation are tied together, not silos. You can search
then navigate, or navigate then search all getting you
to the same results.
Their Type Ahead is especially impressive with all types
of content coming back in the drop down. Products,
categories and even merchandising content with
images are returned back as the user types into the
search box.
Navigation includes a vast array and variety of
attributes to be able to navigate on. These attributes
stay relevant based on what the user is search on. The
attributes themselves are extremely detailed and allow
the user to multi-select, and even search within the
results and attributes.
ROI is often calculated based on Traffic and
Conversion, both of which Quill does an excellent job.

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B2B E-Commerce Experience: Quill.com
There is an increasing trend in B2B organizations
adopting some form of e-commerce capability in
their online marketing initiatives. According
to BtoB Online‘s study, “The Emerging Role of B2B
E-commerce,” 31% of B2B marketers are “strong”
or “complete” adopters of e-commerce. And as
highlighted in a recent report covered by
Econsultancy, by migrating B2B customers online,
companies have seen a 44% increase in Average
Order Value (AOV).
In a recent article from eCommerce and B2B, they
highlighted five examples of exemplary B2B e-
commerce websites in terms of customer
experience, account management and handling
complex product catalogs. Out of the five
examples, only Quill.com scored an “A” for their
onsite SEO efforts.
What SEO Initiatives Does Quill Do Right?
Ease of navigation, effective search functionality and
responsiveness are some of the top attributes
demanded from prospective customers of B2B e-
commerce sites. It’s easy to forget some of the SEO-
specific details when developing e-commerce
functionality because the “SEO factors” are not
always as easily visible.
As I reviewed Quill’s website, I discovered these
positive factors contributing to its “A” grade:
• Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical tag
• Use of keyword targets in HTML Title, document
content, and descriptions
• Accessability to engines (sounds silly but I’ve seen
a few sites that were inadvertently blocked via
robots.txt because of development testing or some
other reason)
• Use of structured data markup in product detail
pages of the website
Page load times play a part in both user experience
and influencing search visibility. According
to Pingdom, Quill loads faster than 64% of all tested
websites, at a page load time of 2.29 seconds. In
comparison to Google site speed analysis, Quill’s
website appears right in line with opt-in publishers
sharing Google Analytics site speed data.
An excerpt from http://searchengineland.com/3-
b2b-companies-integrate-seo-online-marketing-
strategy-183837

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Product detail page(s)

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QUICK VIEW
Quick product popup with all the product
information and add to cart

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QUICK VIEW
Overview, descriptions, specifications,
reviews and images

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BASIC PRODUCT INFO
Title, SKU, Model, description

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Multiple images

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Add to Cart, and B2B
Add to List (for later)

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Volume Pricing

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Options and Variants

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Get shipping quote

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Upsell better product

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Merchandising & Offers

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B2B Account Pages

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Before I talk about the
account pages, notice this
bar at the bottom on all
pages.

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Clicking Recently Viewed,
brings up a list of products
we have clicked on recently.

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The B2B account pages include most of the best practices in B2B. Most are self
explanatory, but the following is their My Account page:

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View all aspects of orders,
tracking and even make a
return. All downloads are saved
and available

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My Accounting is outside of the
purchase funnel. A small company
or A/P department can review and
pay ALL invoices regardless of where
the order was placed.

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Quill Cash is a B2B loyalty program
that gives them cash to use on
purchases online. They can check
their history and balance.

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All profile preferences are exposed
here to customers. Addresses are
typically not editable, but that is also
configurable by the account.

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Quill provides easy way to recycle
used ink toner cartridges.

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ECOMMERCEANDB2B.COM
@justin_king
justin@ecommerceandb2b.com
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