When does a global distributor of electronic components need to start operating more like Amazon.com and other consumer-focused companies? When the market demands that it move in that direction.

At Avnet Inc., we came to just that realization about three years ago as we saw a shift taking place within our electronic components market. While large manufacturers continued to buy large quantities of components for their designs, a growing segment of engineers and smaller companies wanted to buy low volumes (including product samples) online, instead of by phone or face to face. Many of our customers had to either be really patient or simply stubborn to make a successful purchase on the e-commerce site we offered at that time.

We realized we needed to shift our B2B e-commerce approach to incorporate a B2C perspective. While we were dealing with business customers, their online purchasing expectations were shaped by their experiences on consumer-friendly Web sites such as Amazon.com and HomeDepot.com. Problem is, the experience and functionality those kinds of sites provide users isn't easily replicated in a B2B environment, especially within our industry. For example, we deal with millions of parts, and each part has dozens of technical attributes that must be precisely specified for engineers to determine if it's the part they need. Additionally, legal and country-specific regulations determine which companies and individuals Avnet can ship certain parts to around the world.

Undaunted, we hired two consultants with hands-on experience with consumer e-commerce sites and operations. Through this process and discussions with our customers, we identified a number of best practices to add to Avnet's e-commerce site, including:

Now anyone can search for part information without having to register and share personal details. Only when customers reach a purchase point do we then ask them for their information. And we no longer run credit checks on Web customers making purchases with credit cards. Instead, we rely on industry-standard credit card authorization methods. We also obtain information at this stage to determine any legal or country restrictions on the shipment.

We rebuilt our search engine, using Endeca's technology. We now let customers search by part number, product name, description, and technical attributes. Returned search results now include similar products that match the engineer's requirements, so the engineer can make informed decisions about alternative parts based on factors such as availability, cost, and manufacturer.

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