Award won for fast-paced, industry-leading changes to continually improve the online customer experience
Oxford, UK, 3 October 2016 - RS Components (RS), the trading brand of Electrocomponents plc (LSE:ECM), the global distributor for engineers, has won the Best B2B eCommerce category at the eCommerce Awards for Excellence 2016 for the fast-paced, industry-leading changes it has made to continually improve the online experience for its customers. A key factor to the win was the company’s high level of customer collaboration, which has helped to define and shape thousands of website enhancements to make it faster and easier to use.
RS collects customer feedback and suggestions on a continuous basis through its ‘voice of the customer’ online survey, call centres and real-time testing. This insight, coupled with an Agile methodology, has enabled it to make its website quicker, simpler and more convenient for customers to find, research and purchase the products they are looking for. The company has made significant enhancements to search relevance and filtering, stock level visibility and quote functionality. In addition, site speed has been improved by 40%, over 120,000 new images, datasheets and videos have been added, and ongoing SEO has led to improved search engine visibility and ranking.
eCommerce already represents over 65% of RS sales around the world, but the website improvements have led to the highest level of online conversion and growth in RS online sales for three years, as well as a significant increase in the company’s customer satisfaction rating.
Guy Magrath, Chief Digital Officer at RS, said: "Once again our efforts to continually improve the digital experience for our customers have been recognised by a leading industry award. Customer insight is key to our user-centred design process and Agile approach, enabling us to deliver an industry-leading online experience for our customers that is in-line with the best B2C retailers."
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About RS Components
RS Components and Allied Electronics are the trading brands of Electrocomponents plc, the global distributor for engineers. With operations in 32 countries, we offer more than 500,000 products through the internet, catalogues and at trade counters to over one million customers, shipping more than 44,000 parcels a day. Our products, sourced from 2,500 leading suppliers, include electronic components, electrical, automation and control, and test and measurement equipment, and engineering tools and consumables.
Electrocomponents is listed on the London Stock Exchange and in the last financial year ended 31 March 2016 had revenues of £1.29bn.