Marketing Director of MXD Process: Getting Started with eCommerce

Daniel Loeschen shares with us how MXD Process, as a manufacturer, has gotten started with ecommerce despite the usually large nature of B2B purchases.

Danny:

All right, so let’s go ahead and jump into today’s episode. I have a familiar face, Daniel Loeschen from MXD Process. Daniel, thanks so much again for coming on. This is take two, so I think you were here last October, November, and we talked about social media, so if you haven’t seen that episode, you might want to check it out. We talk about the importance of social media and whether it’s viable for manufacturers, it was a really great episode. But one of the other things that we wanted to kind of pick up on the conversation is that you guys are rolling out with E-Comm. And we’re seeing that a lot, and I just think it’s really valuable for everybody. So just talk about how you guys started doing that, why you started going into E-Comm and all that good stuff. But before we really get it started, for those who haven’t met you or heard you, haven’t watched the episode, tell me a little bit about yourself and MXD.

Daniel:

Yeah, so I’m the marketing director at MXD. The company’s been around since 2010 I think, so going on nine years. And really just wanted to be a disruptor in the space that we’re in. You know, it’s old school industrial manufacturing and there’s not a lot of new developments in that industry in terms of how to sell and how to process things and market, and it’s just been the same stuff for so long and so we really wanted to kick it off from the beginning with trying to do something different and just see what happens. And it’s been a great almost nine years. I’ve been there for the last six, so almost since the beginning.

Danny:

So what does MXD manufacture?

Daniel:

Yeah, so we started off making just agitation equipment, like big mixers, things like that. And then after a couple years, we started making our own vessels for them, which we found, there was a large need in the market for that because there’s not a lot of companies, very few companies that do both and have the engineering in house. And so if you’re needing to mix something, you need a mixer and you need a tank, and so you’re buying them from different people, and then sometimes neither one of them have engineering, and you have to find engineering for them to design, and it can get really costly and really convoluted, and so we wanted to be a company that did all of that, and people really love that. So we added on stainless steel tanks and then a few years after that, we added on automation and batch control systems and stuff like that. So that’s why we kind of changed our name to MXD Process because we’re more of a process company now. So any piece of equipment that has to do with processing a liquid, that’s what we provide.

Danny:

All right, so food service or chemical–

Daniel:

Yep, pharmaceutical, food and beverage, brewing and distilling, chemicals, oil and gas, there’s a lot of different verticals for it.

Danny:

Awesome. All right, so that makes a lot of sense. So let’s talk about this E-comm thing. When did you guys start going into E-comm and why?

Daniel:

Yeah, so we started from day one. We built a store on Magento. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Magento.

Danny:

Yep, it’s a E-comm website.

Daniel:

Yeah, it’s a platform, and it’s a good platform. It was a little too much in terms of everything that it could do for what we needed. But it was something that was recommended, and we kicked off our website with that, and it did well. I mean, that’s really what grew our company up until this past year, we switched to Shopify. But going back to the beginning, the thought with launching with ecommerce was, no one else was doing it in our industry, and we did believe that people would buy expensive items without dealing with a salesperson. We didn’t really know how they would do it, or what that process would look like, but we believed that they could, and that it would be a better experience for them. So granted, kicking it off, especially in 2010 it was slow going, but it really started off with the propellers, like $60 propellers that you can’t really mess up. You know, that kind of stuff. And then after a few years, we redesigned the site, still on Magento, to kind of make it a little more user friendly and we were heavily investing in SEO to try to do better in rankings, get more traffic, all that stuff. But year over year, there was some small growth in ecommerce sales. And we always had the idea that eventually this could be a salesperson replacement; it could sell as much as a salesperson. We really believe that. We just wanted to figure out how to do it, and really that happened within the last year.

Danny:

Really, okay, wow, so 10 years–

Daniel:

Yeah, but the market’s there now, so I mean, I don’t think it would take–

Danny:

2010, that was a little difficult for sure.

Daniel:

Yeah, I mean some of our competitors didn’t even have websites in 2010.

Danny:

Some of them probably still don’t.

Daniel:

It’s a slow-moving industry. So we did a ton of research, we were willing to spend the money, talked to a lot of our customers to figure out what they were doing on the website, what they liked, what they didn’t like, what it would take to get them to be able to spend 10 grand online, you know, that kind of thing. And so we switched platforms, we moved to Shopify which is just full ecommerce. It doesn’t have a lot of the other bells and whistles. I don’t know if I even want to call them bells and whistles because Magento is a pretty dated software itself. And Shopify’s just been great; it’s super easy to use. We signed up for Shopify Plus. It has a lot of the B2B stuff, software and advantages that their normal platform doesn’t. And so we did a redesign, and the redesign was based off a lot of the customer feedback that we had and the analytics that we were looking at. One of the big things we found looking at the analytics was that, on average, the average time on site for a visitor on a website was over 20 minutes. Which is crazy. That’s an insane amount of time for someone to spend on a website. Like you and me wouldn’t do that.

Danny:

And why is that, why do you think?

Daniel:

We started reaching out to people, like asking them, and the main reason was how critical the purchase was. Because they are a business that is buying this equipment to produce a product. And so if they don’t get what they need, then they’re not making product, they’re losing money, and it’s our fault. And so they were spending tons of time trying to get as much information, trying to make sure that what they’re buying is what they need, yeah. And they were trying to do it without talking to a salesperson. And so after talking with them, we were like okay, well clearly what we need to do is get information on the website, educate, get resources on there so that they can speed up that process, and get enough information so that they’re confident and that they can trust us that they’re going to get what they need. So we spent a lot of time developing that kind of content, from better images of the products to customer testimonial videos, and so people can search for products based on the industry that they’re in.

Danny:

Yeah, that totally makes sense.

Daniel:

Yeah, and each industry page has customer testimonials. We traveled, visited, made videos of different companies that we’ve worked with, and so it’s to really build that trust through every step of the process, and it’s gone very well. Our website’s much easier to use, we have a visual navigation so people aren’t having to read as much, and that time on site has gone down by about 10 minutes since we launched, and it’s been a huge success so far. So I mean, we’re close to that goal of being able to replace a- not like fire someone and replace them, but not having to add the dollars without the cost, and that’s the goal. So we’re projecting next year, we’ll hit it probably halfway through the year if the growth continues.

Danny:

That’s awesome.

Daniel:

Yeah, so it’s been a huge win for us for sure.

Danny:

So I’m curious, so you started with a $60 part on there, what’s the most expensive product? Let me ask this: what’s your most expensive product that somebody has purchased?

Daniel:

Sure, I think the most expensive, it happened this year. Someone spent about 18 grand just straight through the ecommerce cart, which was unheard for us before. I mean, I think before we launched the site, it was maybe like three or four thousand. But I mean, we’re getting the $10,000 plus sales straight through the website every month now. And it’s amazing, you know, I mean, where we would get 10, 11 orders in a week, now we’re getting 30 or 40 in a week. The proof is in the pudding that if you do the research and you talk to your customers, you could be successful. That people are really willing to spend that much online when they’re confident. If they’re not confident, they’re not going to. Like for sure.

Danny:

Absolutely, so a couple questions: how are your customers primarily finding you guys?

Daniel:

Primarily through Google.

Danny:

So a lot of SEO.

Daniel:

A lot of SEO, yep. We put a lot of resources into that, and we have people that monthly, excuse me, monthly working on the website, and whether it’s on page data or the meta stuff in the background, the backend stuff, but we have people working on it all the time to try and increase those rankings month by month. And that’s the main way people are finding us, but then social media, and we do a lot of trade shows, and as we bring in more sales people, they bring in contacts too, and email marketing, I mean really the whole gamut of digital marketing. But the main sources is through Google search.

Danny:

I notice you’ve got your inbound shirt on, so for those that aren’t familiar with the inbound, it’s Hubspot. Hubspot obviously is a big proponent of blogs and content marketing and that stuff, I’m just curious, is that part, from a content marketing strategy standpoint, is that part of what you guys are doing as well?

Daniel:

Absolutely, yeah, that’s the main building block of our online marketing strategy; making content that then drives traffic. Excuse me. That drives traffic to bring people to you, but that also has to be followed up with a good sales strategy.

Danny:

Absolutely.

Daniel:

Yeah, and so you can bring as many people to your website as want, but if you’re not taking care of them on the other end, then it can be useless.

Danny:

Are you having customers that come to your website, maybe start going through Shopify, or they start looking at things, and then they’re like, I really want to talk to somebody about this, is there like a percentage where you may say-

Daniel:

Percentage-wise? I don’t know the exact, percentage-wise…

Danny:

Even anecdotally.

Daniel:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s probably somewhere around half I would say. And we have a really great online chat, and we have that chat personalized to every page of the website so if someone’s looking at, for example, we sell mixers called top entry mixers, if someone’s looking at it and they spend a certain amount of time on that page, the chat box will pop up and say like, something personal message about what they’re looking at, asking them if they need help about it. And so that prompts a ton of leads because–

Danny:

It starts engaging them.

Daniel:

And it’s a picture of one of our actual sales people and so if they do start talking with them, they’re talking to that person that they’re seeing. So it’s just kind of like tearing down those walls and letting them know that they’re talking to a real person. Even though that sales person isn’t the one that popped that up or whatever, but if they respond to it, they will be talking to that person, helping them along the way, every step of the way. Making checkout easier, that was one of the big pieces of feedback we got, was that our checkout was “laborious.”

Danny:

Make it more fun.

Daniel:

Yeah, or shorter at least. We had to make the switch to https site. A lot of websites are just getting removed from search because they’re not, and so we wanted to get ahead of that. Well one positive of Shopify Plus is you get, I can’t remember the name of it off the top of my head, but there’s like a couple different tiers of security, and Shopify Plus automatically you get the highest level of security, so you get that green badge with the check. And so we have that now, so people know that it’s secure when they’re shopping. But it’s just a one-step checkout. There’s a picture over here, and you fill your stuff in over here, and then you checkout, you’re done.

Danny:

That’s awesome. Okay, so a couple other questions then on that. And you may or may not know the answer to this, but when you’re looking at customer feedback, I’m curious, do you have any demographic information just in terms of who is actually buying, not in terms of name the companies, but just in terms of, are you seeing it boomers, gen X, millennials, is there a mix, any idea?

Daniel:

Yeah, not so much millennials. And the main reason for that is because our industry is older, it’s just older. It’s not so much, a lot of the older people that are retiring aren’t buying. It’s really that middle, like between 30 to 50, which I guess the early 30’s is still considered millennial, but that’s the main demographic right now because the CEOs are always the older guys, but the head of engineering or the project management’s the one that’s doing the purchasing, or looking for what they need to purchase. And that person is usually in the somewhat of a tenured employee, but not at retirement age. So it’s that middle, it’s getting younger. It’s definitely getting younger, but the millennial age group hasn’t quite aged up into the decision making role, yeah.

Danny:

That’s interesting. All right, so another question I’ve got for you. As far as getting organizational buy-in, so in terms of your leadership, and saying yes, we want to do this. How did that happen? Was there a lot of selling in? Obviously it’s a very innovative approach, especially to do that in 2010, let alone doing it today. I mean, still very innovative, very risky, very different. Is that a cultural thing inside the organization?

Daniel:

For us, it is definitely more of a cultural thing. Our CEO has always been on board with wanting to push the envelope in the industry, and so there’s not, for us, there wasn’t a whole lot of buy-in that needed to happen. Him and I worked very closely together on these things, and when we first started talking about making the switch to a better platform and really investing in it, it really started from realizing that we have to make a change because of the security of our site. That was a big issue because we needed to upgrade how our site currently was, or we were going to lose a ton of ground in our rankings.

Danny:

Just out of security from, really?

Daniel:

Yeah, yeah.

Danny:

Interesting, okay.

Daniel:

Because you know how if you go to a site that isn’t secured, you get that blank page on Google, and that’s just happening more and more and more, and so that was the pathway we’re on. Like that was going to happen, and so we’re like, okay, what do we need to do for this? And then once we kind of pulled that out, then we realized that we really need to update our theme which was currently on Magento, and then Magento had just upgraded their platform so that even if we updated this theme and it wasn’t going to work on the new ones, so I mean we ended up going to a conference to try and find people and talk to people, and started this year-long search to figure out what we actually wanted to do. And through that, it was just like, uncovering one thing after another of what we could do. Because that stuff’s not cheap, even from the beginning, we knew we would have to spend a good amount of money on it, but if we were going to spend the money, what else could we do? Like what could we do? And that’s when we started looking at the numbers of our ecommerce and not just going to get a better design, but a more functional design; one that, when people see, that it makes them feel good. I know that sounds really vague, but it’s a big part of it because when you’re shopping online, especially if you’re going to spend some money.

Danny:

$18,000.

Daniel:

Yeah, right. I don’t know how often you do that. But when you buy anything online, within seconds, when a website loads, you get a feeling about it. You just know this is going to be hard, I don’t know if I really want to deal with these people, you might not even be able to put it into words, but you know. And so we wanted to have a website that didn’t give people that feeling. That instantly made people feel like it was a company that was well reputable, they could trust, all that kind of stuff.

Danny:

That’s such an important thing because we’re so conditioned to making snap judgments, I mean just immediately.

Daniel:

Even if it’s not founded. This is what we do.

Danny:

Exactly. Instinct, we are totally, really we’re taught now to just totally judge a book by its cover. And it happens. So if you’re totally starting off on the wrong foot and the websites like eh.

Daniel:

Yeah, it can’t look like a directory, which I mean, you’ve seen so many of these, especially the industrial manufacturing, their websites just look like a directory. It’s just a terrible version of Amazon. And it loads slowly, it’s hard to figure out what you’re doing. That’s why we wanted to go with a visual navigation so that people don’t even have to read as much. So whenever they go to the menu and it drops down, there’s all the categories, but next to the categories is a picture so they can just see. because a lot of times, especially with our products, people know I need a mixer that’s going to fit this, but they don’t know what it’s called. And so they’ll come to the website looking around like, do I need a Drum mixer, do I need a tote mixer? Like I don’t know what it is, I know I need it to fit in this thing, and they know what it looks like. And so they can see it and immediately by like, that’s it, that’s what I need, and go on down. So it’s really improved everything, but it started with a design, and then getting into the numbers of like, what do we need to do with the design to improve these numbers? How can we get people to spend less time on our site, but make it a more productive lesser time? because the last thing we want is someone spending 25 minutes on our website and then just bouncing. I mean, what a waste of time. And they’re going to feel like they wasted a ton of time. So we really wanted to lower that and give people just a better experience overall.

Danny:

That’s awesome, that’s really intriguing to me. One part in particular, and I know a lot of people struggle with this is, what did getting that feedback look like? Did you just email a bunch of people? What did that look like?

Daniel:

Sure, so we got a list together of a spreadsheet, and we filtered that list by the people that have spent the most online. And then started just calling them or emailing them, however we could get in contact with them, just asking questions of, what do they like about the store? What do they not like? What is their process through when they’re trying to find something? “Tell me how you’re doing this.” So we got a lot of that feedback. And we went all the way down the line to people that had purchased but they never purchased again, asking them why, and things like that. And then we also got a heat mapping software for our website so we can see how people were navigating, which that’s crazy.

Danny:

It’s creepy, but it’s cool.

Daniel:

It’s creepy and it can be, you have to take your emotions out of it because you can see people–

Danny:

What are you doing? Go this way!

Daniel:

Yeah, well, and you can watch someone’s session and you just know they hate this website and they’re having a horrible time.

Danny:

And it tears you up inside.

Daniel:

Yeah, you just feel terrible. But that was super helpful because we could see where people are naturally gazing and all that stuff. And whether it was where we wanted them to or not, and be able to adjust, and so that was really helpful. So those were the two main ones is like, actually contacting the people that were purchasing, and then the heat mapping and the website sessions.

Danny:

So using like Crazy Egg or Lucky Orange or something like that?

Daniel:

Yeah, it was… HotJar is what it was.

Danny:

Yeah so anyways, anyone who’s interviewers who are listening or watching, if you’re not familiar with that, there’s some creepy technologies that basically do that. It literally records website data and activity. You can see where the hotspot areas that people are looking, I mean some of them will actually record the actual user session so you can see the mouse.

Daniel:

See the mouse all over.

Danny:

Creepy, but it does really help from user experience.

Daniel:

And you’re not getting any personal data from them, so it’s not anything, yeah. But those were the two big data points that we looked at.

Danny:

That’s awesome. So what’s next? I don’t want you to give away the secret sauce here.

Daniel:

We do have a big project we’re working on, and I can’t go into full detail about it right now because we’re kind of in the middle of it, but it’s a big step and they’re trying to make that process even easier. We recently re-evaluated our kind of core purposes and culture as a company, and so we kind of landed on a new core purpose that we want to use and really implement in everything, and that’s that we really believe that every process we touch, we improve. That’s our core purpose statement as a company, and so we want that to kind of filter down internally and externally. And so how are we actually manufacturing stuff? How can we improve that? How can we improve marketing? How can we improve communication internally? And then on the customer side, how can we improve their experience? How can we let them know along the way when their stuff is getting built? How can we evaluate their process that they’re actually buying this equipment for, and maybe recommend something better, even if that means it’s cheaper. You know, like, really improve the process for the better, not just for our own gain. You know, that kind of thing. because I mean, we really believe that as a company, the more that you give, the more you’re going to get. If we sell someone something that’s less expensive than what they originally wanted because it’s what they really need.

Danny:

Then you pick up a customer for life.

Daniel:

For life, yeah. And you don’t feel like you cheated someone out of something, you know? And so we really want to just apply that to everything, and that’s why this next project is going to be so important because we do believe that people are smart enough to make their own decisions, and they need to be able to not just find what they want, make their own decisions, but to be able to customize stuff, too. And that currently there’s nothing like that in the industry. And so that’s really what we’re working toward so that people can be their own salesmen through the entire process. And so that’s what we’ve got coming up hopefully sometime next year.

Danny:

That’s awesome.

Daniel:

We’re working on that hard right now.

Danny:

Very cool. All right, so one of my last questions, you know, for those companies that are interested in taking a little step in that direction. Obviously we know, and this isn’t necessarily going to work for everybody, totally depends on what you’re manufacturing and your product and all that stuff. But what tips would you give for somebody who’s thinking about it, or like hey, we kind of want to get into this. What would you say?

Daniel:

Well, I would assume that they have websites now, even if it’s not ecommerce. And so I would start with that data. Start looking at that data. Install a heat map so they can see what people are doing. You’ll find out very quick whether or not they’re finding the answers to their questions. And once you know that data, start answering those questions. That’s really where you kind of learn if, like, well maybe ecommerce isn’t what we need to be doing, or maybe it is. You can have this product with all the information that they could ever want, and really clean it up and make it easy to use. So unlike last time when we talked about social media and you asked about the time investment, I don’t think that this requires to start a huge full-time salary time investment. Gosh, websites can be so easy nowadays. And especially if you’re using Shopify. You know, there’s plenty of great agencies out there that can do pretty cheap, good templates that are built off of best practices so they might not be customized to the extent that ours is, but they’re customized to best practices. So you’re starting on a good foot.

And so you can start there, implement this ecommerce website, and then you don’t have to lose what you’re already doing because you’ll have a good website, it can be a legion, you’re not firing salespeople, you’re not really changing anything, and just pick a few products that you think that people are buying. Maybe a middle of the road price range that’s somewhat of a popular product that you sell that’s not complicated. And start with that and really put some ad spend into it, and try to really see what you can do in terms of converting your visitors to those things, and see if it’s something that’s viable. And then if it is, then you can start adding more and more products and building more and more content. You don’t have to just put all 2000 products you have from day one, because you’ll spend a million dollars in content and images. You just don’t have to do that, but I think people feel like they have to do that. But you can start smaller and kind of test the waters of it, and then collect that data. And if you’re in a place where your competitors aren’t doing it, I mean, gosh, you’ve got nothing to lose, everything to gain.

Danny:

Absolutely. Well Daniel, again, I really appreciate the time, the answers just unloaded a ton of value and just a lot of great insights. Thank you so much for coming back on IndustrialSage, swinging by in the Atlanta area. So if anybody wanted to come check you guys out, you’re at mdxprocess.com?

Daniel:

The website that we’ve been talking about is mixerdirect.com. Yeah, it’s our brand of agitation equipment.

Danny:

So mixerdirect.com, check that out and take a look at all the great things. I love the visualization you were talking about through the navigation and all that stuff.

Daniel:

Yep, definitely.

Danny:

Thank you, thank you.

Daniel:

Yeah, absolutely, my pleasure.

Danny:

Well, this was really, I love this episode. I’m just a big huge fan of ecommerce, and I know we talk about it a lot on here. There’s so many key takeaways that I definitely took. Think about, if you think this might be a really good fit for you, you might want to try it, dip your toe in the water, just try it. You don’t have to do everything like Daniel said. Maybe just try a couple little things, and I’m going to steal a line that Malika, if you watched a couple episodes ago from Landis+Gyr talked about nail it and scale it. All right so just like get it, test it out, and if it works, then scale it, and go from there. Don’t be afraid to continue to really just try. You have to be innovative, and that’s what it’s really going to take right now.

I think one of the other great awesome takeaways is, and we talked about this a lot, is looking at your website and that experience. Like people make a snap judgment on you and with your product and your company. And if you go to your website, we talked about this on a previous episode we just recorded, that when people come look at your website, what’s the experience? This all plays into it. So anyways, take a look at MXDprocess.com– I’m sorry, mxddirect.com, I got that wrong– and take a look at what they’re doing, see how you guys might be able to use that in your own organization and go from there. So if you have any future questions that you love for us to answer on IndustrialSage, we love to do that, you can reach out to us at IndustrialSage.com/questions. If you’ll see it on iTunes, we love a review on social media. Hey, share the love. And as always, thanks for watching. I’m Danny Gonzales and this is IndustrialSage.

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