Selling a Product Without Ecommerce: SteriPEN Buy Online Function

Ecommerce is the best way to sell your product online - but what if that isn't an option?  What's the best way to "sell" a physical product to customers if you don't have the resources to actually sell the product through your own website?

We faced an interesting challenge with the new SteriPEN site.  One of the site's main goals (if not the main goal) is to sell products.  However, SteriPENs are not sold directly through the company website; there is no on-site ecommerce.

To tackle this issue, we chose a two-pronged approach:

1. Facilitate online purchases through links to online retailers that carry SteriPEN
2. Point users to the nearest physical stores that carry SteriPEN, through an easy store locator search

Here, I'd like to focus on the custom functionality behind option #1: links to online retailers.

The Buy SteriPEN Online call to action widget, placed prominently throughout the site, links to an internal Buy Online page.  This Buy Online page has a list of links to online stores that carry SteriPEN.  Two dropdown menus let users filter these stores by the specific Product Categories and/or Products they carry.  For instance, if you select the Outdoor category from the dropdown, only those stores that sell Outdoor SteriPENs will display.

We also customized these filters so that if a user clicks the Buy Online widget from a specific Product or Product Category page, the list of stores will be automatically prefiltered by that Product/Product Category.

So far, this is basic filter functionality...  But then we took it one step further.  Each online retailer has a unique link URL for each Product.

Let's say you choose Adventurer from the Product dropdown menu, causing only the retailers who carry Adventurer to appear below.  Now, let's say you want to shop at REI.  Clicking the REI logo from this filtered list will take you directly to the specific REI SteriPEN Adventurer page - as opposed to an REI SteriPEN generic page.

This specific level of customization helps guide potential customers directly to the point of purchase - allowing them to buy the exact product they want, at the store they want.  It also gives them plenty of opportunity to compare prices and explore their purchasing options.  As I said initially, ecommerce is usually the best choice; but when it just isn't possible, this is one alternative.