Team Carbon : Silver Team

Web Analysis of www.peachsuite.com by Drew Raab

Value Proposition and E-Commerce Category

PeachSuite is a B2B retail website for hotel supplies and equipment. The site claims several value propositions including having a variety of unique products, high quality supplies and equipment and low prices. Additionally they make note of their abundant selection by way of an "Atlanta showroom and warehouse (that) has 120,000 square feet and maintains thousands of hotel products in stock and ready to ship." The company does not however require purchases to be made by businesses and as such it also acts as a B2C site for purchases that can be made by individual consumers.


Primary Competitors and Revenue Model

PeachSuite's revenue model is purely retail sales. Competitors include

  • American Hotel Register Company (Americanhotel.com), "The Premier Supplier to the Hospitality Industry".
  • HD Supply Maintenance Solutions (hdsupplysolutions.com), a leading supplier of maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) products to owners and managers of multifamily, hospitality, educational and commercial properties; healthcare providers; and municipal and government facilities.
  • National Hospitality Supply (nathosp.com), providing Hotels, Motels and others in the Hospitality Industry a source for all their supply and equipment needs.


Integration

Before the company established its web presence, it was already an established supplier of hospitality products with a large warehouse in Atlanta, GA. They do have a call center for placing orders, as well as the website. They have a presence with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn. Additionally, they maintain an email contact list providing exclusive offers and updates.


Intended Customers

As a B2B site specializing in hospitality products, the intended customers are hospitality companies, such as a hotels and restaurants. The company sells to both large and small companies and it offers free shipping for larger orders.


Attract - Market and advertise in order to attract consumer interest

The site uses a combination of marketing and advertising. It has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn. It maintains a distribution list which company representatives can sign up for to receive offers and updates. Additionally it distributes promotional pieces that appear in other sites as short write-ups.


Attract - impulsive, patient and analytical buyers

To attract impulsive buyers the home page highlights a "New Products" section and a "Featured Products" section with immediate Add to Cart buttons. For the patient buyers, the site has a Sale/Clearance link on the Home page which stands out at the bottom of the page. Additionally the patient buyer can subscribe to the exclusive offer emails. For the analytical buyer, the site offers the ability to select multiple products and proceed to a comparison grid. (I would note however, that there is no review information provided for the products and the comparison grid just redisplays the images and general information of the product without truly providing 'side-by-side' details.)


Interact - Enhancing the Customer Experience

The site offers a great number of products. To provide the ability to quickly locate a specific product, a search tool has been implemented along with filtering checkboxes to assist with narrowing any searches. A layout control has been implemented to allow tailoring the viewing of results in a fashion more welcome to the user. The site also provides a shopping cart to allow for caching the list of products a customer wishes to purchase and allowing them to leave the shopping cart to continue shopping if desired. When viewing individual items (outside of the shopping cart) additional items of possible interest are also displayed.


Act - Order Placement and Payment

As noted above, the site has a shopping cart to handle order placement and payment. The shopping cart maintains the list of items the customer has placed into the cart and a link to the cart is always available allowing the customer to remove an individual product, empty the cart entirely or adjust quantity. The Sub-total is readily available and shipping can be estimated and added at any time. Payment information can be stored by user accounts secured with passwords, but to cater to customers who do not wish to establish accounts, a 'guest' checkout and payment option is available.


Act - Delivery, Shipping and Returns

Shipping is usually provided through UPS and charges are calculated from one a single warehouse located in Georgia. Larger items may need to be shipped via freight carriers. Several delivery periods are available for purchase (i.e. Next Day, 2nd day, etc.). Free shipping is offered for purchases over $500, but are restricted to certain products. Products that fall within this criteria are noted as such during ordering. PeachSuite has a 30 day refund or exchange policy if the customer is not completely satisfied with the online purchase as long as the product was not used and it was not a custom ordered product. If a product is returned where the product is not defective, it must be unopened to receive the full refund. They do not, however, refund shipping charges or pay for return shipping.


React - Customer Service and Support

Customer service is provided via an online email form on their website as well as by telephone.


Interface and Arrangement of Content

Overall the interface is fairly utilitarian with products categorized first by business interest and then by product categorization. (Some of the links do not display product information and it is not clear if products are just currently not offered in those categories or if the link is broken.) Products are also categorized separately by brand name. The interface is clean and not cluttered and products are easily identifiable by image and description. Only the home page appears to provide visual imagery appeal other than the utilitarian layout with several image links near the bottom of the page to a Sales area and to New and Featured product.


Utilitarian and Hedonic Shopping

As noted above, the site is mostly utilitarian with products categorized for easy drill down. A search function is also present with filtering options to provide an alternative approach to locating products. There is little in the way of hedonic shopping involved other than imagery of each product. There is no mechanism for providing or reading product reviews.


Improvements

To improve customer loyalty the category links that provide no product information should be removed or at the very least linked to a message explaining that no current product is avaible. One particularly annoying link is the Full Store Directory which does not act as a link at all (and thus provides no information or change to the screen). Because the website focuses on business customers, the utilitarian approach is appropriate. The limited appeal to the impulsive shopper with the home page quick links for new and featured product is appropriately limited in scope. However, a business shopper is not likely to be an impulse shopper. This section should probably be tailored toward individuals, but currently the product selection lends itself more to business items that a homeowner would not likely buy. Again, even in this section the links do not appear to function correctly. Clicking on the "View All New Products" link takes the user to a product listing that yields no product results.


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