Team Carbon : Silver Team

Web Analysis of www.tophotelsupply.com by Marty Ciszon

Value Proposition and E-Commerce Category

Tophotel Supply, Inc. is a distributor of hotel equipment and supplies for guest rooms, bathrooms, and public areas. Tophotel Supply, Inc. makes a claim on their website that "If it is printed on paper or plastic - we are the best." Additionally, their value proposition includes providing custom stock programs and just-in-time distribution from three warehouses across the country. This website appears to be primarily a B2B website serving large hotel clients. Their rotating marquee on their landing page touts the names of Hampton, Hilton, Doubletree, Marriott, etc.


Primary Competitors and Revenue Model

The primary competitors of Tophotel Supply are the following websites:

  • 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

In my research, it does not appear that Tophotel Supply has a lot of integration outside of their website. It's difficult to determine if any direct mail campaigns exist from my web searches, and they also do not appear to have a social media presence. I do find a basic Yelp page with their listing, however, no reviews are posted. The only channels that Tophotel Supply is integrated with are their customer service channel, in which they tout their customer service number in prominent orange font at the top of their landing page. Additionally, an address to their sales office with a direct telephone and fax line number are provided in the "About Us" section of their site.


Intended Customers

The intended customers of the site are other hotels looking to buy products for their hotel lobbies, guest rooms, etc. Many large brand names hotels are showcased on the landing page in a rotating marquee, and also as samples in the featured products section. Hampton Inn & Suites, Courtyard Marriott, Fairfield Inn, The Westin, Best Western, etc are hotels promoted on the homepage. For certain products, when clicking through, you are provided the option to add your hotel name to the product (i.e. Hampton Inn & Suites logo printed on the pens for a hotel room).

These customers could be in a variety of situations looking to buy one-off products for individual hotel rooms, or bulk orders to fill many rooms. This site offers everything from shower curtains, to wastebaskets, to bottle openers at unit cost, or discounted bundled prices.


Attract - Market and advertise in order to attract consumer interest

Unfortunately, it does not appear the site is conducting a lot of marketing and advertising to attract consumer interest. Their lack of presence in social media, as well as the absence of any prominent email address capture form, leads me to believe most of their customers are obtained through word of mouth and more offline relationships with sales representatives.

Customers can register for the site by creating an online account consisting of an email address and a password, with the option to check a box for an occasional newsletter. During this registration process, users provide their shipping address, which presumably could be used for direct mailings. Since registering, I have not received any communication in email or direct mail format.


Attract - impulsive, patient and analytical buyers

Tophotel Supply's site is organized in a 3 column format. The left column is a very long, alphabetical list of products starting with "Acrylic display holders" all the way down to "Wyndham Hotel & Resorts stock items". I should note that for some reason, "Electronics" is not in the alphabetical list and is at the very bottom, which may be a simple coding mistake. Additionally, directly above "Acrylic display holders" are two links to "Sale items" and "24 hour gifts."

The middle column consists of a welcome message (if you're logged in), a rotating marquee of product images, and then a section of "Featured Products."

The right column contains a placement for "Super Deals" and a placement for "New Products."

I should be clear to note that the landing page is quite long, and a lot of content is "below the fold," thus requiring scrolling. It is also quite dense with copy, and requires a lot of reading to fully learn about each product.

Impulsive buyers would likely be attracted to the large images displayed in the rotating marquee and the Featured Products section, which attempt to capture your attention with images and bolded, red copy talking about prices, and discounts if purchased in bulk.

Analytical buyers may struggle. The site lacks a strong search and filter function, and overwhelms with the vast amounts of products available. It is not intuitive that filters exist until you attempt a search first. So, an analytical buyer would need to be savvy enough to type in a keyword search in the top left search bar. Then, on the results page, they would find filter options to sort by price (low to high, high to low), most popular, title, manufacturer, newest, oldest, and availability. Despite all of that, it still may not let them make an analytical decision because reviews do not exist and product compare pages are non-existent.


Interact - Enhancing the Customer Experience

From an interact perspective, Tophotel Supply makes a few basic attempts at enhancing customer experience.

First, it allows customers to add products to a "Wish List" seemingly replicating a "favorites" function so that you can bookmark products for future viewing, assuming you are logged in.

Second, many products have an option to view a "Larger Photo" from product detail pages, allowing customers to further inspect their products online before ordering.

Third, a sharing function exists that allows users to "Email a Friend" from a product detail page.

Links to viewing discounts exist, too, in an attempt to save the user money on their purchase.


Act - Order Placement and Payment

Tophotel Supply has a unique feature, in that as you navigate various product pages, a "My Recent History" bar floats on the bottom of the page, reminding you of products that you have recently visited or even added to your cart. This appears to be an attempt to keep all of your interested items top of mind so that Tophotel Supply captures as much sales as possible from your visit. Users do have the option to "Turn History Off."

When checking out, like most sites, there is an option to checkout as a user by logging in with your email address and password. There is also the option to "Proceed to Checkout" directly without logging in. Customers are provided forms to provide billing and shipping address information, and can select from three different payment options. The four standard credit card networks exist (Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover). Users can also choose to have a credit application faxed to them, or to choose an option called Net 10, which appears to imply that an invoice would be mailed for future payment. Options to use PayPal, V.me, Google Wallet, etc. did not exist.

It is admirable, though, that the checkout process is a one-page checkout with all information required on one screen, and a confirmation page following with a receipt.


Act - Delivery, Shipping and Returns

From a delivery, shipping and returns perspective, it is interesting during the checkout experience that the site asks two questions: "Is this order needed by a certain date?" and "What is the billing email address for the hotel?' yet the only option provided under the shipping section is "Ground." This does not appear to make sense, because if you indicated you needed the products next day in the text box field, your only option would be ground, and there is a good chance you will not receive your products in time.

A few notes on shipping discovered in the "Help" section:

  • During the site registration, users provide their shipping address. If the country they reside in is not in the dropdown, then Tophotel Supply does not ship to that country, so a user must attempt registration first to find this out.
  • Orders do not ship until payment is received so if a non-credit card option above is selected, orders will be held until information is received.
  • Return policy was linked to the Terms & Conditions of the site and no return information was obvious.

React - Customer Service and Support

In large orange font in the header of the landing page, a prominent placement of Tophotel Supply's customer service phone number exists to help customers with their orders. However, upon further investigation on the site, their customer service hours are only from 8 am to 5 pm Monday through Friday. With such a prominent placement of a customer service number, you'd expect wider availability of customer service staff.

The site also offers a "Help" section with navigation to this section in the upper right hand corner of the global header. When accessing the Help section, it is a categorized list of frequently asked questions under the groupings of Order Status, My Account, International Shipping, Guarantees, Pricing and Billing, Buyer's Guide, and Additional Support.


Interface and Arrangement of Content

Frankly, the site's interface and arrangement of content is rather poor. It appears that Tophotel Supply has a vast inventory of products for their customers, however, there are over 100 links in the left hand navigation for products, and some of those links have hover menus with another 10 links to drill into.

There are no categories on the site that attempt to group products into natural groups to help a user drill into sections to find products better. The way the site is currently constructed, if you do not know the exact name of the product you are looking for, you may struggle finding it in the left hand navigation, unless you search for it reasonably well in the search bar. I'd venture to guess that many users invoke a "CTRL + F" function on their keyboard to try and find things, which is not the behavior desired from your users.

Lastly, if you do find a product you are looking for, it is dense with copy that overwhelms the small product image above. Yes, some products allow you to click to view a larger image, but why not provide this image upfront, and reduce the copy below.


Utilitarian and Hedonic Shopping

For a utilitarian consumer, looking for a task-oriented shopping experience, Tophotel Supply provides this. Assuming the user can find the products they are looking for using the lengthy left hand navigation, products are easily added to the shopping cart, and the checkout experience is fast and intuitive, allowing for a view of the shopping cart, a one-page checkout, and a confirmation receipt page. Product descriptions are provided with a wealth of information to allow you to have all of the information needed to make a decision, too.

For a hedonic consumer, looking for a more interactive and entertaining experience, Tophotel Supply is not the site for this. There are no interactive components of the site and it is all static text and images. In the footer of the site, there is information about a sweepstakes for a daily Starbucks gift card drawing, however, there doesn't seem to be anywhere on the site to register for this, and it is not promoted with any interactive design or experience. I would recommend that Tophotel Supply either remove the link to the sweepstakes rules, or promote this as a way to engage consumers and drive more frequent traffic to their site.


Improvements

The following is a list of improvements and enhancements that I would recommend to improve customer loyalty on the site:

  • Reduce copy. Many of the products are self-explanatory and do not require detailed descriptions. If needed, put this content on a product detail page in a separate tab.
  • Increase image sizes. Tophotel Supply has a vast amount of products, and they should showcase them with larger images that allow customers to get a good view of what they are purchasing.
  • Improve search. The search bar is tiny, and not obvious. Filter options are buried after searching, and most users will not know they exist.
  • Improve navigation. The long scroll of the left hand navigation with an alphabetized list is frustrating. Products need to be grouped into logical categories and spread across a top level navigation instead of long left hand navigation.
  • Modernize site. The site has a boring font that is too small as it is, and lacks any type of interactive experience. I would recommend a demo, video, social media integration, the option to click to chat, etc. to liven up the site and create more of an "experience" than a "destination."
  • Increase customer service availability. Or, remove prominence of the phone number on the landing page. If you're going to have the phone number be the largest size font on your landing page, I'd advise to have more hours of availability, or you are just going to create a negative customer experience.

References: