Team Carbon : Silver Team

Web Analysis of www.americanhotel.com by Matthew Pacholek

Value Proposition and E-Commerce Category

American Hotel Register Co. is one of the largest and oldest hotel privately held suppliers in the US and Canada. They provide over 60,000 different products to the hotel industry and provide a wide variety of services including Full-Service Sign Shop, Interior Design, FF&E procurement and Special Order Services. Their value proposition is that they provide the widest selection of products and services in the industry and they have been in the hospitality industry since 1865. American Hotel has multiple different B2B sites split into two sides their premier sites which is for contract based customers and their public site which is for non-contract customers. The premier sites require a login before seeing any products but are specifically branded to the hotel chain while the public site has no specific user branding.


Primary Competitors and Revenue Model

American Hotel Co. uses a combination of a product and service based revenue model. Also included in their model is the addition of purchase requirements on contracts.

American Hotel's major competitors are:


Integration

American Hotel provides five major channels for ordering products, services and for customer communication that integrate with the website. The first is customer service they help the users order through the website and solve any issues that the customers might have. The next two are American Hotel's blog and Facebook page which provide a social media presence so that users can find information about the hotel industry as well as discuss topics that are posted in the blog. The forth one is a punch-out channel which allows customers to integrate and order through various punch-out sites such as Birchstreet. Finally, the last two are the email campaign channel and the direct mail catalog channel both of which provide information about the hospitality industry, ordering and the features of the website.


Intended Customers

The intended customers of this site range from individual boutique hotels to large chains or property management companies looking to purchase hotel supplies or services for their various properties. Customers coming to American Hotel are looking for a full-service hospitality supplier that can not only provide them all of the products that they need but all of the services, becoming their one stop shop.


Attract - Market and advertise in order to attract consumer interest

To market and advertise the site to customers American Hotel uses four major marketing channels. The first is email marketing which americanhotel.com sends out emails about the company and site features and enhancements. The second is direct mail marketing though this is limited to the catalog it draws customers in by showing them a list of products and services that they offer on the web site. The third is social media, American Hotel has a presence on both Twitter and Facebook to keep customers up to date and draw them back to the site. The last is television; American Hotel provides supplies and services to the TV show "Hotel Impossible" to promote their products through television.


Attract - impulsive, patient and analytical buyers

To attract impulsive buyers American Hotel displays a featured products section and a rotating banner that displays various specials or new products on the site.

To attract patient customers the site has a link clearance page which lists out all items that are being sold close to cost to remove them from inventory and a Sales page which lists out the entire set of items currently on sale.

To attract analytical customers American Hotel provides detailed information on their product detail pages, landing pages which have information about specific groups of products and service pages explaining the various services American Hotel offers.


Interact - Enhancing the Customer Experience

American Hotel offers multiple tools and features to enhance the customer experience, I have listed out a few below:

  • Favorites Lists - This tool allows users to save items into a list for future ordering or reference.
  • Order Guides - This tool allows large chains create lists of items that they want their properties to order from, the benefit is that it gives the large chains more control over what the properties order.
  • My Orders - This tool allows users to view past orders and check the status of current orders.
  • Track Shipments - This tool allows users to track shipments once they have left the DC, so that users know when they will receive their delivery.
  • My Invoices - This feature allows users to view and print invoice electronically through the website.
  • Site Branding - This feature provides specific branding for larger chains like La Quinta and a look and feel specific to their needs.
  • Quick Order - This feature allows users to put in catalog numbers and quantities into a list to quickly add items to the cart.
  • Easy Re-Order - This tool provides an easy way for users to order items that they have order in the past. It includes features like product grouping and sorting to make finding the items easier.
  • Search Ahead - This feature allows a user to see a list of relevant item categories based on what they are typing into the search giving them option to navigate to those categories or continue typing in their search criteria.
  • Branded Search - This feature displays a pop-up asking the user to log-in if the user is not logged in but is looking for a branded item.

Act - Order Placement and Payment

The American Hotel sites have two ways of checking out, both require that users have items in their cart and they click the checkout button. From there it can take two different paths the first is the normal checkout process in which a user clicks the checkout button and is then taken to a payment and shipping page. Once the payment and shipping information is completed the user is taken to an order review page to make sure that all the information is correct and then the user is prompted to click "process order" button to finalize the checkout process. If a user is qualified to use quick checkout then they can use the second path in which all they need to do is choose a shipping location on the review cart page, click the checkout button, and it will instantly process their order.


Act - Delivery, Shipping and Returns

American Hotel provides three main shipping options ground, 2nd day, and next day. Since American Hotel has their own truck fleet in conjunction with other logistics companies and multiple DCs around the US, Canada and now the globe shipping pricing is determined by the closest DC that has the items ordered in stock. If however the order is above $500 the shipping fee is waived, but if the order is below $50 an extra handling fee will be charged along with shipping.

Delivery is dependent on the shipping options chosen and the DC that the items are coming from. Since American Hotel has a bunch of different DCs delivery could be either handled by their private fleet if it is within a certain distance to the DC or by another logistics partner if time constraints and distance do not fall into American Hotel's capabilities.

Returns are handled using the incident reporting tool on the site which provides the customers with a way to report the quantity and item that needs to be returned and then submit the information to a customer service representative who will contact them and help them return the product.


React - Customer Service and Support

Customer service and support for the site is provided through a customer service page which is split into four sections "Ordering/Payments", "Shipping/Returns", "Policies/Legal" and "Using our Site". Each one of these section provides tools and information to help them with their questions. If they have a question that cannot be solved with the information or tools on the site there is also a list of support numbers or an email form that they can fill out to get help with their issues.


Interface and Arrangement of Content

The interface for American Hotel is fairly cluttered and outdated. Though the homepage does provide a lot of pertinent information, but the information needs to be better organized and some of the information needs to be consolidated. The guided navigation is good and provides easy way to navigate and filter items and layout of the item lists are clean. The site is also not consistent some pages provide a more updated look and feel to the site while others look like they are from the early 2000's.


Utilitarian and Hedonic Shopping

The American Hotel sites are definitely more geared towards the Utilitarian user providing good guided navigation, product sorting and filtering and tools, such as quick order and favorites lists, for the user to quickly order the products they need to order.

For the Hedonic user there are some options too such as the "Resource Center" link where a user can find the company's blog and a link to the American Hotel Facebook page. Then there is the email signup where they can sign up for hospitality business tips, product information and promotions. And a rotating banner is displayed on the home page for new promotions, items and information about the site and the company.


Improvements

Overall I think functionality wise American Hotel provides better tools and features than its competitors, but is in much need of a full redesign on the interface; pages have too much information and clutter and the interface needs to be cleaned up provide a better user experience, especially on the homepage. The search could use some work too as I did a couple of searches and found the results to be lacking sometimes. Lastly, I think that the prompts and the way they handle customizations online needs to re-designed to provide better business logic and cleaner user experience (For example a user should not be able to choose extra shipping charges as an option).


References