Automotive Ecommerce Solutions

Strabo Partners works to streamline your automotive ecommerce solutions when starting an implementation. The automotive industry, particularly ecommerce, is highly specialized when it comes to aftermarket parts online. Before starting any automotive ecommerce business, it is critical to have product data and content. The success of an ecommerce website always hinges on differentiators like great content. But when working in the auto industry, product data is also key. Now that supply chains are coming back online during peak auto sales, demand for automotive parts continues to run at an all-time high. There has never been a better time to capture some of these online sales and grow your business!

Deciding on a new automotive ecommerce platform may seem like a daunting task, but the Strabo team is here to help guide the process and ensure a smooth transition to a new ecommerce site. With years of experience in the automotive aftermarket industry and ecommerce business, Strabo knows what it takes to create a great user experience that leads to customer conversions. Throughout every phase of a project, the goal remains the same – a strong customer experience with great product data and easily understandable user navigation.

In the automotive ecommerce market, data is such a critical piece of the digital commerce experience. Much, if not most, of the automotive ecommerce market has issues with current ecommerce platforms and improvements are needed to the online shopping experience. Many ecommerce platforms are not built to handle the data required to power an automotive ecommerce store.

Ecommerce for Auto Parts

When deciding on a new automotive ecommerce website, there are many functionality aspects to consider regardless of whether you are a manufacturer, distributor, or showroom looking to grow your omnichannel presence. An important aspect of any high-quality auto parts ecommerce store is ensuring an accurate year, make, model lookup is front and center. Strabo suggests using our tool, ProductDesk to ensure accurate fitment from the start. Year, make, and model aren’t the only important aspects to consider when creating a strong user experience. It is vital to have updated product data around pricing, installation instructions, dimensions, application data, specifications and more. With supply chain disruptions from the pandemic, keeping pricing information up to date can be a difficult task, especially with a large SKU count. When using Strabo’s Product Information Management (PIM) tool, ProductDesk, to manage SKU data, pricing updates are a breeze. Accurate pricing is crucial for SEO and maintaining high search engine rankings.

When utilizing ProductDesk and a strong automotive ecommerce platform, you have all the tools necessary to grow your ecommerce sales. Some of the amazing features included with these toolsets include:

Advanced search
Year, make, model search
Industry standard category-driven facets
ACES PIES data updates monthly
Pages built with SEO that optimizes search rankings to grow market share

Picking the correct ecommerce platform is one of the most key decisions in the journey to getting a new ecommerce store. With that in mind, Strabo works closely as a partner with BigCommerce and has implementation experience with Shopify and Magento. Choosing one of these platforms will lead to the best overall experience and ensure a scalable business model. In addition to these platforms, we have direct support in our products to help you sell on eBay and/or Amazon.

Strabo recommends using BigCommerce for the best experience creating your ecommerce site. BigCommerce is a leading cloud-based ecommerce platform offering robust enterprise level functionality surrounded by a strong app ecosystem. A major differentiator for BigCommerce over many of its competitors is the strength in the API toolset. With BigCommerce Enterprise, automotive ecommerce customers are able to add their entire catalog of car parts, etc., with speed and accuracy. Many BigCommerce customers in the automotive industry have very large SKU counts that are handled with ease.

BigCommerce has strengths in both B2B and B2C spaces. The robust B2B functionality allows for complex pricing to be addressed with ease, handling wholesaler, MAP pricing, or jobber. BigCommerce offers multistore front solutions for different brands and different user experiences as necessary. In addition to these great features, BigCommerce offers “Buy Online, Pickup In Store” functionality to give the customer even greater flexibility to buy online and pickup offline. For businesses selling products with a CORE, BigCommerce has CORE return workflows to help capture and collect CORE fees.

Interested in using Magento? Magento remains one of the largest ecommerce solutions in the world. Strabo’s automotive ecommerce experience helps you build out your B2B or B2C Magento site. Magento continues to be a great option whether you’re a Fortune 100 or a rapidly scaling business. Whether your focus is B2B, B2C, or both, Strabo can help guide the digital transformation onto a new automotive ecommerce platform. With automotive sales continuing to break records, car shoppers are also looking for aftermarket parts in record numbers! Delivering a top-notch customer experience is important the second they land on the website.

Automotive Industry Specifics - ACES and PIES

There is so much more that goes into an automotive ecommerce website than just building a strong website. Another important aspect is getting the right data and attributes on the website. Accessibility to data as fast as possible is key when building out a digital commerce strategy. The automotive industry works together to build out product information through the ACES and PIES structure.

When working in the auto industry, it is important to know about both ACES and PIES. PIES (Product Information Exchange Standard) is a standard built by the Auto Care Association. This is a standard used throughout North America by the automotive aftermarket industry. This standard helps define general information about a product. This information varies and can be pricing, product attributes, images/digital assets, kit information, and much more. PIES can hold over 180 different data elements. The PIES standard does not, however, hold any vehicle fitment.

ACES (Aftermarket Catalog Exchange Standard) help to streamline the vehicle fitment process. This standard is used for fitment across light, medium, and heavy-duty vehicles, as well as powersports. This data is used to power the year, make, and model search for auto parts on the website.

While ACES is free to use, car parts will need to be mapped and validated against the Vehicle Configuration Database or “VCdb” (paid database subscription through the Auto Care Association). This is a relational database of all vehicles, including special configurations like sub-models in North America. Using ACES will help ensure customers are selecting the right parts that fit the right vehicles. ACES are typically reloaded frequently to account for automotive companies coming out with new vehicles on a regular basis.

Automotive industry manufacturers will produce their auto parts data utilizing the ACES and PIES standards, so it is critical to use these on your ecommerce website. This will ensure new products from suppliers and distributors will make it to the website quickly and efficiently. Utilizing these standards also ensures quick updates to product information and pricing.

Digital Transformation - Next Steps

Strabo focuses on high quality delivery with every project. Strabo’s team of experts works directly with clients to build a unique automotive ecommerce website that includes messaging for growing sales and market share. Throughout the project, our team will work with you to create a modern user interface for both mobile and desktop. We will work with you on any outside integrations like Amazon and eBay to ensure exposure across multiple channels. Our team is happy to provide SEO and social media strategies as well.

Strabo understands the unique challenges of the automotive industry with customers in the manufacturing, distribution, and retail space. Our customers vary greatly by size – some offer just a handful of SKUS while others offer up to 1.3 million parts! As OEM parts continue to rise in cost and dealerships continue to raise prices, there has never been a better time for aftermarket parts companies to grow their online presence. Strabo is here to help you begin this transformation. Contact us today!

Interested in learning more about how Strabo Price Plus can take your business to the next level?