Efficiency and precision are the backbone of a thriving wholesale business. Customer order forms play a critical role in achieving this goal by helping you provide a seamless ordering experience to customers. However, it’s all too common for businesses to miss the mark and overlook the potential of these forms.
Poorly designed customer order forms can cause unnecessary friction in your sales process. Consequently, this can lead to confusing and frustrating customer experiences, resulting in lost time and missed opportunities. These are scenarios no wholesale business can afford, especially during a time when seamless transactions are the expectation.
Thankfully, the task of designing effective order forms is not as daunting as it may seem. By following the actionable tips we’ll share in this guide, you can design order forms that convert and drive results for your business!
So, let’s get started!
The Importance Of Having Effective Customer Order Forms
According to industry research, 32% of customers will leave a business they love after just one bad customer experience. So, what accounts for a bad experience? One common culprit is the cumbersome process of placing an order, leading to frustration and dissatisfaction.
Customer order forms are valuable tools that help you improve the customer ordering experience. Think of them as streamlined interfaces that make placing bulk orders easy and efficient. Rather than navigating through countless product listings, your wholesale customers can input their desired quantities swiftly and proceed to checkout!
Here are some key benefits of having streamlined customer order forms:
- Efficiency: These forms transform the ordering process into a seamless series of actions. Your customers can select products, input quantities, and finalize their orders without unnecessary clicks or complicated steps.
- Accuracy: By providing a structured format for orders, these forms reduce the likelihood of errors that can occur during manual order placement. This translates to fewer misunderstandings and smoother transactions.
- Time Savings: Time is a precious commodity in the wholesale world. Customer order forms save valuable minutes by eliminating the need to navigate through extensive product catalogs manually.
Best Practices For Creating Winning Wholesale Customer Order Forms
With the insights we’ve uncovered so far, it’s evident that creating effective customer order forms can be a game-changer for your business. In this section, we’ll explore actionable tips that can help you craft order forms that convert and how Wholesale Order Form simplifies this process.
1. Keep it simple
Simplicity is key to making effective customer order forms. In order to achieve this, keep it clean and organized, ensuring you present an easy-to-understand interface for your valued customers.
Here are some of the essential elements you need to include:
- Product Names: Each product should be clearly labeled to prevent confusion.
- Images: Visual representations facilitate and aid decision-making when making purchases.
- Descriptions: Short descriptions provide essential product details.
- Price: Customers should readily see the wholesale price of each product.
- Quantity Fields: Provide fields that can be easily adjusted for desired quantities.
- Add-To-Cart Button: Integrate a streamlined button for instant purchases.
- Total Cost Display: Offer transparency by presenting a clear breakdown of costs.
You can easily add these elements to your customer order forms with our Wholesale Order Form plugin. This powerful plugin simplifies creating effective order forms for your WooCommerce store. With its drag-and-drop form builder, you can effortlessly arrange these elements in an intuitive layout.
2. Present your products effectively
Visual cues play a critical role in the success of your online wholesale business. In fact, according to industry research, 60% of US digital shoppers say they need to see an average of three to four product images when shopping online.
Meeting these expectations is critical, especially for bulk transactions. Wholesale customers have a keen eye for detail, often seeking in-depth insights into products before committing to significant purchases.
To address this, make sure to use high-quality images of your products in your form. By choosing images that accurately portray the colors, sizes, and features of your offerings, you can provide a better online browsing experience.
Plugins like Wholesale Order Form allow you to incorporate high-quality product images into your customer order forms seamlessly. It also provides the option to showcase your image gallery via product pop-ups, empowering your customers with a closer look at product details and fostering confidence in their selections.
3. Provide seamless Add-To-Cart integration
Browsing through an extensive product catalog and adding products manually can be time-consuming and tedious. However, by providing your customers with seamless Add-To-Cart options, you reduce friction in the ordering process. As a result, selecting their desired products becomes an effortless process.
Wholesale Order Form offers two options to integrate “Add-To-Cart” functionality seamlessly into your order forms:
- Direct Add-To-Cart Buttons: This option streamlines the process by placing individual “Add To Cart” buttons next to each product listing. This design lets customers instantly add their chosen products to the cart without redirection.
- Select and Add: Alternatively, customers can make multiple selections and add them to the cart in one go. This method mimics the feel of traditional order sheets, providing a sense of familiarity while maintaining the convenience of online ordering.
By minimizing the steps required for product selection and cart addition, you’re creating a frictionless ordering journey for your wholesale customers.
4. Simplify search and filtering
Notably, nearly 50% of online shoppers cite good search and navigation features as an important factor in their online shopping experience. To provide the best experience, you need to give your customers the ability to quickly locate the products they’re looking for without the hassle of scrolling through extensive listings.
To enhance the discoverability of your products, incorporate a user-friendly search bar directly onto your customer order form. This way, your wholesale customers can effortlessly enter product keywords, SKUs, and names for easier searching.
In addition to search, it is also essential to provide an efficient filtering system. Cater to the needs of your wholesale customers by allowing them to sort by product categories, availability, or specific attributes. By doing so, you ensure they can efficiently narrow down their choices, saving them valuable time.
Wholesale Order Forms allows you to add search and filtering capabilities to your order forms, helping you elevate the ordering experience for your customers.
5. Adapt to mobile devices
91% of today’s shoppers make online purchases using their mobile devices. As such, your customer order forms must be mobile-friendly.
To achieve mobile-friendliness, design your customer order forms with a responsive layout. This means the forms automatically adapt to various screen sizes, ensuring readability and usability regardless of the device.
For instance, Wholesale Order Form features a card-based layout for mobile and small tablet devices, ensuring that your order forms remain responsive even on compact screens.
6. Tailor it to your customers
Picture this scenario: your customer excitedly adds products to their cart, only to discover later on that they are not eligible to make the purchase. This frustration can lead to dissatisfaction and abandoned orders. To prevent this, it’s essential to tailor your order forms to the needs of your different market segments.
With Wholesale Order Form, you can ensure that your order forms cater exclusively to your intended audience. The plugin’s user role permissions allow you to control who can access your customer order forms. For example, you can create order forms exclusively for your VIP wholesale customers, ensuring they have a tailored and seamless ordering process.
By tailoring access to specific user roles, you guarantee that the ordering experience is in line with the preferences and expectations of your target audience.
7. Make your customer order forms accessible
Maximize the accessibility of your customer order forms by embedding them into your website. While standalone links can serve their purpose—such as sharing via email—integrating the form directly onto your site offers several advantages, including:
- Enhanced User Experience: When your customer order form is embedded on your website, visitors can interact with it without navigating away, thus simplifying the ordering journey.
- Consistent Branding: Embedded forms maintain the look and feel of your website, helping you foster trust and familiarity.
- Reduced Abandonment: With the form readily available on your website, customers are less likely to abandon their orders due to redirection or cumbersome processes.
Wholesale Order Form enables you to effortlessly integrate your form anywhere on your website through a shortcode. Once you’ve crafted a wholesale form, the plugin generates a shortcode that you can insert into any page on your website.
Ready to provide your customers with a better ordering experience?
Implementing these best practices for creating customer order forms can help your wholesale business increase conversion rates. From simplifying the order process to effectively showcasing your products, each tip contributes to an improved customer experience.
If you’re ready to create a winning wholesale order form, check out our comprehensive guide: How To Create A Product Order Form For Your WooCommerce Store. This detailed guide will walk you through the process of creating and customizing customer order forms that drive results for your business.
Conclusion
Providing a seamless and efficient ordering experience is a must in the competitive wholesale industry. Customer order forms are powerful tools to improve the customer experience and bridge the gap between intent and purchase. Throughout this guide, we’ve outlined seven best practices you can follow to optimize your wholesale order forms.
To summarize, let’s quickly revisit the key practices we’ve explored:
- Keep it simple
- Present your products effectively
- Provide seamless Add-To-Cart integration
- Simplify search and filtering
- Adapt to mobile devices
- Tailor it to your customers
- Make it accessible for your customers
By implementing these best practices and using Wholesale Order Form’s powerful features, you’re taking proactive steps to enhance your wholesale business’s success.
If you have any questions or would like to learn more about optimizing your customer order forms, feel free to share them in the comments section below!
