Trade buyers order differently from retail shoppers. A purchasing agent, a shop owner or a store buyer orders many of the same items every few weeks, knows them by item number, and expects to see their own price, not the list price. They buy by the case, not the each. They want to place an order early in the morning or late at night without waiting for a rep to call back, and they want to see what they bought last time so they can buy it again. New buyers looking for a supplier still start with a search, so the catalog has to be public and readable even when the prices are not.
Common problems on distributor websites
- Orders still arrive by phone, email and PDF order form. Each one has to be read, checked and keyed in by someone on your team.
- Price sheets go out of date. A PDF price list from last quarter is still in a customer’s inbox, and the order arrives at the old price.
- The website is a brochure. A catalog with no prices and no ordering, or a retail store that shows every visitor the same price.
- The web catalog drifts from the ERP. Discontinued items stay up, pack sizes are wrong, and new items never appear.
- Account requests have no process. A new customer emails, the reply slips, and there is no record of who was approved.
- Item-number search misses. The buyer types “401120” and the site only knows “40-1120”.
- No path for big or special orders. A buyer who needs a quote for a pallet or a special item has only a phone number.
What we build for distributors
- Trade account sign-up with your approval. A buyer applies with their business details, the request reaches you, and trade pricing turns on only after you approve it. We build this on member logins and roles as a custom web app.
- Prices by account. Each account gets a role tied to a price level, such as dealer, contractor or distributor, and a signed-in buyer sees the prices for that level. Visitors who are not signed in see list price or a “sign in for pricing” note, your choice. Contract prices for individual customers on individual items are a larger build, so we scope them separately in the proposal.
- Reorders. A signed-in buyer sees past orders and can put a previous order back in the cart, change quantities and check out.
- Quote requests. A form on each product, filled in with the item, for quantity breaks, special orders or freight. It reaches your sales team by email or Discord through our order and form alerts.
- A catalog from your ERP feed. A scheduled sync brings in items, pack sizes, stock and price levels from your ERP or inventory export, logs every run and runs a daily check. The inventory and ERP integration page explains the sync.
- Item-number search. “40-1120”, “401120” and “40 1120” find the same item.
- Pack sizes stated clearly. Case of 12, box of 100 or each: the unit is in the title and next to the price, so nobody orders twelve cases when they meant twelve units.
- Categories, filters and brand pages. For example, Janitorial / Floor Care / Floor Pads / Burnishing Pads, with filters by brand, category and price, and a page for every line you carry.
- A staff order screen. Inside sales and the warehouse get their own sign-ins to an orders list, so the owner’s Wix account stays with the owner.
Card payments go to your own merchant account, set up in the business’s legal name. If some accounts buy on terms, we plan with you before the build how those orders are placed and marked. Underneath, the cart, checkout and product pages come from our standard store build; the trade features sit on top.
Getting found when prices are behind a login
A distributor site has two audiences: current accounts who sign in, and new buyers looking for a supplier. The second group searches for things like:
- “janitorial supply distributor wholesale”
- “wholesale 3/8 hydraulic hose fittings”
- “burnishing pads case pack wholesale”
- “who distributes” followed by a brand you carry
Product and category pages stay public so Google and Bing can read them, even when prices show only after sign-in. Each item has a permanent address and a title built the same way every time, such as “[Brand] Burnishing Pad, 20 in, Case of 5, Item 40-1120”. Brand pages answer searches for who sells a brand, and category pages get short introductions. Structured data carries brand, item number and availability, plus price where the price is public. Some search features, including Google’s free shopping listings, need a public price, so we choose with you which items show one.
Buyers also ask AI assistants which distributors carry a brand. Clear brand pages, a plain statement of who you sell to and an accurate About page give those tools facts to work with; the guide to AI answers has more. No one can promise rankings or AI mentions, and we do not.
Starting a distributor project
- Your ERP export. Which system you use, how it exports (a CSV, a scheduled file or an API), and which fields hold item number, pack size, stock and price levels.
- Your price levels. How many there are, which customers belong to each, and whether any customers have their own contract prices.
- Your account rules. What you need to know before approving an account, and who on your team approves them.
- Your customer list. So current accounts can be invited once the site is live.
- Policies. Minimum orders, freight, returns and order cutoffs.
- Product images. Photos from the brands you carry, where their terms allow it, or your own shots.
The platform holds 50,000 products per store, with hidden items counted. A larger catalog changes the plan, and the platform limits guide explains the options. The first import must match your ERP export in item count, and we compare a random selection of items with the export before any account signs in.
Account pricing, the ERP feed and reorders each add to the build, and the written proposal shows one-time and monthly costs apart so you can see where each part of the cost comes from. The cost guide explains each factor, and the contact page is where to start.
