CHRIS: As for mobile, and just generally responsive responsiveness of the designs, this needs to be part of the DNA of the whole delivery. And for us, we really focus on not just a responsive site, but also getting to a PWA, a progressive web application, so that the end-user could, if the buying group wanted to, take advantage of having a mobile launch. And having that experience be omnichannel, if you will, across the different devices.
Ultimately, the main idea is that there's architecture and planning around the presentation for not just desktop, not just tablet and mobile, and not just the kind of main browsers, but really having a standard for meeting all of the different channels that might come up over the many years that you're operating your site. And we really encourage you to ask these questions, ask how your partner is going to do this and what their experiences with it is.
RON: Yeah. And if you want to write this down, audience. When you're asking the questions, ask them about ADA. That's the Americans with Disabilities Act. Ask them about their ADA compliance and how they deal with that, potentially about Section 508 that's the low-hanging fruit, the easiest to comply with. And then WCAG. If you write those three things down, just ask them and record their results as you compare vendors and see how they deal with that. Because those are the three things that you mainly need to think about.
As far as SEO, SEO is kind of an interesting one. It's kind of 50/50. A lot of times with these buying groups, right? I've heard mixed reviews. Somebody said one time, I can buy from Costco even if I don't have a Costco membership. And I'm like, I don't even know how that's possible. Well, maybe Costco allows them in. Do they charge them the retail price? They can go ahead and buy, but they just have to pay retail. They don't get membership price. I don't know. Maybe they do.
I guess GNC does that. I have a membership at GNC, and when we go buy our whey protein for my protein shakes, I get a discount because I have a GNC membership. But if I didn't have a membership, I could buy it full retail, I suppose. So maybe there's that.
So with your store, your online store, is it a true closed-off membership where it is contractual that these people come to me and they've negotiated the price? Then SEO is not in play. I am not trying to drive traffic to my site or am I trying to drive? Even though I do charge memberships, I'm still trying to drive and bring on new members constantly. So I need a SEO. Remember, SEO is the gift that keeps on giving. It is the one that drives traffic to your site.
CRO for the audience (conversion rate optimization) is once they’re to the site. How can I ensure they have a good experience as I guide them toward buying or converting. So SEO CRO are both important. They're equally important.
You don't want to invite 100 people over to your house if your house is messy, right? The CRO would be garbage. The SEO would be great. Conversely, you don't want to go spend $10,000 and invite Oingo Boingo to play at your house and only invite three people over unless they're your favorite three people and they have a great concert. SEO is terrible, but the CRO is wonderful, right? So SEO and CRO are really important. They're married, they're tied at the hip, they're equally important and they're 50/50.
You need you always need CRO no matter what. You don't always need SEO. If it's a private party and you're not you're not telling anybody about the party, it's by invitation only, then there's no SEO. You still want them to have a good time at the party, and so CRO is still important.
So even if SEO is not on your roadmap, I've had three or four people call me talking about buyers group SEO. You don't care about SEO? And I’m like, “What about CRO?” “Yeah, I don't care about that either.” Yes, you do. Because everything we've just talked about for the last 30 minutes is all CRO. What is the experience? How do we guide? How do we know what the price is? How do we know what compliance is? How do we know where it ships from? Every bit of that is literally related to CRO,right?
So let's let you finish out and talk about the final complex piece, right? Which is really the access control, scope control, maybe performance security of the site itself, things like that. Go ahead and go crazy with this one because this is obviously your specialty.
CHRIS: Oh, thanks, Ron. You get me excited talking about it there. This may or may not be a super sexy topic for folks, but talking about permissions is really important for a lot of group purchasing organizations. Now, the first thing that I would say is, we typically hear a lot about the idea of having a web-based price or no-price showing on the web. And in some cases, our clients will prefer that the site just not even be visible on the web unless someone is a member. We can do any of those and variations, we can also not show inventory data, for example.
Whether you work with us or another vendor, these are things that ought to be very doable. And fundamentally, the concept behind the permissions tends toward focusing on authentication and authorization. Authentication is going to be, “Did someone successfully log in to their account?” And then authorization is going to be, “What does their account have a role for? What do they have access to as part of that account? What is it a member of essentially from a role perspective?”