Madison B2B site to debut at IceBike

The overhaul of Madison’s business-to business website will debut at IceBike, with interactive demonstrations to the trade.

Some 70 per cent of all transactions have been going through the distributor’s website during the past year, but as technology (and user numbers) has moved on there have been calls for an upgrade.

A clean sheet will be started from March 1st, with much of the trade’s wish list ticked off within the new system. On top of the 24/7 access and other features of old, the revamp will include:

-Full cross-platform and internet browser functionality;
-Integrated image, video and logo media library;
-Live online chat facility with internal sales and customer care;
-More homepage news than ever before, also incorporating a live RSS feed from the BBC (world news), BikeBiz.com (industry news) and weather from Metcheck;
-SMS notification option for when products arrive back in to stock;
-Customisable, schedulable automatic data extract tools, for EPoS and Web population;
-A Windows Vista Gadget – so you can order and access B2B from your desktop, without the need to even log-in;
-Customer specific stock enquiry link strings allowing retailer e-commerce systems to interrogate Madison stock status on a real time basis;
-Product comparison facility, improved product data, zoomable product images, PDF customer presentable data sheets for each and every product in the portfolio;
-Easy access to product category lists direct from the homepage;
-Narrow down searching, refine search results by brand, category, colour, size and price range;
-More special offers than ever before, including special product kits and accumulators.

The system has been subjected to rigorous testing since October 2008 and is currently in beta live testing with selected Madison customers.

Daily seminars will be scheduled at Icebike, which takes place at the Milton Keynes distribution centre from February 24th to 26th.