Categories: WarehouseTWO Updates
By Mark Tomalonis
Principal, WarehouseTWO, LLC
Got surplus inventory? Just because your local customers no longer want these items anymore does not mean that no one else in the world wants them. The secret to selling surplus inventory at a fair price is to expose it to as large an audience as possible, at the moment that a potential buyer is looking for these items. To this end, WarehouseTWO has enhanced the capability of its WEB MARKET functionality.
About WarehouseTWO’s WEB MARKET “Classic” FunctionalityWEB MARKET is a premium feature at WarehouseTWO that allows our members to upload selected inventory records to our system so that internet search engines, such as Google and Bing, might capture and index this information. The original purpose of this functionality was to expose surplus inventory to a larger audience, outside of WarehouseTWO’s classic audience, which consists of peer wholesaler-distributors. WEB MARKET is available to WarehouseTWO memberships at level 3 and higher. Click here to review our membership levels and subscription fees.
The original goal of WEB MARKET was to maximize organic web page displays in search engines, using search engine optimization (“SEO”) best practices. As the methods of search engines evolves, so must WarehouseTWO to maximize the exposure of WEB MARKET postings. Furthermore, we continue to explore ways to expose one’s surplus inventory to a larger audience. Thus, we have recently made these enhancements to the WEB MARKET functionality:
We have created a separate website at which to display WEB MARKET items. The URL is https://webmarket.warehousetwo.com. The intended benefit of separating WEB MARKET items from WarehouseTWO's legacy website is to improve identification and indexing of item-specific web pages by web crawlers. For now, we are focusing on indexing by Google and Bing. (Yahoo uses Bing’s search engine.)
Brand-Specific Sub-PagesThe home page of the new WEB MARKET website lists brand-specific sub-pages, on which WEB MARKET items are listed. Click here to see an example. This layered-pages approach gives more content for web crawlers to capture, potentially increasing the organic search results of items listed.
Mobile-Friendly Design Web PagesOur new WEB MARKET website is “mobile-friendly”, in that it is built with responsive web design pages. This design is favored by web crawlers, particularly Google. If you are reading this article on a smart phone, click here to see an example of a WEB MARKET item page.
We have added a search functionality to every page of our new WEB MARKET website. Now, any potential buyer who finds our WEB MARKET website, via any page, can browse all surplus items listed.
Ability to expose Web Market Items to all WarehouseTWO Users, Regardless of Community ParticipationOriginally, WEB MARKET items did not appear in search results at the WarehouseTWO website. If a member wanted to expose its surplus items to peer distributors and to internet searches, it had to post the items twice: once to a regular location on its account, and again to its designated WEB MARKET location. Furthermore, posting surplus items to the WarehouseTWO website exposed them only to other peer distributors participating in communities common between seller and buyer. Now, a member can post a surplus item once, to a WEB MARKET location, and have that item exposed to search crawlers and to searches at the WarehouseTWO website. Furthermore, such items can be found by any WarehouseTWO member, regardless of to which community the item has been posted, as long as the WEB MARKET item meets the buyer's search criteria. WEB MARKET items in search results appear in bold red font and are identified by the source code in bold blue font, "WM".
Incidentally, the inventory-sharing community, “marketplace: miscellaneous” exists to allow our members to post any item to our system, regardless of brand, and even if no brand-specific inventory-sharing community exists at our website.
Refer to our updated WEB MARKET tutorial PDF for details on this enhanced functionality.
Got questions about any of this? Contact us.
Disclaimer: WarehouseTWO does not guarantee that use of its WEB MARKET functionality will result in any of your inventory items appearing in any search engine search results, or that use of this feature will result in any sales of any inventory. Furthermore, WarehouseTWO is not an interested party in any transaction between buyer and seller.
About the Author
After a successful career in sales and operations management in the wholesale-distribution industry, Mark Tomalonis is now principal of WarehouseTWO, LLC. He amuses himself by writing articles, such as this one, to help wholesaler-distributors execute their operations better. Mark’s articles and tips are published in WarehouseTWO’s monthly e-newsletters. Click here to subscribe.
About WarehouseTWO
WarehouseTWO, LLC is an independent “inventory-sharing” service created exclusively for durable goods manufacturers and their authorized distributors, and for any group of durable goods “peer” wholesaler-distributors, such as members of a buying/marketing group or cooperative. To learn how inventory-sharing with WarehouseTWO can help your business, visit the WarehouseTWO website, or email info@warehousetwo.com.