B2B storefront audit · No. 003
Storefront audit — an industrial supply distributor on BigCommerce
Your buyers cannot find a part by its part number, and the way to open an account with terms is explained three different ways.
Ungated. Nobody asked for this and nobody paid for it. The paid version reads your storefront against the ERP →
Unsolicited and independent. We are not affiliated with the store, and we had no access to its analytics, ad account, admin or any buyer account. Every finding below comes from the public storefront, read as a guest. The store is not named here, and we name no store. The store's name, its part numbers, its email addresses and its platform account identifier are redacted inside brackets; everything outside the brackets is copied verbatim from the live pages at the time of review. Nothing here estimates traffic, conversion rate or revenue, because we have no way to know any of it, and nothing here describes what a signed-in buyer sees, because we did not sign in.
Summary
The search box in your header says
Search using Keyword or Part #. We took the SKU printed on a product page, typed it in exactly, and got628 results, led by a drill-bit set. Without the hyphens,0 results. Reordering by part number is the most valuable flow a distributor's storefront has, and on this one it does not work.Underneath that, the path from a guest to an account with net terms is described on three pages with three different instructions and two different email addresses, and the page that says to complete an application
online or PDFoffers only the PDF. Everything a business buyer needs from you beyond the cart — terms, quotes, a custom catalog, tax exemption — is handled by a third-party form or a phone call, off the platform.
- 628 Results for a part number typed exactly as the product page prints it
- 0 Online credit applications on the page that says to complete one online
- 4 Different sizes given for the online catalog, across five pages
- 6–8 ft The threaded-rod length band the free-shipping policy does not cover
F1 · The part-number search cannot find a part by its part number Critical
The header search field is labelled Search using Keyword or Part #. Every product page prints a SKU of the form [prefix]-[number]-P: a two-letter prefix, the manufacturer's part number, and a package suffix. We took the SKU from a fifty-pack of grade 5 hex cap screws and searched for it three ways:
628 results for '[prefix]-[number]-P'— the first result is a twenty-nine-piece drill-bit set at$164.440 results for '[prefix][number]P'— the same SKU without its hyphens2 results for '[number]'— the bare manufacturer number, which returns the part in both of its pack sizes
The result set looks like a keyword search that splits the SKU on its hyphens and matches each fragment on its own: the letter P pulls in every product with a P in its name, and the exact string is preferred over none of them. A buyer with a purchase order in front of them types the SKU as printed on their last invoice. That buyer gets six hundred results and a drill-bit set.
A descriptive search does no better. 3/8-16 x 4 hex cap screw grade 5 returns 10035 results, led by drill bits again. The bare manufacturer number is the only query that works, and nothing on the site tells a buyer to use it.
Seen on the public storefront at the time of review.
Effort to fix: 1–2 days. Exact-match on SKU before the keyword search runs, and treat hyphens and spaces in the query as optional.
F2 · Opening an account with terms is explained three ways, and the online application is not there Critical
The header offers Sign In or Create An Account. The account form is the platform's consumer signup: email, password, country, name, address, Company Name as an optional field, and a phone number. There is no place to say what kind of business you are, no reseller or tax-exempt option, and nothing that leads to terms.
Terms are described on three pages, each differently:
- The FAQ:
To open an [store] account, download our credit application HERE and email or fax to us. - The credit-application page:
Please complete either the online credit application or print and email the PDF version to [accounting address]. - The set-up-terms page:
Please complete and submit the following online or PDF application if your company would like to set-up terms.— and, for questions, a different address:[sales address].
On that last page, what follows the sentence is one link: Download New Account Credit Application PDF. There is no online application on it. We loaded the page in a browser with scripts running and waited; the page ends at the PDF link. The FAQ and the credit page each link to the PDF under a different file name, and the two files are byte-for-byte the same document.
The same page adds a condition that appears nowhere else: we require a minimum of 1 order to be placed with a credit card before your application will be accepted. A purchasing manager who wants terms before the first order reads that on the third page of the process, if they get there.
The custom catalog for a purchasing department — the closest thing to a company account the site offers — is available only by phone: Contact a sales representative today for more information.
Seen on the public storefront at the time of review.
Effort to fix: 1 day to make it one page, one route, one address and one file. A company-account application inside the signup itself is a separate piece of work, scoped with F3.
F3 · The quote lives outside the store High
The largest button in the header is Request A Quote. It leads to a form hosted by a third-party form builder and embedded in the page, with fields for name, address, industry, Customer Type, a date, and one free-text box: Quote on Products or Services *, with the placeholder Please quote me on.... There is no part-number field, no quantity, and no way to send the cart a buyer has just built.
The FAQ routes four different needs into that one box: parts not on the site, samples, quantities smaller than a pack, and volume and import mill shipments. A buyer with fourteen lines in the cart who wants a price on the lot types them out by hand, and the reply comes by email, unconnected to their account or their order history.
The contact form, the kitting quote and the credit application go through the same form builder. So the four ways a business talks to you other than checkout all leave the platform, and none of them knows who the buyer is.
Your own About page makes the case against this: While other companies either require their customers to submit a “Request-for-Quote” or haggle with a sales person, [store] makes it easy and straightforward. For the pack sizes on the shelf, that is true. For everything the FAQ sends to the quote form, it is not.
Seen on the public storefront at the time of review.
Effort to fix: 2–3 days for a quote request built from the cart and tied to the account; or half a day to add a part-number-and-quantity table to the existing form.
F4 · The product page shows a price and nothing else a buyer needs High
A fifty-pack of grade 5 hex cap screws is priced $49.27, with the pack size in the title, (50/Pkg.). What is missing:
- No unit price. A buyer comparing against a catalog priced per hundred or per thousand does the division themselves.
- No quantity breaks. The FAQ says
We offer package and bulk pricing for many of our products online. On this page there is one price and a quantity box. The bulk pack of the same part is a separate product, at$95.94for(250/Bulk Pkg.), reachable only if the buyer finds it — F1 says how likely that is. - No availability. The homepage banner reads
IN STOCK AND READY TO SHIP. The product page states no stock figure, no lead time and no ship-from location; the theme'sCurrent Stock:row is in the page markup with nothing after it, and so isUPC:. The FAQ, elsewhere, sayssome of our distribution centers take 3-4 days to process orders.
What the page gives that space to instead is (No reviews yet) Write a Review, a five-star widget and Add to Wish List. That is a consumer theme's product page with an industrial catalog poured into it. The buyer of a fifty-pack of bolts is not going to review them; they want the per-piece price, the break at the next pack size, and the day it ships.
Seen on the public storefront at the time of review.
Effort to fix: 1 day. Per-unit price computed from the pack quantity, the pack sizes of one part shown as tiers on one page, and stock or lead time rendered from the field the theme already reserves.
F5 · The free-shipping policy excludes threaded rods, then lists them as eligible High
The header of every page says Free Shipping on Online Orders $200+*. The asterisk has no footnote anywhere on the page. The FAQ says We offer free shipping on most orders over $200, however there are restrictions. The policy page says Orders over $199.99 before tax and shipping. Close enough — until the restrictions.
Under Restrictions: the policy lists Excludes threaded rods, oversized or bulky items. Further down the same page, under a heading of its own:
Threaded RodsUp to and Including 3 ft - Eligible for Free ShippingOver 3 ft - 6 ft - Eligible for Free Shipping + $50 Shipping SurchargeOver 8 ft - Standard LTL Frees + $1,000 Shipping Surcharge
So threaded rods are excluded and eligible on the same page, a rod between six and eight feet falls in no band at all, and the band that carries a thousand-dollar surcharge has a typo in it. Below that: $200 surcharge applies to freight orders shipped to residential addresses — the same figure as the free-shipping threshold, a few lines apart, meaning the opposite thing.
For a buyer, shipping is the difference between your price and the competitor's, and this is the page they open to settle it.
Seen on the public storefront at the time of review.
Effort to fix: 2 hours. One threshold, stated once; the rod table made continuous; the exclusion line made to agree with it; the asterisk given a footnote or removed.
F6 · The size of the catalog changes from page to page Medium
- Homepage:
over 250,000 standard products online - Quote page:
over 250,000 products in our online store - FAQ:
over 300,000 products in our online catalog and over 500,000 different products overall - Distribution page:
over 350,000 product online - About page:
over 500,000 standard and custom products
Four different sizes for the online catalog on five pages, and the hero banner adds a figure for one category, 100,000+ FASTENER SKUS. Your own product sitemap, which is what search engines are given, lists roughly 236,000 product URLs. None of the published numbers is that one.
A number that changes by page is read as a number nobody checked. Pick the one the sitemap supports and render it from one place.
Seen on the public storefront at the time of review.
Effort to fix: 1 hour.
F7 · Two test pages are live and submitted to search engines Medium
The store's own page sitemap lists /test-page/ and /test-page-2/. Both return a normal page. The second is titled Test Page 2 and its entire content is the words Test Page 2.
The first is a full copy of the About page, and it disagrees with the About page on the one line a purchasing manager in aerospace or defense reads first. The About page's certification line names the ISO quality standard alone. The test page's line adds and AS9100D — a claim to aerospace quality-system registration that appears on no other page of the site. Either the claim is true and it is published only on a page called Test Page, or it is not and it is published.
Seen on the public storefront and in its published sitemap at the time of review.
Effort to fix: 30 minutes to delete both pages; one conversation to settle which certification line is true.
F8 · Title tags written for a different page Medium
- The technical resources page:
Industrial Safety Products | Fasteners And Screws | Industrial Tool And Supply - [store] - The industries page:
Industrial Fastener Supply | Industrial Tool And Supply | Industrial Catalog - [store]
Neither title describes its page. Both are keyword lists, and both run past the width of a search result. At the other extreme, the terms, careers and test pages carry no store name at all — the terms page is titled just Terms and Conditions — and every search-results page is titled with the store name alone.
Seen on the public storefront at the time of review.
Effort to fix: 1 hour.
F9 · Housekeeping visible to buyers and to search engines Medium
- Two documents in the About menu are served from the platform's raw domain,
store-[id].mybigcommerce.com, rather than from your own: the quality certificate and a federal telecommunications representation form. Both open, and both hand the buyer a URL that names your platform account instead of you. - Every product tile and product page carries the brand line
[STORE] APPROVED VENDOR. The brand field is being used as a placeholder for “no brand”, and it renders as the brand, above the product name, on every unbranded part. - The attribute
Package Size: Packageis printed on the product page next toPackage Quantity: 50, which already says it. - The signup form and the quote form disagree on the world's countries. One offers
Czechia, the otherCzech Republic, and the quote form still listsNetherlands Antilles, which no longer exists.
Seen on the public storefront at the time of review.
Effort to fix: 1 hour for all four.
What is already working
W1 · Prices are public Strength
Every product page shows its price to a guest, with no login wall. Your About page says this is on purpose, and it is the right call: a buyer searching for a part by size and grade lands on a page with a number on it, and a search engine indexes a page with a number on it. Most distributors of your size hide the price behind a login and lose both.
W2 · The minimum order is stated before the cart, and the same way everywhere Strength
Every page carries $75 Min Order. Spend $75.00 more to waive small order fee. in the header, and the line updates as the cart fills. The FAQ states the fee itself: A $15.00 minimum order fee will be added to orders under $75.00. One threshold, one fee, stated before the buyer has invested anything. F5 is what the shipping policy would look like if it were written this way.
W3 · The catalog is structured, which is the hard part Strength
The tap bolts category alone lists 1102 results with filters for diameter, thread size, grade, finish and length, and each product page carries those attributes as separate fields — Diameter-Thread Size, Thread Style, Package Quantity — rather than buried in a description. Tax-exemption certificates can be uploaded inside the account and are verified within a business day. The data a B2B storefront needs is there. What F1 and F4 describe is the storefront not using it.
Priority order
| ID | Fix | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| F1 | Match the SKU exactly before the keyword search runs, and ignore hyphens and spaces in the query | 1–2 days |
| F2 | One page for terms, one route, one address, one file; state the first-order condition up front | 1 day |
| F5 | One free-shipping threshold, a continuous rod table, an exclusion line that agrees with it, a footnote for the asterisk | 2 hours |
| F7 | Delete the two test pages; settle which certification line is true | 30 minutes |
| F4 | Per-unit price, pack sizes as tiers on one page, stock or lead time on the product page | 1 day |
| F3 | A quote request built from the cart and tied to the account | 2–3 days |
| F6 | One catalog figure, the one the sitemap supports, rendered from one place | 1 hour |
| F8 | Rewrite the two stuffed title tags; add the store name to the pages that lack it | 1 hour |
| F9 | Serve the two documents from your own domain, clear the placeholder brand, drop the redundant attribute, align the country lists | 1 hour |
Method
The checklist behind this audit is the one we use for a B2B implementation review, cut down to what a guest can see: how a buyer finds a part, prices it, learns when it ships, opens an account, gets terms, gets a quote, and reorders. It comes from two years inside the engineering team of a B2B commerce platform and from reading distributor storefronts against that flow.
Findings here are drawn from the public storefront only, as a guest: the homepage, the header, the search, one category and one product page, the signup form, the quote and credit-application pages, the FAQ, the terms, the free-shipping policy, and the store's own published sitemaps. Quoted strings are copied verbatim from the live pages at the time of review, with the store's name, its part numbers, its email addresses and its platform account identifier redacted inside brackets. No login, analytics, admin or ad-account access was requested or used, so nothing here estimates traffic, conversion rate or revenue.
Things we could not check and therefore do not assert: what a signed-in buyer sees, and whether a custom catalog, contract pricing or terms change the product page or the search; whether the online credit application renders in a browser we did not use; what the cart and checkout do with the small-order fee; and whether any of the four forms reaches a person quickly. None of these appears above as a finding.
What to do with this
F1 and F2 are the whole job. Between them they are about three days, they need no redesign, and until they are done a buyer holding your part number cannot find your part, and a company that wants terms is sent three ways.
This audit is free and public. Hand it to whoever already works on the store — there is nothing proprietary in it, no gate, no form, and no call required to read all of it. If you would rather we did the work, or you want the full version — the same reading with sandbox access, as an account admin, a buyer and a rep, against the ERP — send the storefront URL and the name of your ERP to hello@altamiracommerce.com and we will reply with what we would change first and what it would cost. The same reading applies to a distributor on any platform.