Ryan Stallard | International Business Development Consultant

Customization Breakdown #3A

This series breakdowns OEM/ODM (customization) listings for WHAT they do that works and more importantly delivers insights for WHY they work.

Today I come to you with another company profile – probably the best company profile I’ve come across so far.  This aluminum OEM supplier is currently ranked #8 on Alibaba for Machining Services, with over $1 million dollars sold, a 4.8/5 star rating, and 536 separate orders on the platform.

Here are four factors this company used to acquire and maintain its high platform ranking.

Outperformer

This company is ranked #8 on Alibaba for Machining services and is tagged as outperforming 99.91% of suppliers in its category.

A company summary block which has a red box highlighting text which says this company Outperformed 99.91% of suppliers in orders,

This ranking is calculated on a rolling window (30-180 days, depending on the criterion), not the company’s total history on the platform.

This flat # rating takes into account total number of orders and the transaction amounts of those orders, which does tend to favor larger companies.  

However, the / 5 rating combines the above (the Transaction rating) with a second category: the Service rating.  The Service rating takes into account reviews, response time, on-time delivery, etc.  The displayed rating is the lower of the Transaction and Service ratings.  This means it is possible for a lower-% ranked company to have a higher / 5 rating, which gives smaller companies a way to compete on quality and experience, even if they can’t (yet) match the sheer volume of a larger company.

This company has both – a large transaction rating and a high service rating, showing to prospective buyers it can handle both large purchase volumes and deliver an excellent experience.

Effective, not Good Reviews

Good reviews are not the same as effective reviews . I see so many 5-star reviews which say nothing but “excellent product” or “good experience”.  Those are good reviews, but they are not effective. 

An effective review tells the reader of the review what that rating was based on, so the reader can judge if they would give the same rating if they received the same experience.

For example, this company’s top review is:

A review that says: "Accurate parts, delivered promptly, with excellent communication throughout the process. Supplier is excellent, all around, a go-to for us, makes things easy to complete. We are a regular and will continue to be. Our end customers have come to rely on beautiful looking assemblies as the components shine and standout from the rest".

This review goes out of its way to define that the 5-stars comes from:

For a prospective buyer who values the above, this would be a strong indicator their experience would also be 5-stars.

Documented Quality Control Process

This is one of the first company profiles whose main navigation bars contained QC – which I immediately clicked on.

A navigation bar (listing Home, Products, Company profile, Contacts, and QC) with a red box highlighting "QC".

I was very excited with what I found: a detailed flowchart of a quality control process which started from raw material delivery to the factory all the way to customer returns:

A detailed QC flow with an inspection diamonds (indicating process branches) after Income Material and 3 inspection diamonds after In-House Made piece Parts: Process inspection, Finished inspection, and Outgoing Inspection.

This does two thing simultaneously:

  1. It signals to the buyer that Quality Control is not just an afterthought, but an important, iterative consideration.  Problems are less likely to occur, an acceptable solution is likely to be found when they do occur, and iteration in the process means that problems will be less likely to re-occur in the future.
  2. It avoids revealing the HOW of the process in a place easy for competitors to find and copy. This protects business secrets while still building trust with prospective customers.. 

Consistency and Attention to Detail

I’ll end this breakdown with two factors which affect a user subconsciously: consistency and attention to detail.

Look at the following two rows of featured products on the profile.

2 rows of featured product listing thumbnails which are visually consistent between products in colors and structure, with high quality and shiny aluminum product(s) in most .

Notice that they all carry elements which indicate they come from the same supplier. There are 3 primary colors: blue, yellow, and purple, which appear in every listing.  There are core design elements which remain the same depending on the type of listing: two orange banners (top-left and bottom) with a purple bottom-right inset for single products, and a blue information field for multi-product listings with an orange banner under the image displaying multiple products. 

Also – look at the product images themselves.  As an aluminum supplier – the buyer wants to see shine, defined edges, and symmetry because this indicates rust-free, high tolerances, and proper heat treatment.  And the product images deliver.

The consistency and attention to detail signal to the buyer that no matter what this company produces, it will be consistently high quality with a low defect rate.

Key Takeways

4 factors to acquire and maintain a high platform ranking:

  1. Platform ratings are based only on recent history (30-180 day windows), so older companies cannot “coast” on past performance, while new companies with mature processes can quickly climb.
  2. Reviews need to include details which inform readers what the review is based on to be effective.
  3. Quality Control cannot be an afterthought or a “nice-to-have” for a serious company who wants to be a top-contender.
  4. Consistency and Attention to Detail are important subconscious indicators a prospective buyer takes into account when evaluating the likelihood an asked-for customization will match previous products’ quality.
Tagged