Pod Drinks’ new web site seeks to simplify the drinks purchasing process. Roger Creathorn spoke to CEO Martin Marks to find out more…
In the last 15 years sleepy industries that have remained entrenched for decades have been completely transformed by entrepreneurial web startups. Amazon has grown to become the number one book retailer and downloads, such as iTunes, have changed the face of music. Now Martin Marks, CEO at Pod Drinks, thinks that time has come for the drinks dispensing industry to join the party…
‘At Pod Drinks with 10 years success, designing state of the art industry changing vending machines and ingredient dispensing systems (like the latest Multi forma) is easy’ Martin said. ‘What’s not so easy is designing an industry changing web site. Currently, most drinks dispensing manufacturers web sites are a plethora of machine pictures with some text, which states ‘designed for large’ or ‘designed for small’ and ‘offers a wide range of drinks’ accompanied by a “get a quote” button. Yawn! It’s not exactly 21st century is it? We knew we could do better than that!’
The challenge for Martin and his team was to re-format their mind set in order to develop a completely new on-line approach. ‘In the past, drinks systems web sites have been ‘information’ sites’ Martin said. ‘We wanted to develop something that was a real interactive experience for the user; something that was engineered from the outset to enable potential customers to look, gather all the information they need, and of course, buy online. The main obstacle to overcome was that the potential customer didn’t know which of our systems (or those of our competitors) would suit their needs best. The truth is that they have neither the time nor the inclination to find out.’
Martin and his team decided they’d begin the online process by asking customers questions that they could answer easily. ‘Most users have a pretty clear idea, before they go on line, of what range of drinks they want to offer their employees and visitors’, Martin said. ‘ All the prospective customer has to do is click the ingredient(s) from our extensive range and bingo; as they do, a picture of the correct machine appears. Easy peasy!’
Once the correct machine is displayed on the page, customers can add any accessories they want and select how many machines they want before finally clicking the ‘add to cart’ button. The experience is fully live and interactive: the user can add and subtract choices or accessories, and as they do, the machine magically changes in front of their eyes…
…users no longer have to plough through endless, meaningless pictures and technical descriptions.
By this simple reversal of the accepted ‘norm’, users no longer have to plough through endless, meaningless pictures and technical descriptions. Now it’s possible, with just a few clicks, for customers to configure, accessorize and order their ideal Multi forma machine – from hundreds of possibilities.
‘We feel it is very important to innovate in every area of our business not just our ingenious ingredient dispensing systems’, Martin said. ‘Our amazing new Multi forma ingredient dispensing system, together with the incredible interactive web site and integrated order tracking with live updates, is just the start of our totally new approach to ingredient dispensing at work.’
*Pod Drinks’ ‘game-changing’ web site is on-line here, now.
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