Controls suppliers push toward e-commerce

Most of the suppliers whose sites we reviewed for this story allow visitors to shop using a "shopping cart" analogy found at consumer e-commerce sites. Most also allowed purchases via credit card or company purchase order.

Perhaps most aggressive in the e-commerce area is the controls supplier formerly known as PLCDirect, now Automationdirect.com (Duluth, GA). Its site, www.automationdirect.com, claims to have more than 1ꯠ part numbers for sale, including sensors, switches, lights, motor contactors, drives, PLCs, PC controllers, software, connection systems and other accessories.

ABB Drives & Power Products (New Berlin, WI) is also entering the business of selling its low-horsepower AC drives over the Web at www.comp-ac.com. Buyers can configure and order the drives, as well as complete the transaction on-line with a credit card, "just like buying books and boots from a consumer site," says a company press release. Orders can also be completed via phone.

Opto 22 (Temecula, CA), a vendor of connectors and accessories found in machine control systems, also sells its products on-line at www.optoexpress.com. This site was a bit more plain than others, starting out with a simple text list of the supplier's products. Clicking on a specific product leads to a table of all the SKUs for that product, with a brief text description and price for each.

Web and phone together

A second type of e-commerce model in the controls supply

community relies

on customers visiting a Web site to gather information and picking up the phone to do the actual ordering. While we would think Web-based ordering would be convenient, at least one of these companies has told us that its customers are happy with this business model given that there are frequently some technical questions that are asked at the time of ordering.

One such supplier is Automation Intelligence (Duluth, GA), whose MotionOnline.com site at www.motiononline.com sells drives and motors manufactured by parent company Sanyo Denki. Visitors have the option of either browsing product on-line or downloading the entire catalog to review off-line on their own machines.

Another browse-online, phone-to-order site is that of OI Direct by AVG (Carol Stream, IL), at www.oidirect.com. As the name suggests, this site focuses just on operator interfaces, including touchscreens, message displays, marquees as well as industrial computer workstations. The site contains ample product information including mounting instructions and dimensional drawings.

Know of an interesting Web site? Tell us about it at [email protected].