Aral Lubricants: Oiling a smooth-running catalogue

The public part of a B2B platform is set up as a supremely accessible catalogue of specification and data sheets.

The Site

Aral Lubricants is the automotive and industrial oils division of Aral, the BP-owned German fuels and lubricants manufacturer. Its German and English-language B2B sites provide detailed catalogues and technical and safety data sheets for its complete range of products plus a customer-only area for online ordering.

Product information is divided into automotive and industrial sections each of which is catalogued three separate ways: alphabetically, by industry (vehicle type for automotive) and by application. The site has also recently introduced interactive PDF-Product Catalogues which use the bookmark feature in Adobe Acrobat to give quick indexed access to pages. Other fast tracks to information include a Product Quick Search on the home page and a Technical service section for finding safety data sheets.

The Takeaway

One of the biggest uses of B2B sites is by customers and business partners looking for technical specifications and other product data sheets. Knowing that it is also one of the ‘stickiest’ ways to get customers using a vendor site, Aral Lubricants has set up the public part of its B2B platform to be a supremely accessible online catalogue.

Everything on the site is geared to making information easy and, most importantly, quick to find and download. So, it uses the capacity of the web to provide catalogues in distinct configurations and as a searchable database. And it even manages to speed up the normally cumbersome navigation of a PDF-formatted document.

First published on 18 May, 2004