Portal or brochure site: build the wrong one first and you'll waste months

Trade portal vs brochure website: start with where the cost sits

Before comparing a trade portal vs brochure website, measure the actual problem you have. Count the hours your team spends taking orders that never change, re-sending the same price list, and chasing purchase order numbers over the phone.

If that's a day a week across the team, the portal is almost certainly the priority. If it's an hour, you don't have an ordering problem yet, you have a findability problem, and the brochure site should come first.

What a trade portal actually includes

• ✓Approved-account login with customer-specific pricing tiers.
• ✓Reorder from previous orders in two clicks.
• ✓Live stock or lead-time indication, even if approximate.
• ✓Order history, invoices and statements the customer can pull themselves.
• ✓Credit terms and PO number capture at checkout.

What a brochure-plus site includes

• ✓Product category pages that rank for what buyers actually search.
• ✓A proper trade account application, capturing VAT number and expected volume.
• ✓A gated price list request that delivers instantly by email.
• ✓A catalogue or line card sales can send from a phone.

“Count the hours spent re-taking identical orders before you build anything.”

The pragmatic build order

Build the findable site first, capture accounts properly, then add the ordering layer once you know which lines those accounts reorder most. Building the portal first is how wholesalers end up with a beautiful system and no new customers logging into it.

It also lets you build the portal around real data rather than guesswork, because by the time you need it you'll know exactly which products, quantities and customers it has to serve.