European Engineers Embrace Digi-Key for Online Component Sales as B2B Ecommerce Market Readiness Intensifies

Digi-Key, the industry leader in electronic component selection, availability and delivery, today announced an enormous spike in web traffic and online orders placed by design engineers in Europe. Already ranked as the industry’s top web resource in North America, Digi-Key announced today that engineers in Germany, the UK, France and Italy, among other regions of Europe, are rapidly embracing Digi-Key as their “go to” resource for electronic component selection and availability. The company also announced today a record increase in European sales with an average of 26-percent year-over-year growth in 2014, as compared to the first three quarters of last year.

After formally announcing its European presence just two years ago, Digi-Key has quickly become known for its unmatched selection of electronic components including one million in-stock parts available for next-day delivery. Today, 81 localized Digi-Key websites represent 10 local languages and 16 different currencies. The company attributes over 42% of its sales revenue to customers outside of the United States.

A recent Forrester study validates the trend with a predicted growth rate of 11-percent per year across Europe with strong numbers in 2014 representing the UK and Germany with the next wave of growth coming from Southern Europe, namely Italy and Spain.

Leadership to Localization

Digi-Key’s global website receives 6.2 million visits and 70 million page views per month from 4.5 million unique visitors. The localized websites feature libraries of ‘how to’ articles, reference designs, video tutorials and a wide range of self-service resources including peer-to-peer online communities for problem solving and idea sharing, along with live web chat and other touch points for the customer.

“We understand ecommerce infrastructure and, at the same time, we understand the importance of localization. As we tap into the readiness of the European marketplace, we are committed to making it as easy as possible for engineers to research, select and purchase electronic components,” said Chris Beeson, EVP of Sales and Supplier Development for Digi-Key. “With a focus on maintaining the broadest inventory of components, we will continue to expand our selection, improve our services and localize our offerings in Europe so that we are, hands down, the engineer’s first choice.”

Designed to support product design from prototype to production, engineers may choose to peruse through a library of reference designs and supporting articles. Then, they can use the Digi-Key BOM tool to compare price and availability and place their order. With over one million products in stock, over 99-percent of Digi-Key orders ship for next-day delivery.

Digi-Key’s dynamic online resources include:

• Design Tool Ecosystem: Engineers have access to an entire spectrum of EDA tools from the free, easy-to-use schematic tool, Scheme-It, to high-end design software co-developed by Mentor Graphics and Digi-Key. In addition, more than 1,000 in-depth reference designs are available to save engineers both time and costly errors.
• Supplier Marketing Centers: Digi-Key partners showcase their product lines on the site with detailed product information including videos, whitepapers and other downloadable materials.
• Multimedia Library: With an on-demand library of over 2,700 tutorial videos, ‘how to’ demonstration videos, just-for-fun electrical project ideas and/or humorous videos, engineers have a fun way to learn from their peers. Thousands of product training podcasts provide useful component-specific examples and supporting information.
• Article Library: Nearly 2,000 articles and written resources on trends and/or best practices are easily searchable by product type, supplier, function, and industry, giving designers fast information to guide their product designs.
• TechXchange™ Community: An integrated social media destination where thousands of engineers and designers share projects and ideas, post problems, and discuss latest industry news and trends.

Mobile

Analysts also predict online retails sales made via mobile phones will grow in the UK by 22 percent to a total of 7.92B. Sales using tablets will grow by 100 percent and smartphones will provide over 60-percent of the UK’s mobile shopping. Other European countries with high mobile shares will be Germany, Sweden and France.

“Digi-Key has been testing the mobile market for several years,” commented Tony Harris, CMO for Digi-Key. “We’ve developed not only our own Digi-Key mobile application but we’re also testing supplier-specific mobile applications such as the one we created for Freescale that is available on iTunes store. Also, we will continue to tweak our responsive design capabilities and explore new technologies, supporting a broader list of tablets, phones and other devices for our customers.”

Click here to access the Digi-Key’s mobile applications designed for iPhone, iPod Touch and/or Android users. To download the free Digi-Key and Freescale ON-THE-GO mobile application, click here.

About Digi-Key Corporation

Digi-Key Corporation, based in Thief River Falls, Minn., is a global, full-service provider of both prototype/design and production quantities of electronic components, offering more than three million products from over 650 quality name-brand manufacturers. With over one million products in stock and an impressive selection of online resources, Digi-Key is committed to stocking the broadest range of electronic components in the industry and providing the best service possible to its customers. Additional information and access to Digi-Key’s broad product offering is available at www.digikey.com.

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Contact information

Editorial Contact for Digi-Key Corporation
Kayla Krosschell, 1-800-344-4539 x1098
Corporate Communications Specialist
Kayla.Krosschell@digikey.com
publicrelations@digikey.com