01 Oct
Nowadays, B2B ecommerce is growing stronger. Across every industry, businesspeople and consumers are learning tough lessons about agility and resilience.
Today, online stores are moving to accommodate B2B orders. It is a growing trend, which is expected to grow further. Investing in B2B e-commerce now gives a competitive edge compared to other businesses that are yet to consider the option.
In addition, B2B customers order hundreds and thousands of items at a go. Thus, you are able to record high sales and move products in bulk in a very short time to improve your cash flow. It’s also worth mentioning that B2B e-commerce has evolved to greatly reduce the costs of call center services.
Let’s take a look at what’s changed over the past decade in B2B, and what challenges merchants still face when moving from bricks to clicks.
What is B2B ecommerce?
B2B ecommerce, or business-to-business electronic commerce, describes online order transactions between businesses. Because orders are processed digitally, buying efficiency is improved for wholesalers, manufacturers, distributors and other types of B2B sellers.
It is defined as the sales of goods or services between businesses via online channels. Instead of receiving orders in the traditional ways (by telephone or mail), transactions are carried out digitally, which helps reduce a great amount of overhead costs.
The importance of B2B ecommerce
If a company forgets to invest in digital platforms in this century, it will soon face the problem of falling behind in the competition. Today, people are willing to purchase everything online than any other channels. Therefore, a clever investment in a B2B ecommerce platform is a wise choice if companies want to acquire millions of dollars in revenue. Moreover, the B2B ecommerce world is growing exponentially with the market value of $10.6 trillion in 2018. What’s more, according to an eMarketer’s report, 94% of B2B executives in North America said B2B e-Commerce is critical to business advantage and result. So, if you think B2B e-Commerce cannot affect your business, then you are totally mistaken.
Also, these days, B2B customers are seeking the same flexibility as what B2C buyers have. In another expression, B2B buyers want a “B2C-like” experience in their purchasing journey, which includes a quicker checkout process, fast delivery, easy and automatic repeat orders and improvement in tracking. To handle all of these requirements, a powerful B2B e-Commerce website is very crucial to any business in the industry because it enhances customer experience at a higher level, which can positively improve conversion rate in the long term to gain profitability.
B2B Ecommerce Challenges
Your B2B buyers want the same experience as B2C shoppers: efficiency and ease of use. But they have different needs — and therein lies the major challenge of B2B ecommerce sales.
1. B2B relationships are personal
You probably don’t have an account manager to be the contact between you and your favorite department store. But B2B relationships often are personalized in this way and have developed over time.
These personalized needs include customer-specific pricing, whether based on a tiering system or specifically negotiated deals, and bulk pricing. You may also have customers who don’t need access to your entire catalog.
B2B buyers expect pricing, catalogs, and product selection to be organized according to their particular requirements. How will those relationships translate online? How do you keep relationships unique and personalized at scale?
Customer groups
Assigning customer catalogs to specific customer segments is a way for you to start to personalize the B2B customer shopping experience for your users. This enables logged in customers to see only what is relevant to them, showing the prices that have been specifically negotiated for their account.
2. The B2B buying process involves a lot of decision-makers, and the buying cycle is long and complex
The B2B purchasing workflow can consist of a wide range of people with their own specific roles and responsibilities. There will be people researching the solutions, stakeholders whose buy-in is needed to move forward, financial representatives to approve the spend, and so many more. And depending on the value of the purchase, this could take up to a year or more — a far cry from the one-click purchase button on Amazon.
All that complexity means there’s a lot to keep up with. This is where solid back-office management comes in. You have to be able to efficiently provide each stakeholder your business interacts with the information they need to do their jobs.
Integrated tools
This is not a job for a manual process. You need powerful tools on your side, like customer relationships management (CRM) software, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to integrate all your data, and self-service options so buyers can find as much information on their own as possible.
3. Buyers have complex procurement processes
B2B buyers expect flexibility on how they order and how they pay and they need it, because some companies’ purchase processes are as complex and analog as the laggards they buy from.
Procurement refers to the activities around acquiring the products and services that support business operations. It’s often tightly monitored and controlled, with clearly defined policies and processes. This can include a lot of documents, like contracts, requisition orders, purchase orders, invoices, and more.
According to a survey of B2B buyers, almost three-quarters of respondents said they’d switch to a new ecommerce site for better purchasing options. The same share of respondents stated that they would purchase more products if they could pay by invoice.
eProcurement
eProcurement is the digitization of the procurement process. B2B buyers use eProcurement platforms to help improve efficiency and gain greater control over spending across the organization.
These platforms enforce best practices and consolidate data, but getting data into the platform can be tricky. An eProcurement integrator, bridging the divide between buyer and seller platforms, facilitates the flow of requisition, purchase order, invoice, and other data between ecommerce and eProcurement platforms.
4. Buyers need many ways to pay
Offering flexible payment terms to B2B customers can help you win new customers and keep existing customers happy.
B2B credit solution
Using a B2B credit solution can give you the advantage of:
- Improving customer loyalty and keeping pace with buyer expectations by offering Net 30 (or longer) terms.
- Allowing you to keep growing your business with immediate capital instead of waiting for customer payments.
- Avoiding the financial risk of offering credit to new customers.
5. Data for multiple channels may be siloed
Selling online requires locking together a number of moving pieces, and that number can be even greater when you’re talking about B2B. Particularly if you sell via multiple channels (e.g., B2B and B2C, or have multiple lines of distribution), you may have many different sources of data. Keeping that data siloed is not the best option for your business.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP)
ERP software integrates order management, accounting, and a 360-degree view of your clients into a single, real-time system, providing all the flexibility you need to customize the workflows and functionality of your back-office environment. A strong ERP integration provides you with a clear, holistic view of your business and your inventory levels so you can strengthen overall operations and meet buyer expectations.
6. Shipping B2B has its own set of requirements and constraints
Determining the best shipping strategy for your B2B business comes with its own set of unique challenges, from freight shipments to client-specific requirements and more. Some of the factors you may need to consider include:
- Possibility and frequency of repeat orders
- Small shipments
- Bulky items that are difficult to rate
- Quoting and real-time rating
- Existing agreements and contracts
But the added complexity doesn’t mean you can shy away from the shipping options offered by B2C merchants. In fact, buyers expect a B2C-like experience that delivers on personalization, quick delivery and convenience. And the growing demand for alternative delivery options in B2C shipping is just one example of this.
Price transparency and tailored shipping options
As you develop your B2B shipping strategy, aim for complete price transparency, multiple shipping options, and tailored shipping options based on product, order, or customer. Two things you can do now? Use different rules per product group, especially if you’re introducing a brand new product line, and make sure you are fulfilling orders via appropriate services (e.g., no LTL freight for small package shipments).
7. B2B buyers need to find more complex products just as easily
Modern buyers are moving away from in-person sales meetings and ordering via a paper catalog. Online B2B buyers, like B2C shoppers, want relevant search results, easy website navigation, and suggested product content.
But they also need accommodations that meet the complexity of B2B buying, such as a unique account with a custom catalog, specialized pricing, and sensitivity to product availability. The future of B2B is in ecommerce, and the need for personalized, intelligent, search-driven experience is essential.
Adaptive search
Leveling up your B2B site search solution can turn your site into a dynamic, customer-centric shopping experience. Adaptive search is a technology that learns from and adapts to B2B buyers’ behavior over time. It uses machine learning to display products based on each buyer’s unique browsing and search behavior, thus personalizing the shopping experience.
When adaptive search is combined with autocomplete, it completes the word in the search bar and presents suggested answers or results based on the search term. Here’s how to leverage adaptive search for B2B functionality:
- Search by exact part number or SKU
- and Search by exact keywords, including industry terms
- Search by problem or issue solved
- Search by content
Benefits of a branded B2B ecommerce website
Business-to-business ecommerce websites provide a way for your customers to purchase your products online, and a host of other benefits to your organization. Here are 10 powerful benefits of deploying an ecommerce site with an engine built specifically for B2B.
1. Scalability
An effective B2B ecommerce digital experience platform will enable your organization to grow and scale easily to meet market demand and customer needs, by opening new sales channels and continuously reaching new market segments.
By creating and testing compelling content for your targeted B2B buyers, you can deliver value and quickly respond to changes in the market. Also, by adopting extensible B2B ecommerce cloud solutions, you can revamp your existing technology and significantly improve your marketing and merchandising capabilities.
2. Improved efficiency and productivity
Through integration to the enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other back-end business systems, ecommerce provides marked efficiencies for B2B organizations. Since customers can order online at their convenience, businesses can focus on the actual customer service functions rather than simply being order takers.
Also, automated ordering and workflows eliminate the need to reconfigure data in independent systems, thereby reducing the possibility of errors. This further improves the efficiency of shipping processes and increases order throughput.
3. More Customers
A B2B ecommerce site with public-facing catalog pages is a powerful tool to reach new B2B customers. Your future buyers not only prefer to shop online, but will demand it. As B2B buyers head online to compare products and find the best prices, manufacturers and distributors can leverage the power of search engines to connect with them. By developing a responsive B2B ecommerce site with rich SEO-friendly content, you can locate new visitors and convert them into customers.
4. Improved Brand Awareness
A B2B ecommerce platform provides your business with an online presence, thus giving you control over your brand. This allows you to promote, grow and strengthen your brand both locally and internationally.
Although other external B2B market channels may generate additional brand awareness benefits, your branded ecommerce website is the main marketing tool for a sustained online presence and visibility.
Developing SEO-friendly content for your ecommerce site is a fast way to improve your site’s search engine ranking and improve the likelihood that your target audience will know who you are.
5. Increased Sales
A B2B ecommerce site not only helps you reach new customers, it also allows you to easily implement an automated cross-sell and upsell recommendation program. With this, you can increase sales by offering relevant suggestions to customers on the site and encouraging them to purchase related items, or items with more features and functionalities.
A well-designed ecommerce platform provides the right information to your customers, thus facilitating the ordering process. Also, by providing self-service capabilities, B2B ecommerce websites allow customers to order or reorder easily based on previous purchases, including negotiated prices and personalized preferences. This not only increases sales, but also improves the mean order values.
6. Analytics capability
B2B ecommerce provides a perfect platform for organizations to launch comprehensive analytics campaigns. Through ecommerce, organizations can easily measure and evaluate marketing campaigns, sales effectiveness, product mix, inventory turns, customer sales effectiveness and customer engagement. Google Analytics offers ecommerce tracking, but integrating analytics with your ERP as well gives you much more valuable data with actionable insights.
7. Customer-centric experience
Amazon.com sets the standard for providing an exceptional ecommerce experience and today’s online shopper expects an Amazon-like experience whether they are shopping for business or pleasure.
While there are certainly differences in experiences for retail shoppers and B2B buyers, B2B organizations still need to employ intuitive design, rich content and interactive functionality in their websites in the way of product recommendations and trends based on previous searches, merchandise based on holidays or themes and easy access to past orders, account settings, profile and wishlists.
8. Exceptional customer service
Ecommerce provides an exceptional opportunity for B2B organizations to improve their customer service initiatives. Ecommerce sites can provide access to self-serve portals with customers’ account, order, history and tracking information. Through integration with an organization’s ERP system, a robust ecommerce site can display customer-specific products, services and pricing based on customer login credentials.
9. Improved sales engagement
Your physical sales team will also benefit from the launch of a comprehensive ecommerce effort. A B2B ecommerce site or portal will improve your sales teams’ visibility into customer orders, pricing and history while traveling or working remotely.
With automated inventory management and order tracking, you can synchronize data across your ecommerce channels and provide accurate updates to your customers. This is a proven way to promote transparency, ensure faster delivery and improve customer experience.
10. Multi-site capability
While acknowledging that today’s shopping tendencies are mostly non-linear, it is important to provide an omnichannel experience to your customers with a B2B ecommerce platform. Usually, B2B buyers move from one device to another and across multiple platforms as they search for the products they need.
Launching channel-specific or co-branded ecommerce sites is easy with the right B2B ecommerce platform. This capability allows you to offer co-branded websites or microsites for each of your distributors or key clients as well as allow for sites that cater to a specific international audience by presenting content in alternate languages or currencies.
Final words
B2B ecommerce is a potential and tremendous market for many businesses to participate in. But, it is not easy to be successful if people have a lack of background knowledge about the online B2B platform.
By working with B2B ecommerce solutions that offer a variety of services, you’ll have access to the kind of system customization that you need for your company to operate effectively.
As more and more B2B businesses are finding their niche on digital platforms, the competition is getting fierce. B2B ecommerce comes with its own set of challenges but we have discussed the solutions too.