The Ultimate Guide to B2B Ecommerce Solutions

In today’s economic climate, disruption has become ‘business as usual.’ For any company hoping to stay competitive, digital buying and selling is not just an option, but a strategic necessity.

Firms that haven’t fully embraced e-commerce should consider this warning: the time to adapt is now. Does your organization have the technologies, skills and strategic know-how to attract and retain today’s, fast-evolving B2B customers?

B2B vs. B2C Target Audiences

Beyond the obvious distinction that B2B firms sell to other businesses while B2C companies target individuals, there are key differences in how B2B and B2C companies define, market to, and sell to their target audiences.

On average, the B2B target audience is more diverse, makes higher-value purchases from each supplier, and takes longer to research and make purchase decisions than their B2C counterparts. In fact, B2B sales take 22% longer today than they did five years ago.

The main reason for these behavioral differences is the composition of each target audience. Typically, a B2C buyer is also a user of the product/service, as well as the purchase decision-maker. By contrast, B2B users, buyers and decision-makers are often three different people or three different groups of people:

Here are a few easy steps for launching a successful B2B e-commerce option – fast:

Keep it simple: Overthinking the process will do nothing but slow you down, so it’s crucial to utilize a tool that requires minimal setup and no technical expertise. Look for options that provide clean, attractive, customizable templates and styling, as well as hosting and platform support.

Put your customers first: Always remember that you are offering your customers a product, a service and an experience. Put yourselves in your customer’s shoes as you create your marketplace. Ask yourself what five things you want customers to see when they visit your company online. Consider what you like when you’re shopping online. Then implement your marketplace with a platform that allows you to customize the way customers view your merchandise.

Make the technology do the heavy lifting: After the website is set up and customized, harness its automation and integration processes to save time and process orders more efficiently. In addition to using the software to manage products, orders, client registrations, and payments, put the site to work by integrating a clickable, easy-to-navigate catalog. Your business’s catalog is the heart of your sales program. Significant resources, time, and intelligence go into the creation of this virtual showroom of your company’s offerings. To reap the rewards of all that effort, create a user-friendly, point-and-click catalog that truly engages the customer.

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The Future of B2B is E-Commerce

At the dawn of the 20th century, the U.S. automobile market was insignificant. In 1900, there were just a few thousand cars chugging along America’s roads, and early motorists were often advised to “get a horse.” By mid-century, however, the number of cars had soared to more than 60 million. A market that began as a trickle soon became a torrent.

Likewise, at the dawn of the 21st century, e-commerce comprised a tiny fraction of U.S. retail sales, accounting for just $34 billion of a $3 trillion market. Since then, e-commerce has enjoyed explosive growth. And Business-to-Business (B2B) e-commerce – online order transactions between businesses – is also growing rapidly as new digital models, platforms and sales strategies help manufacturers, retailers, wholesalers, and distributors to expand their audience reach and offer customers a more personalized and convenient buying experience.

By 2023, an estimated 17% of B2B sales in the U.S. will be generated online, up from 13% in 2019, and B2B e-commerce sales are projected to grow to $1.8 trillion from $1.2 trillion in 2021. A 2018 survey found that nearly half of companies conduct 50% to 74% of their corporate purchases online.

Examples of B2B e-commerce companies include well-known “digital players” like Amazon, Alibaba and Apple, as well as industry giants that rose to prominence long before the Digital Age – from ExxonMobil and General Motors to GE, Nike, Procter & Gamble and 3M, each of which generates billions of dollars in annual online transactions.

Create Intuitive, Customized and Effortless E-Commerce Experiences

Today, B2B buyers are looking for e-commerce interactions that mirror their B2C experiences. B2B sellers must now find ways to provide shopping experiences that are every bit as intuitive, customized and effortless. That being said, creating a personalized experience within a B2B e-commerce ecosystem requires a very different approach than it does within a B2C environment.

What is Personalization?
In the broadest sense, personalization is the ability to provide unique user experiences that meet a customer’s specific needs or add value in a given context. In e-commerce, that can mean tailoring a customer’s experience according to their unique order history (e.g., through an automatic upsell engine or recommending-products feed) or by streamlining an aspect of their user experience on the site (e.g., enabling faster, easier purchases).

B2C vs. B2B Personalization
B2C personalization generally leverages buying history and data from past or similar customer transactions to generate targeted add-ons for a purchase or to increase the purchase size. But because B2B e-commerce transactions are longer, more complicated, and involve multiple stakeholders, B2B personalization relies on finding new efficiencies that add value for customers.

Tips for B2B Personalization include:

Segmenting the audience. Effective B2B e-commerce personalization includes audience segmentation – i.e., delivering different experiences to different buyer types, but doing so without creating totally different applications or websites. Unique customer log-ins can help facilitate this goal, displaying different content, product lists, and pricing for specific accounts or customers.

Streamlining the order process. Personalization at checkout means the ability to configure the cart and ordering process according to buyer type, creating a smooth flow and an easy-to-use experience for customers. For example, customizing checkout might allow you to specify payment or delivery methods for some buyers, and not others, or to set different approvals for various stakeholders. The main idea is that you’re tailoring the ordering process according to customer needs in order to make the buyer’s experience as painless as possible.

Managing & creating catalogs. B2B catalogs can be long and difficult to navigate. Although knowledgeable sales staff can help guide users, B2B buyers increasingly prefer self-service during the research phase. To help customers find what they need, offer them tools that help customize and streamline catalog browsing and list management. Integrating your e-commerce with important sales data (ERPs and backend systems) can also help in this effort, providing useful transparency into inventory counts and logistics that help customers make their purchasing decisions. Searchable catalogs (by name, SKU, or even barcode) are also useful. In addition to catalog management, B2B sellers can use instant catalog publishing tools to create custom, flippable and shoppable catalogs for their sales teams and customers, increasing sales order efficiency and personalizing a crucial phase of the buying cycle for customers.

Ultimately, B2B personalization should demonstrate to your different customer types that you understand their needs and want to make their jobs easier. Doing so will help drive positive engagement, reduce your cost of sales, and drive efficiencies for the entire B2B e-commerce journey.