It has been a few years now since the emergence of B2B eCommerce has been witnessed. The industry is experiencing a whopping growth, and there’s no slowing down to it. As per the US B2B eCommerce Market Report of 2022, the B2B eCommerce businesses collectively generated an 18% increase in the sales rate, which is a whopping number.
This explains the potential of this market and how B2B companies are leveraging the potential of it. So, if you intend to start a business in this arena, you must adopt the best practices to seek B2B eCommerce development. With a professional team at your back, you will be able to approach your site development project with respect to what your B2B buyers need.
As of today, every wholesale or B2B brand is looking for an eCommerce site to provide their customers with a phenomenal shopping experience. If you are one among them, read along this article till the end to rely upon some of the best development practices and key features of B2B eCommerce.
What Explains the Differences Between B2C and B2B Customer Needs?
Here is a brief explanation on what’s the difference between B2C and B2B eCommerce customers for you to be clear about your business model:
- Buying Decisions
When in B2B eCommerce, the customers’ buying decisions are often planned, value-driven, or logical, whereas for B2C purchases, customers’ decisions are often emotional or impulse.
- Decision Makers
B2B purchasing decisions are made in groups, and they follow a specific procurement process, which might require approval from diverse departments or managers. In B2C, the decision maker is only a single person who is searching for the item.
- Buying Cycle
In the B2B landscape, buying cycles are considered quite long and overly complicated, as they involve a lot of individuals and departments. B2B buyers prepare a long-term agreement with the eCommerce business as they make repeat purchases, but that’s not the case with B2C buyers.
- Focus
The focus of the B2C eCommerce customers while making their purchase decisions is always on their needs or desires. On the other hand, the B2B eCommerce buyers drive their focus towards deciding on how the product would impact their business, and what are the payment terms.
What are the Features that Should Exist in a B2B eCommerce Site?
Now that you know how B2B eCommerce development differs from that of B2C, it is important to get along and decide on what features are a must for your site to have. They are:
1. Storefront with Better UX
When seeking B2B eCommerce development, the shopping experience you deliver to your clients or customers should be considered on priority. All the B2B customers often look for a high satisfaction quotient from the B2B stores, and yours should top the chart. To ensure that your storefront acquires the best UX, better than the competitors, here are some elements that the eCommerce development experts must count on:
- Make use of intuitive and responsive templates.
- Add scope of branding and customization.
- Ensure mobile responsiveness for the storefront.
- Add elements such as lead capture forms, rewards programs, etc.
- Keep the site structure open for integrations or extensions when needed.
2. Implement Both Customer and Wholesale Pricing
All the B2B buyers must have clarity on the product prices in your store and compare them with those of the other sources for making their purchase decisions. Therefore, you must make sure that the B2B eCommerce development experts integrate pricing features with respect to the customer group.
Every store visitor, including new clients or customers, must be able to understand your products’ price per unit alongside the volume discounts for making decisions. All the B2B buyers are often focused on acquiring value out of their purchases, for which the procurement departments will often be using the unit value and available discount to compare their potential purchases with other available options.
3. Detailed Product Catalogue with Content
When seeking B2B eCommerce development, make sure you are relying upon a specialised CMS for supporting your online product presentation and information management. Your CMS should be able to support the classification of products with diverse hierarchy levels, product images, prices, manuals, specifications, and descriptions.
You can also expect to integrate the video contents of your product, for the B2B customers to relate better. Some of the specific product types might be in need of special configurators for making necessary sections of options and parts. Talk to your eCommerce development experts like MGT-Commerce and ask them to make your product catalogs shareable across different channels, such as Amazon marketplace, Google Shopping, or Facebook Stores.
What are Some of the Best B2B eCommerce Development Practices for Building a Successful Site?
To help you ensure that your B2B eCommerce developer is doing the job right with respect to building your store, here are some of the best practices that you must ensure they implement:
1. Understanding the Shopping Behavior of Clients/Customers
The battle between the B2B eCommerce business owners is now centered upon a competition on who is more capable of meeting the growing expectations of the customers and providing them with simple, reliable, convenient, and fast experiences.
2. Design the Visuals & Content Altogether
In a B2B eCommerce store, the visuals should align with that of the content to entice the customers to make a purchase. So, the eCommerce development company you hire should consider this while executing your project.
3. Enhance the Search Functionality
Your B2B eCommerce site should give your visitors an evident reason to stay in your store, and this should happen quickly. Let your development experts analyze your target audience and decide how they tend to look for products or services within your site. Enhance the search functionality of your store, and it will help boost the B2B conversion rates.
Bottom Line
These are just a few of the many things that your B2B eCommerce development experts should take note of while creating your business platform. Implementing these features and keeping in mind these development suggestions shall help you set up a thriving B2B business with the necessary enhancements.
So, when you find your B2B eCommerce development company, make sure you talk to one of their consultants first, to specify your needs and expectations from the project. Let them analyse your B2B business requirements and pitch their quality services for the same. Get along with the team that you think is capable of delivering the best outcomes for your project.