In the world of eCommerce, B2B is considered a “misunderstood giant.” While the majority of talk and discussion revolves around the consumer end of eCommerce (B2C), B2B is a broader industry with a lot more potential for growth.
The problem with understanding B2B is that it’s professional; in that, it doesn’t have the same glitz and glamor of B2C eCommerce. Another issue that deters businesses from expanding towards digital B2B is the uncertainty about platforms.
But what if we told you that you could use WooCommerce to set up your B2B store?
WooCommerce, while powering up a majority of B2C stores, is slowly being realized as a platform built to support B2B wholesale operations as well. With the right hosting, companies understand why a handsome majority of stores are using WooCommerce as their platform of choice.
But there is still the group that’s reluctant to do so for one reason or another. Some of which we will be discussing in detail below.
This article, therefore, aims to convince business owners to use WooCommerce for B2B.
To that end, we have compiled five of the most crucial B2B-specific requirements. We will be highlighting these requirements and explaining how WooCommerce will be able to support it.
So, without further ado. Let us begin:
1. Personalized Pricing
The pricing strategy for B2C stores is pretty standard. There is universal pricing for all consumers for every product.
In B2B, the strategy is a bit different. There, you have to focus on providing customer-specific or dynamic pricing. Just look at Alibaba and its pricing strategy, which focuses on delivering bulk buyers a discount on their purchases.
This ability to alter your pricing is beneficial to B2B buyers since it leads to more purchases and loyal customers.
But is WooCommerce capable of handling such a pricing strategy? With the help of various dynamic pricing plugins like WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing, and WISDM’s Customer Specific Pricing, you can easily integrate that functionality within your store.
2. Advanced Checkout
B2B checkouts involve an interplay of different factors that add complexity to the entire process.
From corporate accounting, tax calculation, receiving payment information, logistics management, to facilitating payment methods like LoC, Trade Credit, Has Terms, and Purchase Requisitions, among others, there are plenty of checkout considerations that B2B businesses have to take into account.
At the same time, they also have to ensure that the entire process gets streamlined with the least amount of cart abandonment issues.
Apart from supporting over 100 payment gateways, there are plugins like the WooCommerce Checkout Manager that helps you integrate all the B2B payment methods that we have highlighted above.
Moreover, with plugins like the intuitive Quick Order for WooCommerce and Product Table, you can set up an ordering table that enables your customer to order products directly from the table rather than going to individual product pages. This is insanely beneficial for your store since it helps reduce cart abandonment and boost conversions.
3. Bulk Ordering
As discussed in the preceding sections, customers ordering products in bulk is a popular event in B2B eCommerce. Often, the customers (or buying companies, to be exact) doing this are regular customers who know what they want from your store. Because of this, browsing through multiple product pages, ordering the products, and checking out becomes a time-consuming process for them.
To simplify their purchasing process, you can integrate a bulk order form into your store. It helps customers place an order a lot more quickly by simply searching (through both name and SKU title), adding, placing orders for products, and checking out directly through the quick order table.
The best (and the easiest) plugin you can use to integrate a bulk order form to your WooCommerce store is perhaps Quick Order for WooCommerce since it allows you to perform all the functions as mentioned above with relative ease and simplicity.
4. Enhanced Mobile Experience
Nowadays, B2B product discovery begins from the smartphone. As noted in a study, 94% of customers enter to search for products from their smartphones and eventually purchase using another device. It is a clear indication of how, in the modern world, a mobile-friendly website is not an optional feature, but rather a necessity.
Besides responsiveness, there are plenty of features that you need to look out for when designing a mobile-friendly eCommerce store. Some of them include a bright CTA designs, product sliders, faster load-times, quick access, and navigation menus, among others. All of this makes for better customer experience for the user.
On WooCommerce, you get all of the functionalities above pre-built with WooThemes. Additionally, with plugins like WP Bakery, and Slider Revolution, you can create an aesthetically pleasing customer experience. Other than that, there are plenty of design plugins that you can use to develop refreshing designs in your store.
For checking site load-times, you can use Google Page Speed Insights.
5. Flexible Payments
B2C payment procedures are immediate since the money involved is less, and customers are more than willing to pay.
With B2B eCommerce, the opposite is the case. Because the stakes are generally high, customers and companies establish a long-term relationship that allows owners to extend various credit terms and flexible payment options to their loyal clients.
Including flexibility in your payment methods is an important consideration regardless of whether you’re B2B or B2C. But in B2B, you need to integrate a variety of different (and offline) methods that allows the customer to pay for their orders.
Again, as discussed above, WooCommerce supports a variety of online payment gateways as well as several plugins that can facilitate those offline payment gateways.
Conclusion.
Creating a B2B wholesale platform on WooCommerce overnight is not possible. You need the right set of tools and plugins to cater to your clients effectively at scale.
While the common misconception is that WooCommerce doesn’t support a B2B wholesale store, the reality is that it’s a statement that follows a gray area. It is true that, out of the box, WooCommerce doesn’t support B2B functionalities; but with the correct hosting package that helps your business scale, your WooCommerce store can handle full-scale B2B and B2C operations with ease.
