10 points to respect for successful B2B e-commerce
The share of online purchases continues to increase among individuals and professionals. However, B2B e-commerce has specificities that you need to know and know how to manage if you want to ensure the success of your sales site...
To successfully meet the needs of B2B online buyers, B2B sellers are increasingly encouraged to equip their online stores with features essential for B2B e-commerce.
With the rise of the B2B e-commerce market, B2B buyers are becoming more accustomed to buying online, but are also becoming more demanding than ever when it comes to the experience delivered.
Here are the 10 key points to take into account to carry out your B2B e-commerce project .
#1 – Personalized B2B catalog management
Customized B2B catalog management is probably the most distinct and well-known feature of B2B e-commerce.
It allows sellers to customize product catalogs based on companies, divisions, business units, and even individual buyers or customers.
Each group has access to its own catalog where purchasing managers can view content and purchase products.
#2 – Multiple Price Lists
Pricing in B2B e-commerce can be very complex.
It may depend on purchase volume, pre-negotiated discounts, purchase frequency and many other factors.
It can also be calculated dynamically based on specific business rules.
At the bottom, there is the possibility of creating and customizing multiple price lists for each customer, company or business unit authorized on the e-commerce site.
This can get quite complex since each price list can contain an unlimited number of price points, different levels and different currencies.
Furthermore, it is also difficult to synchronize these price lists with an ERP, which must be solved with the appropriate B2B e-commerce solution.
#3 – Business Account Management
Unlike B2C, the B2B buyer experience requires a lot more personalization.
Often a B2B account can be made up of multiple users with particular purchasing roles and rights, especially when dealing with sub-divisions or sub-units of a business.
As a feature unique to B2B e-commerce, account management should be able to handle complex, hierarchical business accounts. Buyers should also be able to set up their own business account management structure, add authorized users, and create purchasing rules.
#4 – Access controls, roles and permissions
In the B2B industry, each customer may be represented by different users, each with different titles and responsibilities.
This is why it is important to ensure that users only have access to the information necessary for their work and nothing more.
Buyers, which are the most common category of users, can be divided into two categories: purchasing managers and simple buyers.
The purchasing manager can have all the necessary permissions to work with invoices, orders, tax codes, etc. while simple buyers can only access quotes, prices and shopping lists.
#5 – Organizations, websites and multiple stores
Many companies run multinational brands, which operate in different countries, with different currencies and tax regulations.
Thus, the localization capabilities of a B2B e-commerce solution can become a critical business requirement.
These aspects of B2B e-commerce are typically supported by an out-of-the-box B2B platform.
#6 – Content Management System
Having access to detailed product information is one of the main requirements of B2B buyers for a B2B e-commerce site.
As B2B buyers purchase items for pragmatic reasons, sellers will need to offer additional information to ensure the buyer knows what they are buying.
Product descriptions, videos, certifications, marketing sheets – all this information can help to clearly present all the advantages of the products and to preemptively answer the various questions of several decision makers.
Having CMS functionality on an e-commerce platform allows marketing and merchandising teams to perform updates to content and product pages without IT intervention, helping to further streamline productivity.
#7 – Multiple Shopping Lists
B2B buyers working on multiple projects, such as exhibits, printed materials, or products or equipment for different business units, may want to manage and save multiple shopping lists on the B2B e-commerce site.
This will allow them to save shopping lists for later use and quickly purchase already saved products.
#8 – Simplified buyer-seller interaction
Regardless of the site's level of development, a B2B e-commerce site cannot fully replace a seller.
However, even when it comes to a negotiation process between buyer and seller, certain B2B e-commerce features can significantly streamline the interaction.
For example, it is desirable to improve interactions between buyers and sellers by providing buyers with an easy way to create and submit inquiries, purchase orders and requests for quotations (RFQs) digitally. .
Sellers are then able to easily respond to orders and quote requests on the same platform, facilitating the negotiation process.
#9 – Segmentation and custom reports
With great customization flexibility and multiple pricing strategies, B2B e-commerce is fertile ground for account-based marketing, segmentation, and customer behavior analysis.
Companies need to be able to track key business performance indicators (KPIs), and determine how they are affected by different marketing strategies, user experience innovations, and new product offerings.
#10 – Customized and flexible workflows
When choosing a scalable B2B e-commerce solution, it is important to consider the flexibility of the solution.
An e-commerce site should never be stagnant and customers will eventually request many other features to improve the customer experience.
To achieve this, one of the key capabilities of Technical Valuation should be the ability to create an unlimited number of custom e-commerce workflows to support buyer and seller related processes.
Such a flexible workflow engine allows customization of workflows such as checkout experience, order submission process or automatic replenishment.
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