Driven by FOMO, B2Bs are going all in the B2B eCommerce implementation with high levels of enthusiasm but little thinking. The result translates to poorly performing sites, lacking key functionality to provide low ROI.
To meet and surpass buyers' lofty eCommerce expectations, companies have to define specific goals and KPIs from the start and, above all, take to the warnings given below...
What is the business to business eCommerce?
Business to business eCommerce refers to the sale of goods and services from one business to another business through an online store.
Unlike B2B sales of the past, business to business eCommerce transactions get processed digitally, making business to business eCommerce the preferred channel for digital-savvy B2B organizations.
In 2019, the global business to business eCommerce market was worth US$12.2 trillion. That's more than six times the B2C eCommerce market!
But all this was pre-COVID. The world is a pretty different place now. COVID-19 has completely changed the scenario of in-person selling and took complete industries online.
A global vaccination program's rollout does promise a return to some normalcy. But with 80% of B2B decision-makers preferring their remote sales interactions and also digital self-service over the more traditional methods, business to business eCommerce looks pretty set to retain its dominance in the near future.
Business to business eCommerce gives the buyers several unique benefits: ease in scheduling, saving on the travel expenses, a pretty simple sales process, reduced sales cycles, and 24/7 availability as well to name a few.
The pros for B2B sellers, however, can tend to be more profound...
Why business to business eCommerce is an absolute delight for B2B sellers...
B2B sellers investing in the business to business eCommerce can:
extend their reach a lot, enter new markets, and also boost brand awareness through search and even social means. collection of customer data, carrying out a detailed analysis, boost the data-driven decision-making, improve the accuracy of forecasts, and also enhance the B2B customer experience. Automate the core sales processes for boosting efficiency, reducing human error, reduce costs, and also improve overall scalability. sell direct-to-consumer (D2C), cut out all intermediaries, to maximize margins. explore different B2B2C opportunities, partnering with the established brands for gaining a lot of new customers and increase credibility. improve the experience of digitally aware Millennials gives out a strong preference for self-service. become an omnichannel enterprise, meeting the buyers where they actually are as opposed to hoping them coming to you. increase the order values with the help of intelligent promotions, upsells, cross-sells, and even email marketing. organize and manage the supplier and customer data like order histories, special prices, and their subsequent returns.
10 business to business eCommerce mistakes that won’t be good for your online presence-
#1: Rigid payment options
Offering your customers with flexible payment terms increases the sales by 17% and also the average order values by 21%. That's according to a recent study by Forrester.
Your online payment terms needs to mirror the ones provided offline. There's absolutely no reason why you can't offer net 30, for example, when the various apps and plugins add this particular functionality to your site in just a couple of clicks.
Digital wallets, EFTs through ACHs, checks, and even instant credit give the customers even a lot of freedom and also serve as a prominent differentiator.
#2: Inconsistent product information
Companies that are new to the business to business eCommerce often tend to underestimate the scale of product information challenge: the writing, formatting, and uploading of product information for the thousands of SKUs inside their product catalogs is highly time-consuming and confusing.
To keep your business to business eCommerce site serve like a feasible alternative to direct interactions with the sales reps, it needs to convey all the product specs, regs, and even compliance with absolute clarity.
PIM software can also be used for the storage, management, uploading, editing, and distributing your business's product information through your different business to business eCommerce channels.
#3: Really bad product images
Buyers that spend large amounts of money on crucial items need to see what they are actually getting before they make a purchase. A couple of run-of-the-mill product shots–or worse, generic images that hundreds of different product options– are not going to fit the bill.
Increasingly, B2Bs are turning to 3D product rendering as an alternative to photography. Producing multiple computer-generated product images tends to be cost-effective, particularly for customizable products.
Buyers can now interact with 3D images in more engaging ways–zooming in and out, spinning them around, and also watching animated sequences. Throw AR and VR into it, and then you have got yourself a highly interactive buying experience.
#4: Uniform pricing
Strong B2B relationships stand on special prices, that are sometimes negotiated over several years. If you wish to continue making the buyers feel valued, price transparency should not be your priority. Configure your site for automatic price adjustments, depending on how much a customer's repetition is worth to you.
#5: B2C-level experiences for customers
Amazon is the gold standard by which all business to business eCommerce gets measured. It's kind of unfair, considering how Amazon is the world's third-largest company with $280.5 billion in revenue, but, what can you do?
The good thing is, with hundreds of SaaS vendors, B2Bs can benefit a lot from a number of the same technologies that Amazon has spent millions on, to develop and test.
Business to business buyers want a killer UX design, advanced search, one-click reordering, multiple shipping options, live tracking, quick page loads, live chat, and most importantly, mobile optimization–80% of B2B buyers use their mobiles for work.
#6: Short on personalization
The tech giants like Amazon and Netflix have put personalization at the core of their overall strategies, which is hardly surprising considering 80% of consumers are likely to purchase when personalized experiences are on offer.
1-to-1 customer journeys build a lot of loyalty and retention, encouraging the conversion rates by organizing the purchase path. Intelligent recommendation upsells and cross-sells increase order values.
#7: Short on customization
The demand for customized products is increasing with each day. In some categories, more than 50% of buyers have shown interest in purchasing cusstomized products. But providing customization online is tough, especially for the manufacturers of the most complicated and customizable products.
By embedding a visual product configurator like KBMax in a business to business eCommerce website, buyers can then customize their products themselves by dragging, dropping, pointing, and clicking, all inside an interactive visual interface, creating the perfect product for their unique use case.
#8: A Flawed B2B eCommerce platform
How to choose the best B2B eCommerce platform when there are so many of these in the market? It's a pretty tough decision to make, but an important one. It could well be the difference between success and failure.
Traditional platforms like Magento allow B2Bs to have complete control on their code. This power translates to complete flexibility on how websites actually look and behave. But this control comes at the cost of speed. The development costs are pretty high, implementing changes is slow, and you get a stable architecture that nobody fully understands.
A SaaS B2B eCommerce platform like Shopify Plus or BigCommerce is a much better choice for the huge majority of small- and medium-sized companies, providing ease of use, automatic upgrades, easy integration with third-party apps, and also 24/7 support access.
#9: Leaving your sales team out to dry.
Even a simple mention of the words "business to business eCommerce" sends chills down the spine of sales reps that are fearful of losing their jobs due to automation. Business to business eCommerce can surely perform a number of sales tasks faster, better, and cheaper than any human sales rep ever could.
But B2Bs abandon their sales teams at their own risk. Because far away from replacing the sales reps, business to business eCommerce can, and should, be a multiplier, giving the reps access to a huge amount of data-driven insights and predictive analytics that can be used in the field.
Some sales jobs will surely be lost to automation, but they will be at a lower end of the pay scale. Other sales jobs will then be created at the more creative, strategic, and innovative end. The most effective sales reps will be those that will combine cutting-edge technology with great interpersonal skills.
#10: No social proof at all.
Social proof–the online version of your word of mouth–is integral in driving the business to business eCommerce sales. 92% of consumers read a minimum of one review before purchasing something online. And 47% just buy the products with ratings above four stars.
Testimonials, recommendations, client logos, reviews, user-generated content, and even influencer endorsements all can work wonders, as with likes, shares, followers, and other related social media credentials.
|