Right Ecommerce Platform

The B2B Marketer’s Guide To Choosing The Right eCommerce Platform

 

So many vendors to choose from, so little time. The influx of eCommerce platform providers has often been cited as one of the big challenges for B2B companies trying to digitalize their sales operation.
Research shows that 60.7% of manufacturers and 38.1% of distributors do not have an eCommerce site. And while Forrester predicts that B2B eCommerce transactions will reach $1.5 trillion by 2021, that will make up just 13% of total B2B sales that year.
While it’s clear that B2B commerce is definitely making strides, and we're seeing quite a bit of uptake in that space, it’s still fairly early days. Picking the right eCommerce solution that is truly built to support a B2B eCommerce framework is imperative. Here’s my advice on what to look for—the core B2B functions you need—when you are evaluating various B2B eCommerce platforms.

1. Make sure multiple buyers from within a business can easily purchase from you.

There are plenty of vendors out there who say they specialize in B2B eCommerce, but many do not actually have those B2B-specific core features. True B2B eCommerce platforms have built-in functionality that allows businesses with multiple buyers to purchase from you using the same account. You also want to be able to set different kinds of roles and permissions for those buyers in terms of who is allowed to make purchases, request quotes, or make updates to the company account. And the B2B eCommerce platform must support an order-approval process based on those permissions that control how much they may spend, the items they can purchase, their available “ship to” addresses, and payment options.

 

2. Customization is key.

Your eCommerce provider should also be able to support price quoting in addition to just enabling standard orders so you can craft personalized offers for large or made-to-order requests. The entire quoting process should be digitized, with the ability to negotiate with your customer, convert the quote to an order when an agreement is reached, and check out online. The ability to present custom catalogs and pricing to different customers is also of utmost importance, since B2B buyers frequently have negotiated contracts that must be honored across all channels, including online. Solutions should allow you to support these contract terms or integrate with your ERP system in real-time to ensure each buyer has the right experience and pricing.

3. Quick ordering is a must.

B2B buyers frequently reorder the same set of products, over and over again, making quick ordering options essential. For example, a printer might want to give its B2B customers the means to reorder the same paper and ink products monthly without having to start from scratch each time. The commerce platform must enable buyers to place those types of orders quickly and efficiently by either quickly typing in or uploading SKUs they want, creating an order from a previous order, or setting up standard shopping lists that can be quickly added to the cart. Taking the friction out of these day-to-day purchasing experiences saves buyers time and encourages them to purchase more.

4. Strong content development to drive more B2B sales.

Strong content development is a must in today’s B2B landscape. B2B eCommerce involves complex and high-consideration products, and there are often multiple stakeholders engaged in the purchase. You need to be able to present rich content that serves those different stakeholders so they can efficiently research and evaluate your products. Providing detailed information, such as product specs, computer-aided design (CAD) drawings, usage and configuration guides, comparison charts, volume pricing, user reviews, and more allows buyers to easily answer their questions so you can close the deal. To generate and continually update all of these resources, you need management tools that empower your business users to create, schedule, and publish everything on their own, without help from IT. You also want to have the ability to personalize and target different content and product recommendations to specific customers or buyer roles. This will enable you to create a relevant and efficient experience for your customers that will help them find the information they need faster.
Rich merchandising of your products, including the ability to show off many different angles through images and give buyers the ability to zoom, view customer reviews, and see product specs are the expectation in the B2C world, and it’s no different in the B2B space.

Read More: https://magento.com/blog/best-practices/b2b-marketers-guide-choosing-right-ecommerce-platform