How to Choose the Best B2B eCommerce Platform

Are you able to provide services that aid businesses in their growth, hiring or manage their teams? Do you offer products for companies? Do you offer items for sale wholesale?

If you're in the B2B industry or would like to become one, you may very well be able to benefit from an eCommerce B2B platform. It can simplify processes for your customers and team and allow you to grow faster and more efficiently.

Let's review of how an eCommerce store can help businesses in B2B in deciding the right platform.

The reason for creating a B2B eCommerce store?

The majority of online stores that you've come across are B2C (Business to Consumer) which can provide your dog's food, your child's birthday present, or perhaps your preferred specialty food items. But don't be lured into thinking that eCommerce sites are exclusively intended for businesses that cater to the consumer. They can be an incredibly efficient instrument for B2B businesses too.

A recent study found that 41 percent of buyers from B2B said that the self-service feature could make it easier for them to doing business on the web. This is a huge number! The ability of customers to manage their accounts and perform other associated tasks is one of the highlights of the eCommerce capabilities.

As an example, instead of calling for an estimate the Sourcing Manager might submit a request online and receive the quote promptly, regardless of time of day. It is also possible to submit an order, or enroll to have the products you offer delivered to them every month. If you offer lawn maintenance services to retailers, the business owner could log into their account and adjust the frequency of their services or check out the next day when you're due to stop by.

B2B eCommerce stores can also go a long way towards making processes easier to manage. They can take the load off of customer service representatives and sales team members through some of the self-service tasks mentioned earlier. They can sync information between various distribution channels, ensuring that everything's up-to-date and accurate. Additionally, they eliminate all the hassle of manually sending invoices and quotes, then following up with every prospective client.

In the end, an online store is your brand's face and is the center of the marketing strategies you employ. The store can be linked directly to products and services in your marketing emails and advertising campaigns. Create valuable content that guides prospects through the sales funnel. You can also track the success of your efforts and steer the future direction of your business.

A few things to think about when selecting an B2B eCommerce platform

The eCommerce platform you pick is essentially the foundation of your online storefront. Let's dive into some factors to think about when choosing one, and examine why is the best option for B2B eCommerce stores.

The types of goods that you're offering

There are a huge variety of possibilities to consider for B2B companies. Here are a few things you could sell along with some examples:

• Physical goods. Think equipment, printed training manuals, as well as cleaning equipment.  Storage and Handling Equipment  For instance, Storage and Handling Equipment offers eco-friendly shopping carts to the grocery and retail stores.
• Digital products. Products like online course including eBooks and eBooks available for download, as well as software licenses. TipoType, for instance, offers font licenses to businesses as well as freelancers.
• Services. Offers include graphic design, accounting and legal help. Your Benefit Store is a service provider providing healthcare benefits that companies can add to their employee's packages.
• Wholesale items. Selling large volumes of products to retailers, effectively serving as their supply. Porta Pro Chem For instance, provides portable restrooms to clients around the country.
• Memberships. Access to a collection of benefits and resources, such as a training video library, or an online forum. The Interactive Advertising Bureau, for instance, has the membership program, which includes tools such as courses, invites to events and more, specifically for marketing and media firms.
• Subscriptions. Regularly scheduled products or services for example, a annual license, weekly cleaning service as well as a monthly supply of coffee pods for your breakroom. Design Modo sells subscriptions to design tools, but subscriptions can also involve physical products as well as even newsletters.

You can tell that they all vary widely between them, however, there is also some overlap. You might sell both wholesale and retail products. You can sell both physical and digital books together. You could also have a subscription that includes a weekly office cleaning, as well as a set of cleaning supplies.

The point here is, it is possible to conduct business through a myriad of methods and make sure the platform you choose supports each of them.

provides selling functionality for every product and services mentioned above, and more! Actually, every one of the sites listed above are using . Offer one kind of item or several side-by-side. Anyone can purchase or restrict capabilities to specific customers or wholesale clients.

No matter what you want to market, make it possible.

Design Flexibility

As your goods or services are distinct and unique, so is your branding too. Of course your site needs to reflect the character and distinctive characteristics of the brand.

A reliable B2B eCommerce system will give you complete and total flexibility in the design and development of any kind of product you think of -- without having to modify code or employ an expert developer, even if you don't wish to.

As it's an extension to WordPress, you can harness the power of Block Editor. Block Editor to create all of your blog posts and pages. The Block Editor lets you drag and drop various elementssuch as headings, paragraphs video, images, and columns -- to make your own custom layout. It is then possible to toggle the settings to customize colors, font styles, as well as other characteristics of design so that the layout is individual to your.

Ownership of Content

In the world of online business, ensuring that you own the content you publish is essential. Your site is an important source of income that you cannot risk the possibility of it disappearing. There are many exclusive eCommerce platforms will remove your website without notice if they decide that you've violated their terms and regulations. That means loss of revenue, time, and hard work!

But WordPress and are software, tools that can help you reach your goals. Your website can be hosted anywhere you'd prefer it to be, and it is your complete control over and complete ownership of it. You'll never have to worry about taking down your site. It's because it'sthe site is you own it..

Integration of payment gateways

Payment gateways allow you to collect money from customers as well as clients in a secure manner, and then transfer that money into your bank account. They have pros and cons for each tool, and certain functions you'll need to have to run your business. In particular, you could need to collect recurring payments and accept different currencies. You could also use express pay services such as Apple Pay, or offer financing options.

You'll want to make sure that the platform for eCommerce you choose works with the one you'd like to work with, particularly when your business is already using some sort of payment processing or billing.

integrates with a wide array of payment processors, such as:

Shipping

If you sell physical products, then shipping is going to be a major element when selecting an eCommerce platform. Shipping can be complicated, therefore you'll need a software that lets you set up fees the way you prefer, and works with all shipping companies you deal with. This is especially important if you need to deliver large amounts of items at once or require specific requirements such as refrigeration.

User experience

The user experience is crucial for any business, for various reasons. First, if a potential buyer or client comes to your website but it's not easy to use, they'll likely give up and shop in a rival shop instead. The second reason is that search engines take into account the user experience when they determine rankings.

Your task, right now is to identify a platform that makes creating an exceptional user experience. There are a few things to consider:

• Content organization. Find an eCommerce system that can help with menu organization, categorize posts and products, and add features like breadcrumbs that aid in navigation. Because WordPress was designed as a blogging platform at the very beginning, its content tools can't be beaten.
• Mobile-friendly design. Your site must look stunning across devices of every size -- desktops, tablets and even phones on mobiles. WordPress and are responsive by default, and there are lots of great themes that are mobile-friendly to choose from.

Customer service and marketing

Marketing, of course, helps you reach new prospects and increase sales from existing ones. Good customer service helps you retain customers and encourage them to spread the word about your company. They're both key to a successful B2B eCommerce store.

The system you're working with must make your customer service and marketing strategies feasible, whether it is integrating easily with existing tools or making it easier to add tracking codes.

Here are some marketing and customer-service capabilities that come by :

• Connectivity to CRMs. Connect with the CRM of your choice with the help of extensions to Jetpack CRM HubSpot, Salesforce, and more.
• Integration with support forums and ticketing systems. Include live chat on your site, create a support forum, or integrate using tools like Freshdesk and HelpScout
• Content creation capabilities. Regularly create beautiful, effective blogs or landing pages other content to complement your other marketing activities and to educate potential customers.
• Integration with a broad variety of tools for marketing. Track traffic using Google Analytics, connect to social media platforms such as Facebook and TikTok, create Google advertisements directly from your dashboard, email messages, track abandoned carts and much more.
• Simplicity for team members. You can give each member of the team a separate account that has the appropriate permissions for their roles. Approved accounts can respond to support questions, view and approve orders, process refunds, post blog entries, and more.

Other functions

The functionality you need on your B2B eCommerce store are specifically tailored to your business. Therefore, think about any particular requirements that you have. These are some of the examples:

Scalability

The B2B eCommerce platform you pick should never hold you back. Beware of platforms with fees based on numbers of transactions, the number of customersor site visits. The platform you choose to use should load quickly, whether you have 100 visitors at once or 100,000.

can scale with you to any size. It's not limited to the number of products or variations you can have (in fact, this test site was one million!). It's designed to handle huge quantities of orders as well as traffic spikes. It's completely free although you could choose to purchase extensions as the price isn't determined by factors such as sales or customers.

What's the best thing? You are able to select the hosting service you'd like. So, even though you may have the shared hosting option right currently, you are able to upgrade to a VPS or dedicated server when you increase traffic without having to alter your online store.

Management and ease of use

In the world of business there's a saying that time is money. It's not a good idea to waste time on a platform that's hard to use or difficult for new staff members to understand, and demands a developer to implement every single modification.

Although you could employ a web developer to handle your website if you'd prefer, you certainly don't have to to to be able to make the most of your online store. Like we said earlier, Block Editor Block Editor enables you to arrange, change, or eliminate elements with a simple drag and dropping. Want to revise your products? You can do so simply by clicking on buttons and editing fields -- no codes required!

Store managers can access all of their inventory information, from website analytics, to ordering information all in one spot. If you're using products like Jetpack CRM, Shipping, and Payments, you can manage label printing, payment invoices, refunds, quotes and more right through your dashboard, too.

If you're looking hiring a specialist to develop, maintain the store, or even customize it take a look at our selection of WooExperts. They're highly-rated, vetted agencies willing to assist!

Create and expand your B2B eCommerce store with

No matter if it's an existing B2B firm or just starting out, offers all the features and flexibility that you require to expand. Additionally, it will enhance your user experience for your clients and even make your team more efficient.

Ready to grow? Get started with the top B2B eCommerce platform today.