Which one is most appropriate B2B eCommerce Platform

Aug 18, 2022

Do you offer solutions that aid businesses in growing and hire, or even manage the teams they have? Are you able to offer goods and services for businesses? Are you able to sell wholesale items?

If you're in the B2B space (or are planning to become)is it possible to benefit from an eCommerce B2B platform. It can simplify processes for your clients along with your staff, and help you grow quicker and faster.

We will look at possibilities that an eCommerce store can benefit companies in B2B when it comes to choosing the right eCommerce platform.

Why create an B2B eCommerce store?

The majority of online stores you've heard of are B2C (Business to Consumer) that can offer your pet with food and a birthday gifts, or the best specialty foods you've ever bought. Beware of believing that eCommerce websites are just for companies that serve the consumer. They can be an incredibly effective tool for B2B companies as well.

In a study conducted recently, 41% of B2B shoppers stated that self-service capabilities will make it easier making commerce transactions online. It's an impressive amount! And the ability for clients to control their accounts as well as perform similar tasks is a crucial element of the eCommerce capabilities.

For instance rather than making a phone call to inquire about an estimate, the Sourcing Manager might submit a request online and find out the information instantly at any moment of the day. You can also make an order, or subscribe to having your items delivered every month. If you are a landscaping company for retailers, the business proprietor can log in to their account and change the frequency of service and also check for the next time to drop by.

B2B eCommerce stores can also go a long way towards making processes easier to manage. They can take the load off customer service reps and sales staff members by performing certain self-service functions that we have discussed. They are able to share information across multiple distribution channels as well as ensure the accuracy of details. They can also eliminate all the hassle of the manual process of sending invoices or quotes when following each prospective customer.

Finally the online store serves as your image and is the center of your marketing tactics you implement. It is possible to directly link to your products or services within the marketing emails you send out and your advertisements. Create valuable content that guides prospects through the sales funnel. It is possible to track the effectiveness of your efforts to determine the direction for the future of your business.

Considerations for choosing an B2B eCommerce platform

It is important to note that the eCommerce platform you select is the base of your storefront's online. Here are some things to consider when choosing the right one. We'll also look at why it is the most effective solution for B2B online stores.

Types of products that you're offering

There is a wide range of possibilities to consider for B2B companies. There are a variety of products that you could sell, and here are a few suggestions for you to make use of:

  • Physical objects. Consider equipment, printed manuals along with cleaning equipment. Storage and Handling Equipment can be a good instance. It offers eco-friendly shopping carts that can be used at the retailers and grocery stores.
  • Digital goods. These include online courses, downloadable eBooks, and software licenses. TipoType is a prime example. The company offers font licences to freelancers as well as businesses.
  • Services. Services include graphic design, accounting and legal assistance. Your Benefit Store is a service provider providing health benefits for companies to include in their employee plans.
  • Wholesale items. The company sells large amounts of its products to retailers and serves as suppliers. Porta Pro Chem for instance, provides portable toiletries to customers all over the world.
  • members. Access to a variety of benefits and sources like a learning video library, or an online forum. The Interactive Advertising Bureau, for instance, has the membership program, which provides tools like seminars, invitations for events , and so on. designed for media companies and marketers. businesses.
  • Subscriptions. Services or products that have a regular schedule like an annual license, a daily cleaning service, or the monthly coffee pods for the space that is breaking. Designs Modo gives digital subscriptions to design tools, however, subscriptions may contain physical items as well as even newsletters.

There are a variety of differences between the two, but there is a possibility that they overlap. It is possible to consider selling retail and wholesale products. It is possible to sell books that are digital as well as physical together. It is also possible to offer a monthly subscription which includes an office clean-up every week, and also an assortment of cleaning products.

It is important to note that it is possible to conduct business using various methods, and be sure that your platform can support each one option.

offers selling capabilities for each item and service mentioned above, plus more! Indeed, every site listed above use . Selling one product or many side by side. Anyone can purchase, or limit options to only a few buyers or wholesale customers.

Whatever you'd like to provide, it's possible.

Design flexibility

Like your products and services are unique, so is your brand, as well. Your website must, of course, to be a reflection of the personality and attributes of your company.

An efficient B2B eCommerce solution will offer you complete and total flexibility to create and design every kind of product that you can think of without having to edit code or hire a developer in the event that you don't wish to.

Since it's an extension to WordPress it's able to utilize the power of Block Editor. Block Editor to build all of your blog posts as well as pages. The Block Editor lets you drag and drop various elementsincluding headlines, paragraphs videos images, columns and more for you to design your own unique layout. After that, you are able to change settings to alter the colors, font styles and other design characteristics to make the page your personal.

the block editor creating an About page

Ownership of content

If you're a company online, having control of your site's content is essential. Your website can be a major source of income that must ensure that you don't go away. There is a good chance that the exclusive eCommerce platforms can shut down your site without warning in the event that they determine that you've broken their rules and guidelines. This means losing revenue along with hours of work!

However, WordPress is an instrument in software that can assist you in reaching the goals you have set. Your site is hosted where you'd like it to be and it is your complete control and ownership of your site. There's no need to worry about taking down your site. Because it's just- the site is yours.

Integration of payment gateways

Payment gateways permit you to take money from customers and customers in a secure manner, and then deposit it in your account at the bank. They have advantages and disadvantages for each one, as well as specific capabilities you'll require to run your company. For instance, you might have pay for recurring transactions or allow different currencies. use express pay services like Apple Pay, or offer financing options.

It's crucial to check that the platform to use for eCommerce that you choose will work with the platform you'd like to work with, especially in the event that your company already has any kind of payment processing or billing system.

It works with various payment platforms. These include:

the  Payments dashboard

Shipping

If you are selling physical items, then shipping will play a major role when selecting an eCommerce platform. Shipping can be a bit complex, and that's why you require a system that allows you to establish fees the way you prefer, and works with all shipping providers you have in. This is particularly true when you require to transport huge quantities of goods in a single delivery, or need particular features, such as refrigeration.

calculating shipping rates with  Shipping

User experience

User experience is essential for any business, and this is due to a variety of reasons. In the case of someone who is a potential customer visit your site but the interface is not easy to use then they'll probably leave and visit a different store instead. Second, search engines consider the experience of their users when determining their rankings.

Your job, for now is to find the best platform that will make the most optimal user experience feasible. There are a few things you should think about:

  • Manage your content. Look for an eCommerce website that lets to organize your menus , allowing you to categorize your content and your items and also add features such breadcrumbs to help with navigation. This is because WordPress was designed as an online blog platform from the start, and the features for making content is unmatched.
  • Mobile-friendly design. Your site should look great on all devices, including desktops, tablets and mobile phones. WordPress is mobile-friendly as default. There are a lot of fantastic mobile-friendly themes you can choose from.

Marketing and customer service

Marketing is an essential aspect since it aids in attracting potential customers and increasing sales from your existing customers. Excellent customer service can help keep buyers around and drive them to inform their peers about your business. Both of these aspects are essential to the best success with your B2B eCommerce website.

The software you're working with will make your marketing and customer service strategies work, whether that can be easily integrated with the programs you've already used or making it easier to add tracking codes.

Here are a few Customer Service and Marketing skills that are included by :

  • Connection to CRMs. Connect to the CRM of your you prefer using extensions that work with Jetpack HubSpot CRM, Salesforce And more.
  • Integration with ticketing and support forums platforms. Integrate live chat into your website, set up an online support forum , or join with tools such as Freshdesk and HelpScout
  • Content creation capabilities. Create regularly beautiful, efficient blog posts , landing pages and other pages to support the rest of your marketing plans and to educate potential customers.
  • Integration with wide array of marketing tools. You can track traffic with Google Analytics, connect to platforms for social media like that of Facebook and TikTok as well as create Google advertisements directly from your dashboard, email messages as well as track abandoned carts and much more.
  • A simple way to manage your group members. You can give each person in your team a separate account with permissions based on their role. Accounts that are accepted are able to reply to customer support inquiries, review and manage orders, handle refunds, and post blog posts and more.
Porta Chem Pro site
page about the product offered by Porta Pro Chem that permits customers to inquire about an estimate

Other functions

The requirements for features to run a B2B eCommerce site will be unique to your company. Take note of any particular specifications that you may need to think about. These are just a few examples:

Scalability

It is important to choose a B2B eCommerce platform you select will not stop you from achieving your targets. Be sure to choose platforms that charge fees based on numbers of customers, sales or web page visits. The platform you choose should perform efficiently, regardless of whether you are hosting 100 users simultaneously or 100,000.

You can expand your business to any size. There's no limit to the number of items or variants you could be able to offer (in actual fact, this test site included 1 million!). It's built to handle huge volumes of orders, and the peaks in traffic. This is absolutely free but it's possible that you'll need to purchase extensions, and prices are never determined by factors such as the number of sales or clients.

The most appealing part? It is possible to choose the hosting service you prefer. That means, even if you're on the shared hosting option now, you're able to move to an virtual private server, or dedicated server when you increase traffic without having to alter the online shop you have.

Users-friendliness and Management

Business is a place where the notion of time is very important. Don't waste time on a system that isn't user-friendly and is difficult employees to grasp, and requires a programmer to create each and every modification.

Although you could employ an internet developer to run your online store, but you don't have to do so for the purpose of getting the maximum benefit from your shop. As we mentioned earlier, Block Editor allows you to move, rearrange, and remove elements simply by dragging and dropping. Do you want to alter your product? The easiest way to modify your product is by pressing buttons and editing fields -- no codes required!

Store managers have access to everything from inventory numbers as well as the website's analytics, to data about the orders, all in just one place. When you're using tools like Jetpack CRM and Shipping and Payments, it is possible to control label printing, payment invoices as well as refunds, quotes and more directly through your Dashboard, too.

If you're interested to engage an experienced professional to create, manage, or customize your shop, look at our selection of WooExperts. They're highly-rated, vetted agencies ready to help!

Expand and grow the dimensions of your B2B eCommerce company with

No matter if you're a seasoned B2B firm or new to the market, this platform provides the tools and adaptability to help you grow. In addition, it improves the user experience of your customers and increase the effectiveness of your employees.

Do you want to grow? Get started with the top B2B eCommerce platform today.

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