Maybe You Missed These Latest B2B Ecommerce Trends
The directions of B2B eCommerce development vary from business to business. However, there are coincidences among various eCommerce business growth that create B2B eCommerce trends. Catching and understanding the latest trends will help your business gain outstanding achievements in current eCommerce contexts. In this post, we will go through the latest and striking B2B eCommerce trends in 2021, which will make considerable impacts on your business activities. Have You Known Those B2B Ecommerce Trends 2021? The Domination Of Millenials The targeted eCommerce customers have been replaced by Millenials, which account for 60% of eCommerce B2B purchasing decisions. Millennials, who have been exposed to the digital world and acquaintanced with technology, usually spend their time on eCommerce platforms and buy products. Consumer behaviors can easily influence Gen Y buyers. Then, if you want to attract them, publishing previous customers’ feedback or using KOLs for online reviews will be the best approach. Moreover, they are self-educating. The content marketers need to pay attention to this point to generate informative, useful, and persuasive product descriptions. The Millenials want to know clearly what these products mean to them and why they need to buy before making final decisions. Arising Security Threats The extremely fast movement of stores expanding to eCommerce platforms in the pandemic contexts has created tasty prey for hackers or informational criminals. Increasing website security, debugging errors, and enhancing tasks accuracy must be the priority for eCommerce businesses in 2021. Moreover, the security of customers’ information has been threatened due to the intensive competition among eCommerce businesses. The customers’ information leakage from this company will be the chance for other companies to attract those customers. To avoid losing your purchasers and protect the private rights of customers, it is truly necessary to pay more attention to this issue. Personalized Approaches As the sellers and buyers come closer to each other, mass communication is no longer effective. Not to mention customers today prefer personalization in customer service and marketing strategies as they want to be treated differently, that is based on personal requests, preferences, and interests. This B2B eCommerce trend has proposed some new adjustments in marketing strategies. The marketers should use the customers’ behavior tracking to analyze and group customers into suitable segmentation thus launching a well-matched marketing strategy such as favorite products recommendation, messages that address customers’ concerns, etc. Automation Expansion This is one of the most remarkable B2B eCommerce trends. Business runners tend to use automatic applications to convert manual operations to automatic ones. These innovations will boost productivity, reduce repetitive tasks thus help you complete more tasks in a short time. Moreover, you can use the prebuilt workflow from automatic software like Atom8 to run your business smoothly without any mistakes. Check out the app here: Atom8 helps merchants minimize manual and repetitive tasks. Also, some automatic applications allow you to customize your own workflow depending on different purposes and working styles. With automated tasks, you can save a lot of time and labor cost and have a chance to invest in more valuable things. Increased Self-Service Tendency Recently, people want to do the shopping process by themselves, including choosing products, completing checkout procedures, choosing shipping services, keeping track of the delivery process, etc. This tendency has created a new B2B eCommerce trend. The intervention of staff or inappropriate suggestions from your eCommerce stores will disturb them and interrupt their personal experience. It’s ideal if you can support exactly what they need at every buying step. However, all you need to do should be recommendations and give chances for purchasers to make their own decisions. This approach will make customers appreciate our customer services and feel free to shop online without any disturbance. Conclusion The wonderful business runners need to catch up with the latest B2B eCommerce trends if they want to possess a large market share and robust growth. Our information above will be useful sources for your eCommerce innovation and improvement in 2021. Start to be a trendy eCommerce business now!
Strategies To Reduce Inventory Issues
Inventory management is a key yet challenging part of every eCommerce business. Companies rely on inventory management to know when to order stock, how much to order, and so on. However, problems with inventory management are threatening their business’s activities and results. Look at which inventory issues you need to monitor and get ways to build a strategy for reduction. Common inventory issues facing online businesses Complex supply chain The supply chain of eCommerce businesses is getting more complicated due to the tough competition in the marketplace. Businesses must do everything they can to ensure their order fulfillment. They have to expand their range of products and work with more suppliers. The complexity and daily fluctuation are placing a burden on eCommerce inventory management. Dealing with complexity makes online businesses distracted from focusing on serving customers and creating business value. Out-of-stocks Sometimes, e-tailers try to reduce their inventory to decrease costs. This leads to a high risk of stockouts. In addition, failure to track inventory is also a reason for stockout events. When this happens, e-tailers face declining revenue and customer satisfaction, and more back-end costs. Deadstock As opposed to stockouts, when businesses reserve too many items or can’t sell goods, they may face the problem of deadstock. Deadstock deprives businesses of the sales which could be generated by selling those stocks while resulting in higher operational and warehouse costs. Bad operational performance Many operating procedures are carried out as a reaction to a situation rather than a part of the plan. As a result, bad performances negatively affect efficiency and thus increase operational costs. Spreadsheets and manual records Many businesses usually use spreadsheets to manage inventory and manually track the inventory. This is not a matter for small-to-medium-sized businesses. But when it comes to large-scale companies, it is not practical. Big companies will struggle to manage a variety of products in addition to facing the risk of human error. Top 6 strategies for inventory issues reduction 1. Create good relationships with customers and suppliers Developing strong relationships with suppliers and customers is an effective strategy for inventory issues. Open communication with your suppliers. As good business relationships rely on strong communication. Furthermore, always make sure every problem or concern is immediately reached by two sides. To build a good relationship with customers, always be transparent about what you have and avoid over-promising or under quality orders. 2. Forecast Forecasting helps determine how much inventory should have in the warehouse for a specific period. Hence, you will stock the right quantity rather than leaving it falling below a safety threshold or taking up your stock space. Then, lower your risks of stockouts or deadstock. Inventory demand forecast should involve past sales trends and the correlation with future needs. You can use an inventory management system to make your forecast more accurate. 3. First in, first out First in, first out, or FIFO is an inventory management method focusing on selling older stock before anything else. It helps keep the natural flow of goods and makes it easier for record-keeping. Essentially, using FIFO means there is a high rotation of stock. Therefore, you may avoid potential deadstock. Whether you are a fashion, tech, or food company, you should not miss out on this effective method. 4. Allow backorder A demand forecasting is hardly as exact as it is in reality. It may be higher or lower. Thus, allow backorder to make sure you still get revenue and do not disappoint your customers. Backorder enables you to sell an out-of-stock product and deliver it to the customer later when you get the goods. BackOrder is a powerful platform on BigCommerce that helps online merchants manage and fulfill backorders effectively. So, if you are holding a BigCommerce store, give it a try. 5. Automate inventory management Automation helps you decrease manual tasks and result in better performance. Deploy a software or platform that replaces manual inventory documentation, paperless transactions for invoices and purchase orders. An automation application like Atom8 will help you execute repetitive activities and avoid human error. 6. Have a contingency plan One of the essential strategies for successful inventory management is preparing for bad situations. Ask yourself what threats your inventory will face, how your inventory will be affected, and what you will do in that circumstance. Have an action plan to deal with these. The more detailed your plan is, the better it is. Ensure that you specify a person to be responsible for execution. Final thought Inventory issues are unavoidable for every business. But you can take some actions to reduce them and get your business to grow. Keep in mind that no matter which strategy you are following, it is always necessary to combine humans and technology. Humans come up with ideas, and technology makes the best of performance.
