Building a B2B online marketplace is not difficult but developing but optimizing, and making it awesome is really challenging. The B2B merchants need to fully understand the key features of a perfect B2B online marketplace, then apply them to their own ones.
Our article today will list out 8 most essential elements of a B2B online marketplace with detailed explanations and recommendations.
8 Must-have Features Of A B2B Online Marketplace
Workflow Automation
The speed of the business world is increasing dramatically and there is no place for repetitive and slowly manual tasks. Therefore, workflow automation has become a must-have part of a B2B online marketplace. Depending on each automatic application, the workflow can be the pre-built templates or be created by the users. For example, Atom8, which is one of the most powerful applications, allows you to choose the available templates or customize ones for your own operation, including order processing, content management, dealing with fraud, grouping customers, and so on. Workflow automation can bring you more benefits than you imagined. You will no longer spend a lot of time and effort doing repetitive business tasks, double-checking them, or being afraid of manual mistakes.
Bulk Ordering Support
Bulk ordering support is truly a crucial feature as it can open chances for your business to gain more revenue from valuable orders. As the demand for online shopping is dramatically increasing, you may need to add some additional features to simplify the bulk order process. For example, a big dashboard on the product page with specific information about the product, pricing, quotation, inventory status can help the customers shorten the time to compare and search for their items. Also, allowing customers to adjust the product quantities instead of clicking many times to put items in shopping carts could make bulk orders more convenient.
Web Content Management
The quality and appearance of your ecommerce website content is the decisive point to attract customers. First and foremost, the product information should be displayed clearly and in brief. You should focus on customers’ demand, select the key features of products, which can grab customers’ attention at a glance. Secondly, to enhance customers’ trust, it would be better if you can create posts or blogs related to buying guides with the content generated from the core products’ information. Last but not least, you may need a web content app to help you schedule and arrange posting dates. For example, Atom8 can automatically hide or public blogs based on your pre-setted schedule.
Payment Method Diversification
Payment is the final stage of the order process so making this step become easier and faster will increase buying motivation. Customers are able to become impatient if the payment process is too complicated or they can not find their suitable payment form; therefore, they may abandon their shopping cart and find another place to buy products. A B2B online marketplace that provides a variety of payment methods, especially the most common ones such as PayPal, credit cards, VISA, etc., will be the best choice.
Chatbot Support
While the sales staff is responsible for consulting and instructing customers to shop at brick-and-mortar stores, the chatbot will do the tasks on B2B online marketplace. Setting a chatbot with detailed answers for frequent questions about buying steps, products, payment methods, common problems, etc. will enhance customers’ experience. This approach also helps reduce the shopping cart abandonment rate and increase the conversion rate.
App Integration
App integration can help the B2B merchant feel easy to do different tasks in one place. A B2B online marketplace that can integrate with various platforms can help you stay productive instead of switching among websites to finish the business tasks. For instance, â marketplace which can connect with some Google applications can help you reduce the time for paperwork, export, and import documents within seconds.
Customers’ Behavior Tracking
Customers’ insights are one of the most powerful things to enhance customer satisfaction. To discover customers’ insights, or at least, understand what they want, you may need to track their online shopping behaviors. The merchants should take advantage of some automatic application to point out their buying habits, time spent, order values, etc.; then, group customers into suitable segmentation for further personalized approaches. Therefore, you can meet the demands of each buyer group and reach the expectations of almost all your purchasers.
Selling Report And Analysis
Recording your selling performance is really important for ecommerce merchants to evaluate the current situation and plan for future strategies. The report with the specific figures of product quantity, expense, revenues, profits, etc. can give B2B merchants the most detailed pictures about how their selling activities took place. Moreover, based on it, the business runners can utilize analysis software to decide what product should be imported more and which should be cut down on. Also, analyzing selling reports helps you realize some upcoming trends and develop future business direction.
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Conclusion
There are various approaches to optimize the B2B online marketplace. However, our suggestions above are the eight most powerful and down-to-earth ways to help you run the business more smoothly in this competitive business environment.
