Top B2B eCommerce challenges for merchants
B2B eCommerce, though having a rich foundation of benefits provided to merchants, B2B buyers still want the same experience as B2C shoppers: efficiency and ease of use. The thing is that each group maintains different needs and customization is getting more important than ever. In this article, top B2B eCommerce challenges for merchants will be outlined. B2B relationships are personal For B2C, there probably won’t be an account manager to connect with every single customer. However in B2B relationships, there is a kind of personal connection and they are often personalized following this way. These personalized needs include customer-specific pricing, whether based on a tiering system or specifically negotiated deals, and bulk pricing. In addition, sometimes you will even have customers who don’t even need to access and view your catalog for more information. B2B buyers expect pricing, catalogs, and product selection to be organized according to their particular requirements. How will those relationships translate online? How do you keep relationships unique and personalized at scale? Buyers have complex procurement processes From the first part, it is easy to understand that B2B customers just have much more requirements and needs compared to B2C. As a matter of fact, the payment method is required to be more flexible. B2B buyers expect flexibility on how they order and how they pay. This is not only what they want, but actually because they need it, some companies’ purchase processes are as complex and analog as the laggards they buy from. According to an August 2019 survey of B2B buyers, almost three-quarters of respondents said they’d switch to a new eCommerce site for better purchasing options. The same share of respondents stated that they would purchase more products if they could pay by invoice. B2B buyers need to find more complex products just as easily Though the B2B buying process including product searching might be much more complicated compared to B2C one, it can be denied that B2B buyers still expect the process to be as simple and easy. Modern buyers are moving away from in-person sales meetings and ordering via a paper catalog. Online B2B buyers, like B2C shoppers, want relevant search results, easy website navigation, and suggested product content. On the other hand, their requirements regarding the complexity of B2B buying, such as a unique account with a custom catalog, specialized pricing, and sensitivity to product availability remain the same. The future of B2B is in eCommerce, and the need for personalized, intelligent, search-driven experience is essential. The B2B buying process involves a lot of decision-makers, and the buying cycle is long and complex B2C buying can involve only one person, however, for B2B, it can involve a wide range of people with their own specific roles and responsibilities. Some of them might be in charge of searching for solutions, while others work and negotiate, as well as financial representatives to approve the spending. And depending on the value of the purchase, this could take up to a year or more. All of this complexity means that you have to follow up with them a lot and you have to be able to efficiently provide each stakeholder your business interacts with the information they need to do their jobs. Above are the top B2B eCommerce challenges for merchants which is essential because once companies fail to solve, the impact is unimaginable. However, with the help of eCommerce, it will be much more simple.
5 must have B2B eCommerce softwares
Side by side with the significant growth of digital commerce, as an influence of pandemic, online businesses are emerging. As noted in a report of Statista.com, the global B2B eCommerce market is valued 6 times bigger than B2C. This number is on the tendency to increase even more quickly. This will cause more and more merchants to set up their online businesses, which results in raising the demand for B2B eCommerce softwares. Must-have features for B2B eCommerce softwares Security Needless to say, security is one of the biggest priority of each enterprise. That assumption is even more correct as in the Internet era, the world becomes flat and information leakage is totally easy. Top B2B eCommerce platforms need to keep not only their retailers but also buyer data as safe as possible. Customization When speaking of customization, we can refer to a modifying program that software cannot normally do. With customization, the software can attract more merchants to use it. The reason is it helps to save time and money, especially with scaling up. They can totally make changes to the store functionality without hiring third parties to do it for them. They are able to design it based on there and make adjustments to the fullest as desired. Wholesale Wholesale eCommerce just like its name, relates to large quantities of purchase. If it is built in the right way by merchants, they can earn more opportunities toward their business as sales increase, cost decrease. B2B buyers can be identical to B2C customers. Personalization and customer experience are essential to them. Therefore, you need to set up an eCommerce software that offers wholesale eCommerce features in order to increase operational efficiency and reduce costs. Must have B2B eCommerce Softwares CRM A business usually has so many tasks that require attention. They might feel overwhelmed with managing the consumer cycle from lead to sales. In this case, a CRM solution is what they need. This software offers them to follow all business activities. With only one platform, you can view and see a big picture of how your business is running. You are able to track all the sales back in the past, see who takes care of it and what customers are buying. From this detailed information that together forms a big scene, you can then make a plan on the way you want to target your potential customer, how to optimize what you have and supercharged conversion channels. Order management system Order management systems (OMS) are eCommerce software whose main task is to track and monitor the customer order journey. It covers the process from the beginning till the end. This can be involved in stock management and fulfillment as smoothly as possible. Based on this introduction, it can be totally easy to draw out the importance of OMS. Firstly, it helps you to maintain accurate stock levels. Both over and under stocking can cause businesses to waste money and provoke the risk of losing customers. In that situation, OMS by tracking orders will help you to keep the right amount of stock and satisfy customers. Secondly, by using OMS, you are able to see your sales and data ordering, which helps you to have some deep insights about the process and from there, planning turns more simple. And in the end, all of this can save you a big amount of time. B2B Ecommerce Platform As a business, you will have a lot of orders. In addition, according to Statista.com, B2B market is increasing and it is valued 6 times bigger than B2C. Hence, it is essential that you can take care of these consumers well. Business-to-business eCommerce websites provide a way for your customers to purchase your products online, and a host of other benefits to your organization. Imagine your customers, dealers or distributors seeing both their online and offline orders in one place, managing their orders, budgets, seeing their pricing and available promotions through an online experience. Also, with the integration of a purpose-built B2B eCommerce digital experience platform, businesses can maximize efficiency, increase sales and improve customer experience. Customer service applications Customer service can be a strong point if businesses can manage them properly since it adds to the value of your product. Statistica report shows that about 66% of consumers are willing to pay more and to spend more time with businesses with good service. However, it will cost a fortune if businesses pay to have a team of representatives to answer each and every one of customer concerns. If you fail to respond to them quickly enough, you might lose a potential lead. So, it is such a wise investment to use customer service applications. They allow you to provide the information to shoppers quickly and without spending a lot of money. Conclusion Above are the 5 must-have B2B eCommerce software that each merchant big or small should really consider applying to their businesses. With the right action, these can be wise investments that save your money in the long run, save your time and effort. Not to mention, it can increase your revenue and customer retention.
B2B eCommerce Best Practices
Covid 19 pandemic led to the shift from physical stores to B2B commerce. Businesses are then undergoing pressure to not only follow that shift but to invest more and prioritize digital engagement. A McKinsey report found out that B2B enterprises now consider digital platforms 3 times more important. But yet they might be young and green in managing their resources. This article today will point out some B2B eCommerce best practices. The B2B eCommerce best practices 1. Ensure your site is attractive and user-friendly With an intensive competition ahead, it is easy to understand that buyers, with their chaotic timeline, will prefer a safe and easy way to shop. As a matter of fact, if you want your business to stand out, then make sure your site is different. The site should be attractive enough that firstly catches their eyes and triggers their attention to click on and figure out. On the other hand, don’t fall too much into designing and decorating, because after all, it is the buying experience that matters the most. B2B companies should evaluate their eCommerce sites to ensure they are creating superior experiences for their buyers. They want convenient, quick-click ways to gather information, such as accurate inventory status. 2. Comprehensive product description Make product information pages and site searches work for you. The clearer the better. It is obvious that you can not be online 24/7 to answer all the inquiries. Therefore, to save time both for you and the consumer, it is essential to display product descriptions properly, including detailed and comprehensive information. Once you are able to do that, consumers can be more certain with the choice which results in a quicker buying experience and decision making. Not having sufficient product information leads to the fact that consumers might walk away from the product with probable disappointment. Ensure you provide the full cost of purchase, including shipping charges, to make the purchase as transparent as possible. This also maintains consistency in product information across delivery channels. 3. Convenient purchase process In B2B transactions, it is totally common to have repeated orders. Therefore, it would be much more convenient if your site can be able to follow the exact same steps done in the first order information and instruction. In addition, business sites should be robust enough to support multiple orders. It should integrate with the back-end like your CRM, ERP, and inventory management platforms. This is to collect information from customers quickly and then update inventory, prices in real-time and display the exact information to customers. Furthermore, a site that offers a variety of payment methods will also help to simplelize the purchasing process since consumers will not be limited to one single method. 4. Personalized Service As to increase retention from consumers, you can use site personalization to offer a tailored experience to them. In order for this to happen, based on customer segmentation. Then divide more into various criteria like their location, interests, and purchasing capacity to offer targeted promotions and incentives. With this kind of service offered, consumers will likely feel that you create this order, a suggestion just for them. They feel special enough and satisfied, which can help you drive sales and earn customer satisfaction. 5. Automation Sounds like there is a lot of work that needs to be done so far. Do not worry since automation can totally help you out. Refer to Atom8, one of the best apps known in the automation field. This is an app that helps you to automate the operational activities in your shop. It can automate website editing, all the work that takes lots of time like inventory management, content management, order management, customer management, email marketing. By doing this, you can save a bunch of your time to focus on more important tasks while leaving your customer well taken care of. Conclusion In conclusion, these are the B2B eCommerce best practices that are used by most successful digital enterprises. Just take a look as they really can increase your customer satisfaction while decreasing your amount of work.
A Quick Guide To B2B Ecommerce
Nowadays, B2B eCommerce has become really prevalent and more exploded in this pandemic context. Moreover, this form of e-commerce business has gained a huge amount of revenue, had a lot of customers and become a new playground for sellers. If you have an idea of establishing a B2B eCommerce business, this blog is truly for you. Getting Started To B2B Ecommerce B2B Ecommerce Definition B2B stands for Business to Business. B2B eCommerce describes the activities when businesses sell goods and services to other businesses online. B2B eCommerce remarks the selling relationship among enterprises with the more valuable transactions, lucrative market and thus it required more complicated work procedures and tight management. B2B Ecommerce Models There are three kinds of B2B eCommerce models. Firstly, it’s called Wholesale B2B when the companies sell to other businesses in bulk with wholesaling prices and allow other businesses to retail and make profits. Secondly, B2B2C allows a manufacturer to be in partnership with a B2C to sell products on its eCommerce stores. Finally, there is a really new model, which is called B2C2B. B2B Ecommerce Benefits Simplify Ordering Process The customers may no longer spend a lot of time scrolling down various product pages to find items as the detailed catalogue allows them to catch their products at a glance. This approach will open chances for customers to reach more product lines and feel easier to compare among various options. Purchasers can keep track of the order process, add information, make adjustments and keep in touch with suppliers via some software. Improve The Control Of Supply Chains As the connection between buyers and sellers becomes tighter, with the support of software, the B2B suppliers can control the supply chains better. They can follow the inventory status to make plans for restocking. The sellers will be notified about customers’ expectations and behaviours; then, they will try to improve the products and services. B2B Ecommerce Tips Enhance Buying Experience To meet the specific demands of customers, you may need to equip an application that can track customers’ behaviours and group them into suitable segmentation. Then, you can generate personalized content for each group to enhance the customer experience. Moreover, collecting and showing customers’ feedback is also a way to increase customers’ trust and motivation as they tend to believe in former buyers’ opinions before making decisions to buy your products. Also, updating your website performance such as shortening loading times, debugging, improving web security also contributes to your customers’ experience. Optimize Your Customer Catalog A convenient and smart customer catalogue plays a decisive role in B2B eCommerce development. The fulfilled information must be displayed on the catalog that the customers will have a complete look at product characteristics, product rate, inventory status, etc. Moreover, the product recommendation needs to stick to each segmentation and buying history. Also, you need to enhance your catalogue’s search engine to help customers find their expected items as soon as possible. Improve Inventory Management B2B eCommerce usually deals with bulk orders so that the inventory status must be updated frequently via software for the sellers to make immediate replenishment. However, the out-stock-of status during peak season seems inevitable, that’s why the B2B sellers need another solution. If you use the Bigcommerce platform, BackOrder will be your best right option as it can allow your customers to buy items although they are unavailable. The purchasing is automatically in the form of backorders and to do that, you only need to pre-set all the products as BackOrder before. Don’t forget to discover BackOrder: The app allows your customers to purchase even with 0 inventory Conclusion Are you ready to start your B2B eCommerce business right now? We hope that you can start your business from today and gain certain achievements with our guides above!
Ultimate Guide To Decrease Churn Rate In B2B Ecommerce
Customer churn rate directly depicts the extent of B2B customers satisfaction and the effectiveness of our customer service and marketing. With a high churn rate, the businesses will deal with considerable loss of customers, revenues, profits, and even reputation. To help B2B eCommerce businesses increase and maintain a good customer churn rate, we have conducted research and concluded the most effective ways as below. Tips To Reduce B2B Ecommerce Churn Rate Make Clear Why Customers Leave Your Stores To deal with any problem, the first and always step is to identify the reason behind it. In this case, the reason why customers leave your stores is the key to tackle the high eCommerce churn rate. Frequently collecting customers’ feedbacks is the easiest way to find out the causes. You can do a survey by questionnaires which are sent via emails at purchase thresholds, face-to-face interviews, or observations. To automatically use emails to conduct surveys, some automation applications like Atom8 on Bigcommerce and Shopify platforms will help you. Atom8 on BigCommerce: Atom8 on Shopify: Pay Attention To Bad Signals Another way to realize potential factors that cause customers dissatisfaction is by utilizing tracking tools. You can use eCommerce automation software to track customers’ behaviors on your online stores. The most frequent clues that prove the ineffective customer service and marketing are that the customers don’t click products recommendation ads, ignore promotion emails, don’t use vouchers, etc. Besides, there are many serious signals that you need to pay more attention such as suddenly stop visiting, significantly reduce time spent, usually abandon shopping carts, etc. The automation software then reports all the results of customer tracking, generates data into sheets for further analysis, and helps the business runners take suitable actions to deal with, thus preventing the upcoming low eCommerce churn rate. Enhance Customer Service Customer service is the main department that is in charge of increasing customer satisfaction and reducing eCommerce churn rates as the customers’ behaviors are usually affected by the way we treat them. Customer supporters could be your staff or chatbot must be able to support customers immediately and establish appropriate solutions. To reduce labor cost and time response, it would be better to use automation applications, set the sync for frequent customers’ concerns and the bot can automatically answer right away whenever receiving questions from customers. Maintain Customer Relationship Maintaining and nurturing the customer relationship is the key point to convince customers to buy products at your online stores again and reduce the eCommerce churn rate. The frequent and effective marketing strategies will harden this relationship. You can group customers into suitable segments based on some criteria like value purchased, product types, time spent, profile, etc., to launch well-matched email marketing or other marketing campaigns. This approach will make the customers feel excited and avoid disturbing them as we send meaningful and well-suited information to them. Conclusion Reducing the eCommerce churn rate is not as difficult as we have imagined. We believe that our tips above will work well in different contexts so you can apply all of them to your eCommerce business operations.
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!
Practical approaches to B2B eCommerce for distributors
The demand for eCommerce has allowed B2B distributors to grab their target customers easily. Today, most buyers prefer online marketing and this creates the best platform for a distributor to sell their product online. You have to choose the best B2B platform for solutions. Like Bigcommerce there are several other online platforms available that support both SAAS deployment and on-premises and provide the best performance for B2B buyers. Create a detailed plan with requirements Proper planning is always important. You have to make an executive summary. You also need to determine the purpose of the business plan and then create a solid business profile. What kind of information need to be stated on your sites, how can customer place an order. Or essential features to create the best user experience on a website. That helps distributors to sell their product more at B2B platform and it helps to make more revenue easily from eCommerce websites. Determine the right technology Technology is at the core of eCommerce. Therefore you should invest effort in researching for the right platform, tools, software that can help you create a powerful website and enhance operation efficiency. If you are serving buyers for large orders, then the best practice should be to compare the top B2B eCommerce platforms. Then it comes to ERP, CRM, security measures, marketing tools, etc. If you choose BigCommerce or Shopify as your platform, Atom8 can be a valuable tool to take eCommerce operations to the next level with automation. Build an eCommerce team To grab B2B market, most of the distributors want to create a team to manage their eCommerce portal properly. Their main purpose will be analysis online, research and identify potential clients, collect data, and contact potential customers’ requirements for selling the products. Train operational and customer service team Customer service plays an important role. Before providing bulk orders, all the distributors’ houses always want to deliver strong customer care service within their eCommerce website. Whether you can provide strong customer care service or not, that’s very important. During order place or after placing an order customers always want to contact the customer care number. Run marketing campaigns for new and existing customers For bulk orders, it’s essential to contact small and medium-size companies and be aware of your eCommerce site. You have to set different paid campaigns and non-paid campaigns for marketing and promoting your product lists using an eCommerce website. Using social media, websites, and search engines, you can run different marketing campaigns always. So, it’s better to create an eCommerce platform for your business now. B2B eCommerce for distributors is ideal because in this way distributor houses are able to grab B2B buyers very simply. eCommerce platforms provide several opportunities to distributors for their website. Then, you can implement search engine optimization. Through this process, you can increase website ranking and generate traffic to your website. It’s a constant process and you can follow the contact process always. If you’re planning to establish your B2B eCommerce business, make sure to read our post ‘Best B2B eCommerce platform in 2021‘! Final note Proper marketing, advertisement, promotion, and search engine optimization or social media marketing always help to achieve more target customers. The B2B market is trending and the demand for the B2B market is increasing. Given these points, contact with proper channels, analyze the market, and target business organizations to get bulk orders using the eCommerce platform.
