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Top 10 Benefits of B2B E-commerce Website

calender

October 11, 2023

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6 mins read

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Arjumand

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In today's fast-paced digital landscape, the demand for seamless online experiences has reached unprecedented heights. This paradigm shift extends beyond our personal lives, influencing our expectations in the B2B buying sphere. 

According to the B2B Buyer Report 2024, 2 out of 3 buyers prefer a website rather than connecting with a sales representative to shop. This shift in preference is a clear signal of the increasing appetite for digital ordering tools in the B2B world.

Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic, a catalyst for change across industries, has triggered a lasting digital transformation within the B2B market. As revealed by McKinsey, a staggering 80% of B2B buyers have no intention of reverting to in-person sales interactions post-pandemic.

These heightened expectations for powerful digital experiences have left many manufacturers and distributors feeling the urgency to adapt. They've recognized that, to not only survive but thrive, they must enhance their digital commerce offerings significantly.

In this blog post, we will explore 10 compelling advantages that come with an engaging and fully functional B2B e-commerce website. So let’s get right into it.

The Key Advantages of B2B E-Commerce Website

B2B e-commerce, also known as business-to-business e-commerce, is another type of business model where goods, services, and information are exchanged online between two or more businesses. 

In the arsenal of B2B e-commerce, companies buy and sell products and services to other businesses through websites, digital platforms, and marketplaces.

With the increase in the popularity of e-commerce and changing customer behaviors, B2B enterprises are jumping on the digital commerce bandwagon. The benefits of B2B e-commerce are diverse, impacting various aspects of businesses, and all contribute to the success of companies in this digital era.

Scalability

Through the introduction of fresh sales channels and continuous outreach to untapped market segments, a thriving B2B e-commerce digital experience platform provides your organization with the active capability to smoothly expand and meet customer demands and market needs.

You can give value and adapt rapidly to market developments by generating and testing interesting content for your targeted B2B buyers. Moreover, by implementing extendable B2B e-commerce cloud solutions you can also dramatically boost your merchandising skills and marketing. 

Improved Productivity and Efficiency

E-commerce makes B2B companies work better by connecting with business tools like ERP. Customers can order online whenever they want, so businesses can focus on giving good customer service instead of just accepting orders.

Additionally, automated workflows and ordering eliminate the need to modify data in separate systems, decreasing the chance of mistakes. This boosts order throughput and further enhances shipping process efficiency.

Increase Consumer Base

To attract new B2B clients, a B2B e-commerce website with public-facing portfolio pages is an efficient approach. Your potential customers will not only prefer online shopping but also demand it. 

Distributors and manufacturers can interact with B2B buyers as they use search engines to evaluate products and get their hands on the best deals online. You can attract new visitors and turn them into customers by creating a flexible B2B e-commerce site with ample SEO-friendly content.

Customer-centric Experience

Online consumers, whether shopping for personal or business purposes, seek shopping experiences akin to Amazon's due to its reputation for outstanding e-commerce services.

Even in the business-to-business landscape, companies should incorporate user-friendly website design, educational content, and interactive features. These features could include suggesting products or trends based on past searches, offering special items for holidays or themes, and making it easy to access previous orders, account settings, profiles, and wish lists. 

Moreover, it's important to remember that while there are differences between retail shoppers and B2B buyers, providing a seamless online experience is still crucial.

Increased Sales

Moreover, besides helping you expand your customer base, a B2B e-commerce website streamlines the implementation of an automated upsell and cross-sell program. This allows you to increase sales by guiding website visitors to relevant products or those with extra features and functions, making suggestions that align with their specific needs. 

A professionally crafted e-commerce site provides customers with the right information, simplifying the ordering process. Additionally, B2B e-commerce websites make it easy for clients to place new orders or reorder based on their previous purchases, including discounted rates and personalized preferences. This contributes to higher average order values and a boost in overall sales.

Exceptional Customer Support and Service

The E-commerce business landscape offers an incredible opportunity for B2B brands to strengthen their customer service operations. Merchants can have access to a self-serve portal that also contains all the customer-related information such as account data, order history, and tracking records.

Moreover, by connecting to a company's ERP system, an intuitive e-commerce store can showcase products, services, and prices tailored to each customer when they log in.

Analytics Capability

One of the primary benefits of B2B e-commerce for marketing teams is actively utilizing data and analytics to monitor marketing activities. Moreover, it empowers companies to proactively observe their operational processes, identify gaps, and implement changes that can boost sales.

For instance, HubSpot Payments intertwines sales, CRM, and product data to provide the most accurate insights into how effective these processes are utilizing pertinent customer data. Achieving the best possible customer experience involves using this information to enhance sales engagement and aid customers in making informed decisions.

Improved Brand Awareness

Thanks to a B2B e-commerce platform, your company can establish an online presence, granting you control over your brand. You can leverage this capability to strengthen, broaden, and promote your brand on both a national and international scale. 

The key marketing strategy for maintaining a consistent online presence and gaining exposure actively involves your branded e-commerce website, even though other external B2B market channels may provide additional benefits for boosting brand awareness. 

An effective strategy to elevate your website's search engine ranking and enhance the likelihood of your target audience becoming aware of your brand is actively creating SEO-friendly content for your e-commerce site.

Reduced Operational Costs

B2B orders actively drive down operational costs. Selling over 100 units in a single transaction reduces the need for numerous labels and shipping boxes, resulting in tangible savings on operational expenses compared to selling each item individually to end users.

Moreover, B2B buyers actively prefer self-service options when conducting online purchases, delivering further cost-saving advantages when selling in bulk through a customer-focused e-commerce platform. This means no more extensive expenditures on traveling to trade events, manual order processing, or sending invoice reminders.

With a self-serve B2B e-commerce platform in place, buyers can actively make purchases without consuming valuable resources, such as time. This frees up your B2B sales team to concentrate on cultivating relationships, discussing new products, providing marketing insights, and educating customers about emerging trends—all of which actively contribute to increased sales for your products.

Furthermore, there's no longer a need to allocate funds to maintain two separate commerce systems to distinguish the front-end purchasing experience for each client when a single e-commerce backend actively offers distinct B2B and DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) stores.

Multisite Capability

Even when we actively examine internet purchases over the past five years, it's evident that the buying process has undergone significant changes. To achieve the best possible sales performance, e-commerce sites actively empower clients to seamlessly transition between various devices (such as moving from a phone to a PC) and navigate across multiple platforms.

With e-commerce platforms, you can actively establish new channels and even create a co-branded online store, which actively enhances marketing efforts and contributes to increased sales.

To Recapitulate  

B2B companies with the best relationships and efficient sales teams cannot survive in the online marketplace without a powerful B2B e-commerce website. Businesses must establish a robust online presence to stay competitive, offering clients convenient access to their accounts and ordering details. Furthermore, leveraging automation in B2B sales isn't a future possibility; it's a necessity in the present.

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