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How to choose the right B2B eCommerce Platform for your Business?

As a B2B business, selecting the best B2B eCommerce platform is one of the most crucial business decisions you'll ever make. Your eCommerce platform is the foundation of your online business and will have a significant impact on its long-term success and growth, regardless of whether you want to sell to local customers or enter new markets around the world. Therefore, it is crucial to pick a solution made to satisfy B2B retailers' needs.

A Forrester estimate states that by 2023, B2B eCommerce is expected to account for close to 20% of all B2B sales in the United States, reaching a value of $1.8 trillion. The potential scale of B2B eCommerce is therefore two times greater than that of B2C eCommerce.

In order to help you choose the best B2B eCommerce platform for your company, this blog will provide you with extensive information on what features to check for.

What is a B2B eCommerce Platform?

There are a number of B2B eCommerce platforms available that offer a nearly identical set of features and functionalities with minimal to no changes. However, you must examine particular elements that are essential to your business strategy before you invest. Here is a guide to help you choose an eCommerce platform.

A B2B eCommerce platform helps this kind of firm carry out tasks like selling, customer management, order fulfillment, payment collection, and invoice mailing.

Benefits of B2B eCommerce platforms:

With the right platform, you can increase the number of sales channels and attract more B2B buyers. What’s more, it can also help you boost your brand awareness. Additional advantages of such platforms include

  • Improved customer engagement

  • Process management that is seamless

  • Increased brand recognition

  • Increased effectiveness

  • More buyers and reach

However, you must identify the E-commerce platform that completely fits your goals if you want to increase engagement and offer a simple customer experience.

Key Features of B2B Ecommerce Platforms:

The following are some of the most crucial features that your B2B eCommerce platform should include in order to get the desired results.

Easy-to-Use

Due to the complexity of B2B transactions, these systems offer a number of cutting-edge capabilities. With B2B eCommerce software, you should be able to simply optimize your offerings and boost conversions. If not, clients will continue using more traditional methods of order, or, even worse, they may choose a business that offers an easy-to-use platform.

Flexibility to provide customization

You can provide a more individualized experience by using a solution that can give customer-specific pricing and limit the catalog to only show the products that are relevant to a particular customer. Your software should be flexible so that B2B customers can have a unique and customized buying experience.

Mobile accessible and responsive design

B2B consumers shop on a variety of devices, including tablets and smartphones. It's crucial that the eCommerce platform you choose allows clients to use their mobile devices to place orders. Your information should therefore adapt to different device sizes so that consumers can simply read about products, compare pricing, and make purchases while on the road. Ideally, the app allows users to scan barcodes with their cameras.

Payment options

B2B customers typically place recurring, larger orders. Therefore, it's critical that the eCommerce platform you use provides flexible payment options, like partial payments.

Self-service capabilities

The typical B2B customer wants the freedom to gather information and resolve problems on their own. Therefore, the best e-commerce platform will give them access to things like order tracking, approval of quotes, and shipping details.

Capability of limiting access

A B2B company is more complex than a B2C one. This indicates that you are looking for an eCommerce platform that enables you to personalize the user experience. You should have the flexibility to restrict access to particular pages on your website, such that you can, for example, hide bulk pricing.

Ability to deliver transactional options as a single solution

To deliver a single system for customization and order management, a B2B company's numerous systems must communicate with one another. The use of multiple tools can be confusing and lead to potential problems with order fulfillment and inventory management. Therefore, take the time to determine the features and compatibility that you may need before choosing an eCommerce platform.

Note of Order

Your platform should enable customers to post notes on an item or order in order to simplify things for both customers and sales representatives. Additionally, it should also give your sales representative the ability to respond to inquiries about a product, suggest other purchases, and include shipping instructions specific to particular components of the order.

Management of product catalogs and stock availability

If your suppliers provide you with catalogs in different forms, it can be difficult to manage your product information. As a result, compare the approaches taken by various eCommerce systems to product catalogs as a result. Additionally, you are looking for a system that provides complete inventory data that your clients may access. This will help to avoid backorders, which could be costly.

Capacity to replicate earlier orders

Compared to B2C customers, B2B customers are far more likely to reorder the same order from you regularly. You must, therefore, make it simple for them to repeat their previous orders. The best solutions give customers access to their past orders so they can easily make changes if necessary.

How to Choose Your B2B E-commerce Platform

Your online storefront is essentially built on the eCommerce platform you select. Let's explore the selection criteria and discuss why Launchestore is the best platform for B2B online retailers.

Content Ownership:

Owning your content is essential for online businesses. You can't take the chance of your website going away as it's a source of income. You see, if they determine that you have broken their terms and conditions, many proprietary eCommerce systems have the right to immediately remove your site from the internet. That means a loss of money, time, and effort!

However, WordPress and Launchestore are software tools to support your goals. You have complete control and ownership over your website, which is hosted wherever you choose. You won't ever need to be concerned about Launchestore removing your website.

Responsiveness:

Customers today look for websites that can adapt to all displays effectively. B2B sellers must concentrate on making their site content pixel-perfect, beautiful, optimized, and simple to access as more B2B buyers conduct research and place orders on mobile devices and tablets.

Making it easier for your buyers to browse and complete purchases so they can concentrate on the reason they got into the business in the first place makes it possible for your best clients to conveniently order on the go after hours on any device, so they can enjoy their time off from work.

Hosted, On-premise v/s Cloud-based:

An on-premises or hosted solution is set up at the vendor's data center and connected remotely via the internet. With this approach, the vendor can use the Internet to maintain the server that houses the eCommerce platform.

The vendor of the cloud service hosts and maintains a cloud-based B2B eCommerce platform. The information, software, and applications are kept and accessed online. In cloud-based hosting, the networking, security, and data center operations must be handled by the service provider.

Easy ERP integration:

ERP software combines all of your essential back-office processes (including accounting, human resources, and inventory management) into a single, integrated system to help you run your business more successfully on a daily basis. For your online store's activities to be in sync with your back-end ones, a B2B eCommerce platform should provide seamless ERP integration.

Conclusion:

Your company's goals, objectives, and needs must all be taken into consideration while selecting the best B2B eCommerce platform. As a result, you must start by evaluating the advantages, difficulties, and potential of your business enterprise. At Launchestore, we use data-driven analytics and our in-depth subject knowledge to enhance retail operations and provide immersive customer experiences.

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