People that become successful in B2B are the ones that understand their B2B buying processes and utilize digital tools to maintain them. If your website doesn’t differentiate you from your competitors, then customers are likely to move to a renowned option of B2B eCommerce. B2B is a big and diverse business world, but digital commerce and marketplace management platforms can also do remarkably similar things.
Providing the best customer experience and making it easy for others to do business with you requires an eCommerce platform that is built specifically for B2B operations. For B2B sellers to successfully address the needs of their online buyers and compete in their markets, their websites must provide several key features. Therefore, in this article, we will discuss the top 7 features which a B2B eCommerce website should have for achieving its online success.
List of Top 7 eCommerce Features
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Roles, Permissions, and Access Controls
There are a variety of users with different job titles and responsibilities on B2B eCommerce websites. This is why it is important to limit users’ access to the full information on the websites. They should only have access to the information that they need to perform their jobs. Usually, an admin user is responsible for creating other users and granting permissions to non-authorized users.
The most common user category is buyers, which can be further divided into purchase managers and junior buyers. Using this example, a purchasing manager would have full permission to work with invoices, orders, tax codes, etc., while junior buyers would only have access to quotes, prices, and shopping lists.
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Corporate Account Management
In comparison to B2C eCommerce, B2B demands much more personalization. B2B accounts majorly include multiple users with different roles and rights, particularly when they relate to subdivisions or sub-units of an organization.
Your system’s corporate account management capabilities should be able to handle complex, hierarchical corporate account structures. The buyers should be able to create their own purchasing rules, add authorized users, and configure the account management structure.
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Multiple Organizations, Websites, and Stores
The majority of businesses manage multinational brands that operate across multiple currencies, countries, and tax regulations. Hence, your B2B eCommerce solution must have the capabilities of scalability and localization.
In most cases, this type of B2B eCommerce feature is used in purpose-built B2B platforms. If you are building a custom eCommerce solution from scratch, make sure you address scalability and PCI DSS eCommerce security requirements that come along with multi-site functionality.
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Customized B2B Catalog Management
Online selling doesn’t work the same way for everyone. Your eCommerce solution must fit your business model, not the other way around. It is therefore crucial to offer customized B2B catalog management in an eCommerce system for B2B companies.
A wide range of personalization options allows sellers to customize catalogs for specific corporations, divisions, and business units, as well as for individual buyers or customers. Each buying manager has access to his or her catalog where they can view content and purchase products.
Also Read: How to Fix WooCommerce Add to Cart Not Working Issue
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Content Management System
Since B2B buyers purchase items based on pragmatic (not emotional) factors, merchants need to provide supplemental information to ensure buyers understand what they’re buying. Your product descriptions, videos, certifications, and marketing materials help to clearly explain the advantages of your products, and they also help you address the questions and pain points of many decision-makers.
You need strong content management capabilities to manage content, layout, and embeddable on any B2B eCommerce platform. A content editor should be intuitive to use and provide marketing and merchandising teams with the ability to update content and product pages without learning to code.
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Multiple Price Lists
There can be a lot of complexity involved in pricing in B2B eCommerce. Prices can vary based on the volume of purchases, pre-negotiated discounts, frequency of purchases, and many other factors. It is also possible to calculate them dynamically based on specific business and pricing rules.
For all of these reasons, you must be able to create and customize many different price lists for customers, companies, and business units. Furthermore, price lists may contain a variety of tiers, currency types, and price points.
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Numerous Shopping Lists
While corporate buyers can place orders through multiple channels, many prefer to make bulk or repeat purchases using shopping lists. It’s because many B2B customers have multiple projects going at once, or they use different products for different industries – or they even purchase on behalf of multiple people. Different purchasing needs require more than one shopping cart in such sales environments.
It’s also important to include time-saving features like bulk actions on shopping lists. Provide buyers with ways to add, delete, duplicate, or request quotes and orders from lists. Other businesses can offer both a shopping list and a shopping cart to their customers.
Final Words
As a whole, B2B eCommerce is one of the biggest business markets in our current digital era. With the help of this platform, one can purchase goods and products from any part of the world by simply accessing the internet. But a successful B2B website has some common features that help them stand out from other normal websites. These features can benefit marketers if they incorporate them into eCommerce platforms.
Additionally, the development of an eCommerce website is equally important. Therefore, always take help from the best eCommerce development company in your area.
