Which is the most suitable B2B eCommerce Platform

Aug 17, 2022

Do you provide services to assist businesses to grow, recruit, or manage their teams? Do you offer products to businesses? Do you sell items wholesale?

If you're in the B2B industry (or want to be -- it's possible that you'll be able to benefit from an eCommerce B2B platform. It will make life easier for your clients and your team as well as help you expand quicker and faster.

Let's take a closer look at how an eCommerce store could benefit your B2B business in deciding the best store.

Why create a B2B eCommerce store?

Most online shops you've heard of are B2C (Business to Consumer) which can provide your dog's meals, birthday present, or perhaps the best specialty foods you've ever bought. Don't fall for believing that eCommerce shops are only designed for companies that sell to consumers. They could be a powerful tool to B2B companies as well.

A recent study found that 41% of B2B shoppers said that the self-service feature could make it easier for them to doing business on the web. That's a big percentage! The ability of customers to manage their accounts, as well as complete other related tasks is a highlight of the eCommerce capabilities.

For example, instead of calling to request a quote the Sourcing Manager might make a request on the internet and receive the quote instantly, regardless of the moment of the day. You can also place an order, or even opt to sign up for having your products delivered automatically every month. Also, if you supply landscaping services for retail stores, a business proprietor could sign into their account and adjust the frequency of their service or check out when the next time to drop by.

B2B eCommerce stores also can be a great help in automating processes. They can take the load off customer service reps as well as sales team members with some of the self-service tasks mentioned earlier. They can sync information between multiple distribution channels and ensure that all information is up-to date and correct. Additionally, they eliminate the tedious task of mailing invoices or quotes manually in the process of following up with any potential customer.

Finally, an online store is the face of your company and the hub of all the marketing strategies you employ. The store can be linked directly to products and services in your marketing emails and marketing campaigns. It is possible to create information that can guide prospects through your sales funnel. And you can monitor the effectiveness of your efforts to steer future decisions.

Considerations for choosing B2B eCommerce platform

The eCommerce platform you pick is essentially the foundation of your storefront online. We'll look at some of the factors to think about when choosing the right one. We'll also look into why is the top solution for B2B online stores.

What kind of items that you're offering

There are a huge variety of options for B2B companies. There are several products you can sell along with some examples:

  • Physical goods. Think of equipment, printed booksand cleaning products.  Storage and handling equipment , for example, offers eco-friendly shopping carts to supermarkets and retail stores.
  • Digital products. Items like online courses including eBooks and eBooks available for download, as well as software licences. TipoType, for instance, provides font licenses for businesses and freelancers.
  • Services. Services include graphic design, accounting, as well as legal assistance. Your Benefit Store is a service provider offering healthcare insurance that companies can include as part of their employees' packages.
  • Wholesale goods. Offering large quantities of goods to retailers, effectively serving as their supply. Porta Pro Chem is one example. It sells portable restroom products to clients around the country.
  • Memberships. Access to a range of benefits and other resources, such as a training video library or online forum. For instance, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, for example, offers the membership program, which includes tools such as courses, invites to events and much more, targeted at marketing and media firms.
  • Subscriptions. Recurring products or services, like a yearly licence, weekly cleaning service as well as a monthly supply of coffee beans for your breakroom. Design Modo sells subscriptions for design tools but subscriptions can also involve physical goods as well as maybe even newsletters.

You can tell that they differ greatly between them, however, there is also some overlap. There is a possibility of selling wholesale and retail products. You could sell both physical and digital publications together. You could also subscribe to a service that provides an annual office cleaning as well as a set of cleaning supplies.

It's important to note that you may do business in a variety of ways -- be sure that your chosen platform is compatible with every one of them.

provides selling functionality for all of the products and services mentioned above, as well as other services! In fact, all of the sites listed above use . Offer one kind of item or several side-by-side. Anyone can purchase or limit capabilities to particular wholesale or retail customers.

No matter what you want to sell, makes it possible.

Design adaptability

Just as your products or services are distinct Your brand, also. Of course, you want your website to be a reflection of the persona and characteristics of that brand.

A good B2B eCommerce platform will allow you complete and total flexibility in the design and development of any kind of product you think of -- without having to edit code or hire developers in the event that you do not want to.

Because it is an extension to WordPress it is able to harness the potential to use Block Editor. Block Editor to create all of your blog posts and pages. The Block Editor enables you to drag and drop various elementssuch as headings, paragraphs video, images, and columns -- to make your personal layout. You can then toggle options to alter colors, font styles, and other design characteristics so that the layout is unique to you.

the block editor creating an About page

Ownership of Content

If you are a business online, having control of the content you publish is essential. Your site is an important source of income and you shouldn't be putting your money at risk by exposing it to that it will disappear. It's true that many of the proprietary eCommerce platforms will remove your website with no warning if they determine that you've broken their terms and regulations. This means losing revenue, time, and hard labor!

But WordPress and other software are tools that can help you reach your goals. Your website is hosted wherever you'd prefer it to be, and you have full control over and complete ownership of the site. There's no need to be concerned about deleting your website. It's because it's- it's yours.

Payment gateway integration

Payment gateways allow you to collect money from customers or clients safely, then transfer that money into your bank account. They have pros and cons of each tool, and certain features you'll require depending on your particular company. As an example, you might have to take recurring payments or accept multiple currencies. integrate with express pay tools such as Apple Pay, or offer financing options.

Make sure that the platform for eCommerce that you select is compatible with the one you'd like to use -- especially when your business is already using some sort of payment processing or invoicing.

integrates with a wide array of payment gateways. These include:

the  Payments dashboard

Shipping

If you are selling physical goods that require shipping, it is likely to be a crucial aspect when picking an eCommerce site. Shipping can be a bit complicated, therefore you'll need a software which lets you set up fees the way you want, and that integrates with any shipping carriers you deal with. This is particularly true when you deliver large volumes of products at once, or require special features like refrigeration.

calculating shipping rates with  Shipping

User experience

The user experience is crucial to any company, and for a variety of reasons. First, if a potential client or customer visits your website but it's not easy to use, they'll most likely leave and choose to shop at a competitor. The second reason is that search engines take into account user experience when determining rankings.

Your job, for now is to identify the right platform to make the best user experience feasible. There are a few things you should consider:

  • Content management. Choose an eCommerce system that can help you structure your menus to categorize your products and posts, and add features like breadcrumbs to help with navigation. Since WordPress was built as a blogging platform at the very beginning the tools for content have no rivals.
  • Mobile-friendly design. Your website should appear great across devices of every size -- desktops, tablets as well as mobile phones. WordPress and are responsive by default, and there are a lot of fantastic themes that are mobile-friendly to choose from.

Marketing and customer service

Marketing of course helps you reach new prospects and encourage more sales from current customers. Excellent customer service can help retain customers and encourage them to spread the word about your business. These two aspects are crucial to having a successful B2B eCommerce site.

The software you're working with will make your customer service and marketing strategies possible, whether that is integrating easily with existing tools or making it easier to add tracking codes.

Here are some marketing and customer-service capabilities that come with :

  • Connectivity to CRMs. Connect to your CRM of choosing with extensions to Jetpack CRM, HubSpot, Salesforce, and much more.
  • Integration with ticketing and support forums system. Add live chat to your site, create a support forum and integrate it with other tools such as Freshdesk and HelpScout
  • Content creation capabilities. Make frequent beautiful, powerful blogs, landing pages, and others to help with your other marketing strategies and help educate prospective clients.
  • Integration with a broad variety of tools for marketing. Monitor traffic with Google Analytics, connect to social media sites such as Facebook and TikTok, create Google advertisements directly from your dashboard, send email messages, track abandoned carts and much more.
  • Simplicity for team members. Give each member of your group a personal account, with access to the account based on the role they play. Accounts that are approved can answer support questions, view and process orders, administer refunds, publish blog posts along with other.
Porta Chem Pro site
Product page of Porta Pro Chem which allows clients to request the price

Extra functionality

The features you require in your B2B eCommerce store are specific to your company. Consider any specific requirements that you have. These are some of the examples:

Scalability

The B2B eCommerce platform you select will not hold you back. Look out for platforms that base fees off of sales, number of clients, or the number of website visits. Your platform should also load quickly, whether there are 100 users at one time or 100,000.

You can expand your business to whatever size you want. There's no limit to the quantity of items or variations you can have (in fact, this test site was 1 million!). The platform is designed to manage large volumes of orders and traffic spikes. It's completely free however, you might want to pay for extensions as the price isn't dependent on the number of sales or clients.

What's the best thing? It is possible to choose any provider you'd like. So, even though you might have an existing shared hosting account currently, you are able to change to a VPS or dedicated server when your traffic increases without impacting the performance of your store online.

User-friendliness and Management

In the world of business there's a saying that time is money. And you can't afford to waste time on a platform that isn't user-friendly or difficult for new staff members to understand, and requires a developer to make any changes at all.

Although you could engage a professional to run your website if you'd prefer, you certainly don't have to do so in order to get the most out of your store. Like we said earlier, Block Editor Block Editor enables you to arrange, change, or delete elements by simply dragging and dropping. Want to revise your products? It's easy to do this by clicking buttons and editing fields -- no need for code!

Store managers are able to access everything from inventory figures and website analytics, to ordering information all in one place. When you're using software like Jetpack CRM, Shipping, and Payments, you can manage label printing, payment and refunds, quotes and more directly from your dashboard as well.

And if you do want to engage a professional to create, maintain, or customize your store take a look at our selection of WooExperts. They're high-quality, well-vetted companies willing to assist!

Create and expand your B2B eCommerce store with

No matter if it's an existing B2B firm or just starting out, offers all the features and flexibility that you require to expand. Plus, it can improve the user experience for your clients and even make your team more efficient.

Do you want to grow? Start with the best B2B eCommerce platform right now.