Have you noticed the recent trends in the online space? Did you realize that Ecommerce is going through a revolution in many ways? From ecommerce to m-commerce from B2C portals to more and more B2B ecommerce websites coming up every other day, the whole game is getting, bigger, smarter and more competitive!
With business to business online commerce becoming huge and surpassing its own growth forecasts, it is time for wholesalers to adapt to the new shift. In just six years from 2013 to 2019, B2B ecommerce GMV has grown 2X.
Source: Statista
Reason enough for you to take your wholesale business online and stake your claim in this booming industry. But before you take the leap, let us understand what should you expect when going online.
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The Requirements For Building The Best B2B Ecommerce Websites
The boom in the B2B market is driven by the experiences of customers in the B2C arena. The customers are now expecting wholesale and enterprise businesses to offer a better buying experience through digital channels.
B2B is quite a departure from the basics of B2C which still focuses on discounts and low pricing for customer satisfaction. However, wholesale business setups are more complex which need better technological solutions to build future-ready B2B ecommerce websites.
These new-age wholesale portals should be able to:
- Make the buying journey seamless on all device
- Offer multiple customer touchpoints for omnichannel sales
- Leverage m-commerce for business on the go
- Make order cycles faster with custom forms and requirement gathering solutions
- Offer personalized pricing based on previous purchases and requirements
- Offer personalized marketing with location-based content
- Make the whole buying experience at par with B2C ecommerce despite bigger ticket sizes
Quite a mouthful! Isn’t it?
But with the right B2B ecommerce solutions, you can get all of this and much more.
So let us now evaluate the 3 compelling reasons to build the online store for your wholesale business;
1. Rapidly Scalable and Efficient Business
Brick and mortar business is restricting in nature and needs huge efforts to unlock new sales channels and explore new territories. On the other hand, taking your wholesale business online unlocks a huge potential by adding new sales channels to your business.
You can grow and scale your business to new markets by using advanced ecommerce features like a multi-store or multi-seller website in multiple languages. Reaching out to new market segments and catering to diverse audience groups becomes easier and efficient with the help of technology and automation tools.
Using a B2B ecommerce platform with inbuilt features and tools designed for enterprise ecommerce solution can make your Business to business processes streamlined and efficient. Advanced features like bulk order processing, granular user roles, audit log, customized invoice, etc, reduce manual effort and human error and thus, bring around efficiencies in the business. Other features like white labelling help in building a strong brand value for your business beyond geographical boundaries.
StoreHippo B2B ecommerce solutions are designed for large scale, high-volume enterprise businesses. We offer a host of inbuilt features that like multi vendor marketplace solutions to manage a network of suppliers, sellers and distributors. Our multi-store solutions help in building location/customer group-specific sub-stores with unique design layout and URLs. These help with targeted marketing.
You can also use localization along with go-global features to reach new domestic and global markets. By building multilingual sites you can engage domestic and international buyers better. StoreHippo B2B ecommerce platform also offers a secure buying experience and help you build your brand identity with white-labelling. Our automated solutions make it possible for enterprise businesses and their multi-department teams to make their processes faster and efficient.
2. Faster And Better Sales
Taking B2B online helps in closing deals faster and aids in selling bigger ticket sizes. By going online your business is available for your clients 24x7. You can integrate with a variety of customer touchpoints like social platforms, messaging apps etc. to offer an omnichannel buying experience to your clients.
By using a comprehensive and feature-rich B2B ecommerce platform you can close your sales faster. You can increase your sales volume by using cross-selling and displaying related and relevant products to prospective buyers. By upselling, you can not only get more orders but also bigger average order sizes. You can also add a variety of customer custom forms to gather customer requirements and thus eliminate the to-and-fro negotiations by offering personalized price quotes to your customers.
You can also offer country-specific payment and shipping options to ensure frictionless checkouts so that each sales-cycle is closed faster. Also, a B2B ecommerce platform that offers features like fixing minimum order quantity, pricing override for targeted customer group, pricing comparison, inquiry generation form to gather customer specific enquires can help you boost your sales volume and ticket sizes.
StoreHippo includes all the above-mentioned features to help you boost your sales. Along with these, you get inbuilt marketing and retargeting tools like a powerful blog engine, abandoned cart follow up, unified notifications(Email, SMS, Browser and mobile push) to follow up and re-engage your customers.
What’s more, creating beautiful and engaging themes for your B2B ecommerce website is a child’s play with StoreHippo drag and drop design tools. After all, you want to leave no stones unturned to engage your customers and offering a beautiful site goes a long way in doing exactly that.
3. Acquire More Customers
Well, the ultimate goal of taking your wholesale business online is to acquire new customers. B2B sellers have the advantage of having many proven marketing and customer acquisition skills passed on to them by their B2C counterparts. As a wholesale business owner, you might have faced scenarios where your clients turn to other vendors due to a delay from your end in closing the deal. Opting for B2B ecommerce website by making your processes automated and faster can help you in customer retention.
Online B2B not only helps you in retaining your customers but also allows you to acquire new customers. Research suggests that 9 out of 10 B2B buyers research for products online before closing the final deal. What’s even more interesting that like B2C ecommerce B2B is also predominantly mobile commerce now. Almost 70% of online B2B searches begin on a mobile device. By building your mobile-ready wholesale portal and also building your mobile apps you can tap new clients and sellers in distant markets.
Your likelihood of acquiring new customers increases manifold when you build a B2B ecommerce website and design it well to offer a great UX and seamless buying journey. When you showcase your products in an attractive manner, use optimized content, offer wholesale and retail pricing, give the option to compare prices and allow your clients to buy using any device.
Also, not many manufacturers and suppliers have yet woken up to this huge trend. You can thus have the benefit of an early start and use it to create a loyal customer base with good customer support and value-added services.
StoreHippo B2B ecommerce platform helps you in acquiring more customers by offering you solutions to build future-ready, high performance and lightweight sites for your business. These enhanced features automatically boost customer engagement and retention thus boosting your sales subsequently.
You can also leverage mobile commerce by building mobile-ready PWA stores that pack the dual benefits of searchability of desktop sites along with mobile app like buying experience for your clients. You can also build your mobile apps right from your admin panel. Thus you can engage your customers on the go for better m-commerce conversions.
Conclusion
Now that you know the obvious advantages of building your B2B ecommerce website, it becomes imperative that you go for one of the best IT solutions providers to go online. StoreHippo B2B ecommerce platform offers all the features needed to explore the full potential of your wholesale business and grow it to domestic as well as international markets.
StoreHippo offers comprehensive solutions to build, run and grow your online presence. It comes with 300+ features and tools which include a host of enterprise-grade solutions for high-volume businesses.
Need to check out the features and tools before taking the final decision? Experience the goodness yourself by starting your 14-day free trial store right away.
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