5 Signs You Need Help With Your B2B Ecommerce Website

Your B2B ecommerce website is your gateway to claiming your share in the booming B2B ecommerce domain expected to be worth $20.9 trillion by 2027.

However, just building a B2B online marketplace does not mean you got your ticket to success. 

If you have not yet been able to capitalize on your online presence, it's time to introspect, evaluate and fix the issues that are stopping your sales chart from climbing north.

And the audit should begin right from your online store. 

Wonder why we say so?

Well, let's look at some stats on how B2B buyers are interacting with digital enterprise brands. And then, try to figure out where your B2B ecommerce solutions are missing the mark.

What do buyers expect from a B2B ecommerce website

Buying habits of business-to-business buyers have changed dramatically thanks to their conditioning on B2C websites and marketplaces. B2B shopping used to be dull and boring few years back, but the same approach works no longer.

Here is what buyers expect to find on wholesale marketplaces:

• 12 different online searches are conducted by buyers before interacting with a B2B ecommerce website
• 60% of buyers rate usability as an important design characteristic for an online shop
• 70% of B2B buyers now use mobile channels more than they did in the past 
• 91% of business-to-business buyers are more likely to go with brands that provide relevant offers and recommendations based on previous interactions
• 97% of B2B buyers prefer to make self-serviced purchases digitally
• 52% of B2B buyers are more likely to buy from a brand after read their content

Source: Google, Satista, Accenture

Well, the B2B buyers have clearly opted for a more immersive, personalized and automated way of engaging in the wholesale ecommerce domain. And if your B2B company fails to offer that, you are just going to be another brand that feels ecommerce is not your cup of tea.

How to fix the issues with your B2B ecommerce website ( And build a successful ecommerce presence)

We know for a fact that your business needs a strong online presence to reach wider audiences.  But surely it must have a much wider implication than just taking your brand online. Just being online does not advance your business if your website is not connecting and engaging the targeted buyers. 

So, if you are looking into ways to engage the audience that stops by your website, you need to pay close attention to the 5 signs that might be harming your B2B website’s performance:

You didn’t focus on designing your B2B ecommerce website

Do you have a biz-to-biz portal that looks patchy and glued together? Did you just focus on creating a flow for processing bulk orders without any consideration for design and just went with a boring “corporate” look for your website?

If you are nodding YES, this is where your problems begin!

Believe it or not, you can no longer be a market leader until your B2B ecommerce website translates into good design, smooth flow and immersive user experience. Gone are the days when B2B equated with boring. This is the age where a B2B ecommerce website has to be polished, refined and tailored to the changed expectations of modern buyers.  

Get your site design in shape and align with modern aesthetics and see how it changes your buyer engagements. To get you started, StoreHippo B2B ecommerce solutions offer 100+ customisable device-optimized themes along with built-in drag-and-drop tools to get your design game on the mark.  You can also implement multilingual design including RTL languages. 

What’s more, you can easily build dynamic marketing pages for different audience segments. Also, you can create multiple sub-stores for your B2B online marketplace and design each one differently to target different audiences.

Recipe for standing out from the crowd, isn’t it?

Your branding fails to make your customers THE HERO

It’s fairly common for enterprise brands to be blindsided by the awesome products/solutions their business offers and create an entire B2B ecommerce website and marketing strategy that just talks about; 

• How amazing your products are 
• What they can do, and 
• Why your buyers should prefer them over your competitors

This leaves no room to think about your customers.

So, what can you do?

How about taking inspiration from your successful B2C cousins?

Wonder how the super popular and successful B2C enterprises built a loyal customer base? Why do millions of customers across the globe buy Coca-Cola even after having cheaper ( and many times better in taste) local alternatives? Well, it’s the power of branding which makes the customer the central character in your storytelling and emphasizes how the product will aid the HERO in his/her conquests. Recall your favorite Coke ad with this new insight and you will understand what we mean.

How much attention you are giving to your customers is the key to a great wholesale ecommerce website. But if all your thoughts were occupied solely with selling your brand your branding definitely needs recalibration.

Time to get started with storytelling that is about your customers!

Simply, create a marketing strategy  for your B2B online marketplace that is more focused on adding value throughout each and every stage of the customer journey. But to do this, you first need to understand; 

• Who your customers are
• What they expect from your wholesale business, and
• What value are they getting out of it

But how can we gain this insight? What if we tell you this valuable data was right in front of your eyes all along? 

No, we are not joking. This valuable data is present in the form of customer reviews, testimonials, email surveys, customer service chat logs, browsing patterns on your B2B ecommerce website and marketplace apps and any other form of customer feedback that you already possess.

This is a hidden treasure that, if evaluated carefully, can provide much valuable insight to refine your branding narrative. Take all of the inputs you have and run them through the best analytics and marketing tools to build a narrative that makes your buyers the WINNERS. And when your customers win their wars your brand wins the B2B ecommerce battle!

StoreHippo comes with a host of in-built marketing tools like reporting engine, pre-integrated chatbots and live chat software, seamless integration with best-in-breed marketing and analytics tools etc. to help you build success-oriented branding.

Your B2B ecommerce website does not offer seamless buying

Have you built a humongous B2B portal with tons of product pages and thousands of categories and still not getting the desired traction? Chances are you have created a B2B online marketplace that's more like a jungle than a shopping mall. And your customers are feeling lost and hopping on to your competitor's website offering a clean and simple buying journey.

If you find the above story relatable, it's time to check a few things on your wholesale marketplace. Here is your 5-point checklist:

• Is your website theme and colour scheme aligned to give an undistracted browsing experience to your buyers? ( You sure don’t need to add every colour from the colour wheel to your website, right? It creates unnecessary distractions which might end up in site hopping.)
• Does your B2B ecommerce website offer easy navigation, faceted search and filter options to discover products easily? ( Because, if the navigation is clear, your visitors will stay longer than intended, will have a good experience and ultimately, provide more business to you. Cut the chaos, and make it easy for your clients to find what they came looking for on your wholesale ecommerce website.)
• Are you automating the sales process on your wholesale ecommerce website with quick self-service forms, information and processes? ( Believe it, adding multi-pricing and other custom forms to capture user requests can quicken your sales process like you never could have imagined!)
• Are you addressing your customers’ pain points by offering them information to educate them and help them make an informed decision? ( Just by adding FAQs, informative blogs, detailed product descriptions, 360-degree product views, ratings and reviews you can build a business that is perceived as a customer-centric brand. Helping your buyers make an informed decision also goes a long way in building customer loyalty and spreading the word about your B2B online marketplace).
• Is your payment process smooth and frictionless? ( The best products, prices, seamless navigation et al will fail to make a sale if your payment system is not streamlined. Offer your clients a wide spectrum of payment options and see your teams closing one deal after the other!)

While the list gives you guidance, you need well-rounded B2B ecommerce solutions to implement all of the above. Worry not, right from helping you with aesthetically beautiful site designs to building easy-to-use and navigate sites, StoreHippo has got you covered.

StoreHippo also comes with a host of B2B features like RFQ, MOQ, custom forms, wholesale and retail pricing, customer-admin-vendor chat etc. help in building a self-service based wholesale ecommerce website that customers are looking forward to. 

With 60+ integrated domestic and international payment gateways, credit wallet, digital wallets and UPI etc. StoreHippo makes B2B buying frictionless for your clients.

Your B2B online marketplace neglected going mobile

We are a mobile-addicted society and businesses that want to stay ahead of the curve need to ace the m-commerce game. Our buyer journeys are predominantly mobile-channel shopping  experiences. 

Sample some trends that further highlight why your brand needs to build a seamless mobile buying journey for your customers.

• 70% of B2B buyers have started using mobile channels more than they did 2-3 years ago
• 40% of revenue in leading B2B organizations is driven by mobile channels
•  65% of B2B brands already have their B2B ecommerce mobile app 

Source: Bugsnag, Boston Consulting Group, Digital Examiner

The trends clearly indicate that if you are not on mobile, you are not going to be in the race for very long.

Creating tailored, mobile-first B2B ecommerce solutions for your brand is the need of the hour.

And to be a part of the winning brands your business not only needs to have a multi-channel mobile presence, but you also need to offer optimized and immersive browsing and buying experience across devices. 

Building different marketplace apps for your business seems to be an arduous task. Certainly not with StoreHippo at your disposal. Built on mobile-first principles StoreHippo offers comprehensive m-commerce solutions to grow your brand.

You can easily build your B2B online marketplace’s apps right from your StoreHippo admin without writing a single line of code. All stores built on StoreHippo are mobile apps which means your website functions, feels and looks just like a mobile app when opened in any browser. Additionally, PWA stores and marketplaces also work seamlessly even on entry-level devices and slow internet connections.

Along with giving your B2B ecommerce website a mobile edge, StoreHippo also helps your teams, vendors and delivery agents run the business on the go with different admin apps for the vendors, admins and delivery agents. 

With StoreHippo’s m-commerce solutions, you have the secret key to unlock growth for your enterprise brand.

You are practising a stone-age modern content strategy

If you are of the opinion that building a content strategy for your wholesale ecommerce brand means regurgitating what others have written or published a large amount of AI-generated content, you are slowly poisoning your brand reputation and killing your organic traffic.

More content= more traffic/leads is passe.

Check out some latest trends to understand the importance of a top-notch content approach for your B2B brand. 

• 60% of B2B customers read content before considering inquiring and buying a product 
• 92% of B2B and B2C marketers say the content they produce is their most valuable marketing asset.
• 59% of B2B marketers consider blogs as the most valuable channel
• 4-5 pieces of content is consumed by an average B2b buyer before interacting with a B2B website

Source: DM, Content Marketing Institute

The content of your B2B online marketplace has to be useful, you simply cannot cut a slack here. To create the best content strategy, you need to build content that justifies the context. King content needs queen context to win the marketing battle.

What’s the whole point of having content if your site visitors cannot apply the actionable elements of your content to their business?

When you post high-quality content that is relevant to the interests of your target audience, do you know what you get in return (apart from the usual benefits)?

• You establish yourself as an industry expert or an authority that people can count on.
• You help your target audience find solutions to their complex niche problems.

But how to design a winning content strategy for your B2B online marketplace?

Let’s cover this step by step

• Identify your ideal audience. Do you know you can learn a great deal about the people visiting your website simply by exploring your Google Analytics data? This includes basic demographic information (such as age, gender, location) and the topics they are interested in.

• After identifying, your next step involves finding out what piques their interest. This could be the information and content they are searching for and understanding the “why” behind their search patterns.

• Another way of knowing which content is performing well is to keep an eye on your wholesale ecommerce website’s competitors. After all, both of you are serving the same market. Run an analysis to see what they are writing about. You can even get competitive insights from customer queries you get via custom forms.

• Once you get the desired info, do not hesitate to get a little personal. You didn’t create personas, sent surveys and spied on your competitors for nothing. Use blog content, testimonials, product recommendations and anything you deem fit to target specific elements of your customers’ buying behaviours

• Lastly, understand your customer’s path on your B2B online marketplace. That is, map out their entire journey from initial interaction with your brand to the final purchase. This strategy will not only make your wholesale buyers familiar with your brand but will also help you see if specific sources are more influential than others.

Just remember, as a Business to Business marketer, your mission should be to create a relationship with your customers. And what better way than to offer value-added content which encourages your buyers to want to interact with your brand.

Wondering which CMS to use for your blogging and content strategy? StoreHippo B2B ecommerce solutions have done all the thinking for you. It provides a built-in blog engine to take your content game many notches higher. You can easily create a variety of content categories on your blog page and write, edit or publish content to promote your brand.

You can also make your blogs more engaging with images and create unique URLs for your blogs. StoreHippo also offers built-in SEO support to keep your blog posts optimized right from the start. You can easily add meta fields to all your blogs while publishing them and also manage publishing dates wby adding and saving blogs and manually publishing them on a later date. 

StoreHippo also enables you to create different types of website pages on your B2b ecommerce website to publish case studies, customer testimonials or any other kind of content that is critical for your business.

You can also capitalise on user-generated content by adding reviews and ratings for your products and encouraging your buyers to leave comments.

Conclusion:

Above, we have mentioned 5 signs that you need help with your wholesale ecommerce website. If any of these issues sound familiar even in the least bit, it is time to consider a more integrated B2B ecommerce solutions for your brand. 

Powering your enterprise brand with a cutting-edge, future-ready solution goes a long way in building your brand value even if your website isn’t facing any of these issues. StoreHippo the leading Business to Business ecommerce platform is designed specifically to modernise your B2B business and to offer scalable, flexible and agile B2B ecommerce solutions for brands looking forward to secure their position in the booming B2B ecommerce market.

Ready to re-write your success story with the powerful B2b features and tools from StoreHippo? Get started right away with a 14 days free trial.