How A Next-Gen B2B Ecommerce Platform Can Catapult Your Business In 2022

Are you aware? B2B ecommerce is going to be a trillion dollar industry in 2024. Means, there is huge potential to grow in terms of revenue and customers in the B2B marketplace. Want to know what has driven and will drive this growth? Let’s find out below: 

• 18.57 Trillion is the expected market revenue for global B2B ecommerce in 2026, having already scored $7.35 Trillion in 2020

• 18.70% is the expected annual growth of the B2B Ecommerce market between 2021 and 2026 (Global Newswire)

• $3.6 trillion is expected to be made by B2B marketplaces by 2024, contributing 30% to global sales (Business Wire)

• 70% of B2B decision-makers are open to making remote or self-service purchases, with order value amounting to $50,000 (McKinsey & Company)

• 27% of buyers would spend even more than $500,000. (McKinsey & Company)

• 73% of B2B ecommerce is led by Millennials and will act as decision-makers. They want a similar B2C like experience in B2B ecommerce

Analysis: The biggest learning from these statistics would be: Focus on customer demands and tailor your B2B marketplace to adapt to demands, in order to boost profitability in the future.

Understanding B2B buyer behavior

To successfully run a marketplace, you should understand customer psychology, behavior and interests. Let’s explore your customers below:

Reality check in B2B ecommerce buyer’s behavior 

• While buying a product, B2B buyer’s consider 3 KPIs to evaluate a brand and product. They are: Cost savings, Efficiency in purchase process, customer satisfaction (of their buyers)

• The top three mediums of researching a B2B ecommerce brand/product are online – search engines, B2B brand’s sites, and review sites (Demand Gen)

• Gen X and Gen Y are the two generations with the maximum contribution to the B2B e-commerce business landscape

Source: Oracle Software

Conclusion: From the table, we see an increasing population of digital B2b buyers from 2014 to 2021. All credit goes to internet enabled smartphones/laptops, ecommerce sites and online B2B marketplaces. 

B2B trends that will dominate in next 5 years + How to adopt them via B2B ecommerce platform

Are you ready to welcome 2022 with a revamped ecommerce strategy? If not, then we are here to help. Below are the B2B trends, which can boom B2B market growth in the coming year. So, let’s reveal them.

Trend 1: Advanced Level Personalization

Why follow this trend:

• 50% of B2B buyers see personalization as a key factor in finalizing which B2B brand to do business with

• 48% spike in customer spend is noticed by B2B multi vendor marketplaces that personalized buying experience (Accenture) 

• 45% of buyers want personalized portal content to make better and quicker decisions  

• 33% of customers prefer video chats with vendors for direct contact

How to meet personalization demand via B2B ecommerce platform?

1. Customized pricing

B2B buyers are price sensitive and each buyer has a unique perception of value v/s prices. Some prefer quantity over quality. Some prefer quality over quantity. Some prefer negotiating on quality and quantity. You can offer dynamic prices based on the user's demographics  (location) or past data. 

Types of Pricing Model For More Conversions

• Volume pricing: It gives a price for all the units sold within a particular range. For example: 1-2 chairs: $200 each, 3-10 chairs: $185 each, 11-20 chairs: $170 each

• Personalized pricing: It is an automated model that customize prices based on individual buying behavior. Many companies use data such as zip code, past purchases and device type to determine the spending threshold of a B2B site visitor

Example: A customer visits your site from a wealthy state like California, showing them higher wholesale prices.

Example: iPhone users can expect to see higher prices compared to Android users.

• Dynamic Pricing: You can change product prices in real time with respect to changes in market demand, currency fluctuations, time of the month, etc. This model has also led to growth in sales (2-5%) and profit (5-10%). (McKinsey)

Example: You can tweak prices from standard to high during high demand of a particular product.

How does StoreHippo inbuilt pricing engine help? 

StoreHippo offers a pricing override feature. It helps in the customization of product prices in accordance to customer segments and locations. You can implement any pricing model (dynamic, volume etc.) directly from your dashboard. 

2. Product catalog personalization

A B2B ecommerce platform like StoreHippo comes with all the catalogue-management tools. You can quickly serve relevant content to various customer segments. StoreHippo uses APIs to automatically pull users’ data from the backend to offer catalogue personalization. 

Furthermore, with the search result filtration and segmentations, users can get personalized results. StoreHippo also offers device-responsive catalogues which ensure seamless delivery of content across devices (desktops, mobiles, tablets, etc). 

Example: If you have multiple vendors selling electronic items, you can segment them as: “best vendor by fast delivery” or “top suppliers with certifications” or “top-selling vendors”. 

Example: Display the product catalogue (prices, details, delivery charges) in the customer's language and currency. 

StoreHippo is an industry-leading B2B marketplace platform that allows businesses to create high converting catalogues. It has a built-in B2B catalogue creation, publication, and distribution system; thus making developer’s jobs easy and stress-free. 

3. Personalized marketing

 Do you have access to customer data like their past purchase or browsing history or demographic data? Yes? Great, you are ready for marketing personalization! 

If not, you may first need to push your visitors to share their email/contact in exchange for useful email notifications on sale, latest products, vendor quotations, etc.

Quick tips to personalize marketing offers

• Segment the customer data and make different customer groups. Each group should have people that illustrate similar behaviours

• Based on segmentation, you can send relevant product recommendations, welcome emails, cart abandonment alerts to customers emails

• Use advertisement tools like Google Ads, Facebook Meta, etc to retarget your customers

• With retargeting ads, you can invite customers who have not purchased anything (but viewed items) or who have purchased but have not engaged in some time

Example of B2B personalized marketing 

When it comes to personalization, Amazon has achieved monumental success in it. They have weaved all their sales channels together to offer omnichannel personalisation. From app, site, social media to email, advertisements, all their channels offer a consistent shopping experience. 

Once you register, you are immediately greeted with a series of personalized emails like welcome emails, promotions, product suggestions, etc. Businesses can receive discounts on certain business products, as well as price cuts when they order items in large quantities.

How does StoreHippo B2B ecommerce platform help?

StoreHippo gives a gamut of inbuilt and integrated tools. They are: 

• Email marketing tools: You can send emails about cart abandonment, new products, sales, price drop, etc. 

• Discount engines: Create discounts and coupons for each type of customer to reward their loyalty towards your multi vendor marketplace.

1. Blog engine: Attract B2B customers by creating and publishing relevant content on your marketplace via blog engine. It lets you add social sharing buttons under each blog piece to drive more potential customers.

2. Unified notifications: Send personalized offers, discounts, coupons, price drop alerts, reordering, etc via notification. StoreHippo lets you send notifications on 4 channels i.e. Email, SMS, App, Web.

• Third-party tools integration: Want to receive maximum ROI out of your marketing efforts? Integrate your site with advanced tools like Google analytics, Google Ads, CRM, Heatmaps, social media pages, etc. So that you can get rich insights on your customer behavior across channels.

4. Live chat

Live chat leads to a 48% increase in revenue per chat hour and a 40% increase in conversion rate (Forrester). This is why you need a live chat feature on your marketplace. 

Why should B2B Marketplaces Integrate Live chat(+chatbot)?

• Boost employee productivity as they can handle multiple chats simultaneously

• With quick availability of product or vendor related brochures/videos/webpages, live chat enhances customer satisfaction

• Cuts support costs whilst improving performance

• Boosts the average order value and reduces cart abandonment as clients can directly negotiate with vendors on prices

• By further attaching an AI-powered chatbot, you can solve the problem of busy B2B customers, who loathe waiting. You can solve common queries in less than a minute

How does StoreHippo help?

Advanced B2B ecommerce platform StoreHippo offers seamless integration with many live chats and chatbots. Plugins can be integrated into your multi vendor marketplace within a few clicks, with zero HTML knowledge. After that, you are ready to engage with your customers and close them faster than before.

Trend 2: More Reliance On Mobile Devices For Buying

91% of B2B customers use mobile for a product search. 25% use mobiles to make a purchase. Mobile purchases contribute 45% to the revenue of big B2B marketplaces. That’s why you need a B2B ecommerce platform with mobile friendly features.

How StoreHippo can skyrocket your mobile revenue?

1. PWA

 Many big brands like Twitter, eBay, etc are using PWA sites to improve user experience on browsers. Why? They realize that not every user would likely install their app. That's where the PWA enters. It gives an app-like shopping experience, without installing an app. 

Sites powered by StoreHippo are by default PWA. Therefore, no coding ninjas required! PWA helps in mobile-first indexing(critical in SEO), making your site discoverable and engaging on search engines. PWA also solves customer’s issues like low internet connectivity, limited mobile storage, and frequent updation. 

2. Mobile apps

 StoreHippo lets you build marketplace Android and iOS apps in a single click at ZERO additional cost. With Apps, you can offer hyper-personalization and can enhance the customer experience. For boosting app engagement, you can also send in-app push notifications about the latest offers, launches, reordering, etc.

3. Mobile ready themes

 StoreHippo has 100+ beautiful themes that are device responsive. Meaning, the theme elements (like text, images, video, widgets, etc) automatically alter their size to the user's screen size. So whether the user is viewing on a 20-inch desktop or a 5-inch mobile, StoreHippo themes will adjust.

Trend 3: Seamless shopping experience across channels i.e. Omnichannel

Since the internet era, shopping channels have multiplied. In 1990-2000, we only had websites, kiosks and physical stores. Now we have mobile apps, Facebook, search engines, Instagram, Snapchat, Youtube, voice-assistant, etc to shop for anything. With new emerging channels, shopping behaviour has evolved. Let’s see how we can keep up with trends. 

Why follow this trend?

• 250% higher purchase frequency is noticed on omnichannel vs. single channel

• 13% more average order value is recorded on omnichannel vs. single channel (Omnisend)

• 50% of customers use 6 touch points during the purchase journey (Marketing Week)

How to offer omnichannel via B2B ecommerce platform?

61% of B2B companies have already planned to implement an omnichannel strategy, while 36% have already implemented it. The question is how to engage users across channels with 100% efficiency. Let’s find answers below: 

1. Headless architecture

Why headless? 

• 49% of marketers have to go to developers to add, edit or update content on the website. They want freedom in managing content

• Content created by B2B marketplaces on their site needs to be circulated on all other channels i.e. apps, integrations, emails, etc

How Headless helps? 

In headless, code is separated from content. Meaning, marketers can easily manage content by themselves, without writing coding. And developers can quickly optimize and distribute content to various channels to build omnichannel customer experiences. 

StoreHippo headless architecture can power touchpoints across any channel or device; from websites and mobile apps to email, voice-activated digital assistants, smartwatch, AR/VR, etc. Content lives in a cloud-first content hub, and deployment is simple — nothing to install or manage. 

2. Seamless integration of channels

Why integration?

Most marketers experience difficulty in sharing customer data and analytics across multiple channels. Companies also find complexity in handling conflict between channels. Hence, we need to bind all the channels together via integration.

How do Integrations help?

B2B ecommerce platforms like StoreHippo lets you integrate multiple tools and software. This includes CRM, ERP, chatbots, social media pages, messenger plugins, email marketing tools, etc. By binding them together, you can monitor all your customer data, marketing campaigns, sales activities, products, etc on a single dashboard. You don’t need to visit different tools to access information. 

3. Omnichannel marketing

Let’s understand it through examples: 

• Customers can research and purchase products on channels like the site, app, social media, phone and live chat and other IoT devices (smartwatches, virtual assistant)

• Customers can access their profile, place and track orders via apps, sites and on any device

How to plan omnichannel marketing?

• Research customers’ channels, behaviour across all channels and start running advertisements campaigns to collect data

• To store and analyze data; integrate CRM, Google analytics, advertising tools, etc with your B2B site/app

• Study the data to know which channel is most preferred and profitable

• Segment the users based on common behaviour patterns and make multiple groups. Then, create personalized journeys for each customer group

• Want to multiply revenue, sales and traffic? Get the context right. Send relevant offers to relevant customers on their most active channel and time

• Select the right marketing automation tools

Trend 4: Multiple payment options with security

Why follow this trend? 

According to a survey, the most preferred payment method is eWallets (36%), followed by credit cards (23%) and debit cards (12%). (Worldplay). Payment options and site UX remain the two important factors for conversion on a B2B website.

Results of not having multiple payment options 

• Increase in cart abandonment rate due to unavailability of preferred payment methods

• May hurt customers' overall satisfaction, engagement and revenue growth

• If one payment option is down due to maintenance, the customer cannot switch to another option

Reduce cart abandonments with StoreHippo’s integrated payment gateways

With the 60+ pre-integrated payment gateways of StoreHippo, you can provide multiple payment options such as net banking, debit card, credit card, subscription-based payments. You also become eligible for discounted payment fees on each purchase transaction. 

Further,  the support for International Payments, Recurring Payments, paybacks, COD, Wallet and offline payments, is like cherries on the cake. To protect customers’ sensitive data, all the StoreHippo’s gateways are PCI-DSS Compliant i.e. 100% secure. 

Trend 5: Faster order placement, fulfillment and reordering 

Do you know? 44% of consumers stated they were willing to wait for two days for orders delivered via fast shipping (Source). While 70% of consumers rated convenience and free delivery as the reason to shop online.

How does StoreHippo order management solution help?

1. Automated inventory management

Want to speed up your order fulfillment process? With automated inventory systems, this is possible. You can save tons of time and effort, by letting machines do the work of handling inventory.

The built-in automated inventory feature of StoreHippo lets you automate the entire inventory and order fulfillment process. Thus, enhancing the customer experience during order placing and fulfillment.

• Inventory management

Automate inventory reports, order syncing, multi-channel inventory tracking (channels like in-store, site, app), inventory replenishment, warehouse inventory tracking, sales tracking, etc.

•  Order fulfillment automation

 Automatically print shipping labels, assign and track orders, trigger order confirmation and delivery notifications to customers, and many other tasks. 

2. Bulk product updation

Want to save time on repetitive tasks like product updations? With the StoreHippo B2B ecommerce platform, updating products is easy and fast. Increase or decrease prices/descriptions/titles of various products in a click or use CSV file for bulk product changes. 

3. Wholesale bulk brder form

Negotiations play a vital role in B2B purchases, which may stretch the purchase process. Want to speed up the negotiations? Embed a wholesale bulk order form via StoreHippo dashboard. 

Using forms, customers can quote their price, order quantity, add products and ask additional questions. You can integrate the form into your CRM to collect customer data (email, phone, name, address, etc). 

4. Bulk order processing

In StoreHippo, admins can simultaneously process multiple orders. Create invoices, generate shipments, add tracking numbers, change order status for multiple orders.

5. Customizable shopping cart

 Show price drop alerts, discounts, similar product recommendations, past purchases, etc on the cart page. Cart pages are a great way to increase order value and sales. This is where you can cross-sell and upsell products with prominent CTA buttons (like Add to Cart, Buy Now).

6. One-click reordering

You can set up the “Reorder feature” in the customer's profile under Order History. So that customers can quickly reorder. Whereas, sellers can increase conversions. You can even send “reorder emails” to alarm customers to replenish the stocks before they finish.

Trend 6: Demand for high security and fraud protection 

Why follow this trend?

 84% of online shoppers will not purchase from a B2B site that is not secure. Most common cyber-attack methods include phishing, malware, ransomware, DDoS attacks etc. Many companies lost millions of customer sensitive information due to compromised passwords and insecure ecommerce systems. 

How to secure your B2B marketplace via StoreHippo ecommerce platform?

• SSL certificate: Get a free SSL certificate when you sign up on StoreHippo. SSL will protect your site from cyber attacks and also give a sense of security to your B2B customers. 

• Server security: StoreHippo secures your B2B website by extending the security control and unique threat intelligence of Microsoft Azure. Your data and network is safeguarded with the Azure cloud computing platform.

• Audit log: Want to track login activities of each user? With StoreHippo’s audit log feature, you can easily track login activity of your employees and vendors. It also tells the user's location, IP address, and device type for extreme security. 

• Multi-layer security: To prevent unauthorized logins, you can use two-factor authentication. This way both vendors and customers can feel secure. It requires them to input a code (sent to their registered email/mobile number), in addition to inputting username and password.

• PCI DSS compliance: PCI DSS compliance secure your customer sensitive information like credit or debit card details. It also acts as a security shield for customers transactions, preventing it from data breach. 

Trend 7: Easy site navigation from product discovery to purchase 

Why follow this trend?

The most wanted elements on a B2B product page are: clear product images (78%), customer reviews (69%), product comparisons (46%) and self-service functionality. (Episerver) 50.5% buyers want a minimum of 3 product photos (in different angles) before placing an order on a multi vendor marketplace. To sum up, all of these statistics point towards creating a seamless customer journey by offering better navigation. 

Create a phenomenal customer journey with StoreHippo

Having a B2B ecommerce platform like StoreHippo on your side makes site navigation easy for customers. StoreHippo offers plenty of elements for next level navigation, such as:

• Drop down menu: The menu is the inventory of all product categories and subcategories. Users can easily click on the category they are willing to buy. 

• Search functionality: Users can locate content by searching for specific words or phrases, without needing to understand or navigate the website. 

• Product filtration: It allows buyers to filter the product results by price range, colour, size, supplier, rating and reviews, and many other attributes depending on the products. 

• Headers and footer: These contain links to important web pages that customers may visit before a purchase decision.

• CTA buttons: Call to action buttons are the best way to push visitors towards taking action like add to cart, buy now, subscribe now, enquire today, etc. 

Customers can quickly switch between pages and categories with menus, search bar, footer, CTA etc. Thus, eliminating the need for a sales rep during the discovery and purchase process.

Final Takeaways

Want to win in a high demanding B2B ecommerce industry? Time to equip your business with the latest tools and technologies, just like a soldier in a war. How is it possible? Certainly with the next-gen B2B ecommerce platform StoreHippo; winning the hearts of high demanding B2B customers is achievable. 

Want to see the ROI of using the StoreHippo ecommerce platform in real-time? Get started with a 14 days free trial for effortless creation of B2B marketplace.