How to find the best ecommerce platform in India for your B2B ecommerce brand

Did you know that the Indian B2B ecommerce industry is expected to be worth $ 60 billion in the year 2025?

With such huge potential to boost your B2B company’s revenue, are you still wondering about the next step?

Well, the first step is to hop on the ecommerce bandwagon. 

And to do so quickly and easily you need the best ecommerce platform in India.

But how do you identify the right solution for your B2B ecommerce brand? 

Fret not!

StoreHippo brings a complete guide to help you find the best ecommerce platform for your B2B enterprise brand in India.

Keep reading to explore various tips and tricks on how to decide on the right B2B ecommerce platform for your brand.

Before we dive into the details, let us first look at the growth of the business-to-business industry in India:

• 100% FDI permitted for B2B e-commerce businesses
• 90%+ of B2B organizations have shifted to digital channels
• 74% of B2B buyers feel buying from a B2B website is easier than buying offline 
• 80% of interactions to happen online between buyers and sellers by 2025

Source: Financial Express, Statista

Large-volume enterprise businesses are realizing the importance of going online. Creating a B2B ecommerce platform for your enterprise businesses is the roadmap to marking your presence in the Indian ecommerce market. 

How to find the best ecommerce platform for your B2B ecommerce business in India

Cheers for taking the right step to scale up your enterprise business by going online. However, to successfully build your ecommerce platform in India, you need the right tech support that help you go to the market in record time. The right ecommerce solutions come with future-ready features that help you stand out from the crowd and make a kill in the market. 

Finding the best tech support for your business can be challenging and exhausting at times. The right approach would be to first list out the must-have features for running a complex B2B business smoothly. As you power your brand with a cutting-edge ecommerce solution, you get the freedom to explore, experiment, and ace the ecommerce game! 

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when you are on the lookout for the best ecommerce platform for your B2B company in India:

Advanced tech to manage complex B2B flows 

B2B orders are usually complex with bulk orders and lengthy fulfillment cycles. The brands therefore need advanced tech to manage and process bulk orders efficiently. Managing the B2B business operations must not be a resource-intensive or time-consuming task. But wonder how to manage the complexities of your B2B business effortlessly? 

StoreHippo comes with a plug-and-play solution that does not require third-party apps, plug-ins, or paid extensions to manage the business operations. The 300+ enterprise-grade features and 120+ integrations by StoreHippo B2B ecommerce platform in India help you create a custom-made marketplace for your business. The B2B solution by StoreHippo also makes it easy for vendors to run their business seamlessly with its comprehensive end-to-end vendor management solutions. Each vendor gets a separate vendor dashboard to manage their products, orders, inventories, shipping, returns, etc without any hurdles. The advanced product management solution from StoreHippo helps you manage single or bulk products in just a few steps. 

Mobile-ready solutions 

Gone are the days when B2B transactions were done traditionally. Today B2B buyers like to shop on the go and prefer to have access to their B2B ecommerce platform anywhere and anytime. 

• 91% of B2B customers use mobile for product search
• 25% of B2B buyers use mobile apps to make a purchase

Source: Statista

With the advancement in mobile shopping these days, make sure the ecommerce solution you choose to build your platform on offers mobile-ready solutions. To make a kill in the Indian ecommerce industry, you need to be where your customers spend the most of their times, i.e. mobile phones. 

StoreHippo is built on mobile-first technology that helps build Android or iOS mobile apps right from your dashboard in a single click without any additional costs and no coding required. You can also personalize your buyers’ journeys on mobile apps and send push notifications with StoreHippo to engage better. StoreHippo also offers 100+ device-optimized themes to play around with the design and layout of your B2B company’s marketplace app. Online stores built by StoreHippo are PWA online stores that look, feel, and work like mobile apps even on entry-level devices, and work seamlessly in poor internet conditions as well.   

A B2C-like buying experience

The B2B buyers today do not like bland ecommerce websites. As the B2B buyers are also accustomed to a B2C or a D2C-like customer experience, they look for a similar buying experience on B2B ecommerce websites. When you choose the ecommerce platform for your enterprise business, make sure you have ample features to decorate your marketplace and offer seamless navigation throughout your site. 

B2B ecommerce platform in India built with StoreHippo solutions comes with the best-in-class features to help your customers easily navigate through your site, interact with the sellers, and offer easy self-service functionality. You can also deck up your B2B website with StoreHippo’s rich built-in design library that has 100+ device-optimized themes for you. Even novice sellers can easily create the most amazing website designs using the easy drag-and-drop feature with no need for extensive coding. The faceted search feature helps your B2B customers to locate the exact product they are looking for. 

Personalization in content and pricing

50% of B2B buyers see personalization as a key factor in finalizing which B2B company to do business with. If you were not prioritizing the idea of personalization, it's time to reconsider and look for an ecommerce solution that makes it easy for you to offer multi-level personalizations for your B2B buyers. You can offer your customers ease of buying in their local native language and offer personalized pricing based on the user’s order volume, demographics, or past data. 

StoreHippo ecommerce solutions India comes with a pricing override feature to help you personalize the product prices on your B2B ecommerce platform. You can customize the price according to your customer segments and locations. You can implement any pricing model (dynamic, volume, etc.) directly from your admin dashboard. StoreHippo also helps you translate your website content and product descriptions into 100+ different languages like Urdu, Gujarati, etc. You can offer personalized content to your customers based on their location or they can manually select the required language from the dropdown menu.

Support for different business models 

As you take the online route, you need to also keep your options open. You might want to pivot your business to a different or hybrid model as your B2B business grows. When you choose a B2B ecommerce platform that comes with futuristic solutions, you can scale your business seamlessly. You can also tweak your platform for the unique needs of your business or create hybrid business models like B2B2C for the Indian ecommerce market. 

StoreHippo ecommerce solutions help you build horizontal, vertical, B2B, B2C, B2B2C, hybrid, or any custom marketplace in record time. With the built-in features and tools, you do not need to go for additional extensions or premium plugins for any of your needs. StoreHippo’s headless architecture helps you build innovative hybrid business solutions for your B2B enterprise brand. 

Omnichannel ecommerce solutions 

In the recent past digital shopping channels have only multiplied immensely, and new shopping channels have emerged. Such drastic changes in the ecommerce industry have also led to an evolved shopping behavior. Yes, you might be surprised to know that 50% of the customers use 6 touch points during their purchase journey and 61% of the B2B companies have already planned an omnichannel strategy. When you are on a lookout for the right ecommerce platform in India, make sure to check the available omnichannel ecommerce solutions that enable you to engage better with your B2B audience.

StoreHippo offers ready-to-use omnichannel ecommerce solutions for the multi-channel selling needs of your B2B enterprise brand. You can seamlessly create new customer touchpoints using the same backend logic and APIs with StoreHippo. You can boost your audience engagement by offering personalized shopping experiences on multiple channels and also controlling all your sales channels centrally. It helps improve the operational efficiency across all channels.

Advanced marketing tools

To help you reach a wider audience and take marketing a few notches higher for your B2B company, you need access to advanced marketing tools and features. It must be seamless to make and execute marketing strategies that attract and convert buyers. With all the competition in the ecommerce market, you need to position your brand higher and to the right audience. While choosing the best ecommerce platform for your B2B business, make sure it has robust marketing features to offer.              

StoreHippo ecommerce solutions come with easy-to-use marketing tools that can take your brand to the Indian ecommerce market. StoreHippo offers a built-in discount engine to help you implement multi-level discounts like product-level, category-level, etc. on your B2B ecommerce platform. StoreHippo also comes with an in-built SEO engine to help B2B brands rank higher on SERPs by adding SEO elements like meta titles, meta keywords, alt tags, sitemap, etc. The built-in blog engine helps you market your brand and create diverse content to create a strong brand value. With seamless integrations by StoreHippo, you can also integrate with the marketing software of your choice.  

Self-service and features to connect with sellers 

As 97% of the B2B buyers prefer a digital self-service model, enterprise brands need to eliminate the need for salespersons at various stages of B2B buying. But is that possible? Well not completely, however, you can introduce forms and features that make it easy for the buyers to connect with the sellers on your B2B ecommerce platform. 

StoreHippo offers features that help you create custom forms and place them at different stages of B2B buying where the customers are most likely to interact. As customers submit these forms, you also get access to detailed customer insights that help you plan your personalized marketing strategies. Your sales and support team can follow up with the customer as their query is registered on the platform via custom forms. StoreHippo also offers an inbuilt 3-party buyer-seller-admin chat to facilitate faster negotiations, pricing comparison, tiered pricing etc. to your B2B buyers.

Ease of getting quotes 

Would you entertain a long sales cycle in any B2B company? We bet you wont! Well, this is your cue to make the sales cycle faster and automated on your B2B ecommerce marketplace. As B2B buying is usually categorized as bulk purchases, you need to make it easy for your sellers to get quotes, compare different sellers, and place their orders.

StoreHippo helps you streamline the entire sales process with its enterprise-grade features. Your buyers can quickly place their requests for quotes (RFQ), receive the quote, and compare prices on your platform. Buyers can cut down the negotiation time with the powerful features offered by StoreHippo, and make informed decisions on your ecommerce platform in India. You also have the ability to offer personalized prices to your customers by engaging in one-to-one conversations. 

Frictionless payment process 

B2B payments is a lengthy cycle, the buyers tend to pay in segments. However, you can incentivize faster payments by offering discounts to customers who pay instantly. For example, you can offer 5% off to customers who pay their invoices in a week. Also, you need to make the payment process transparent and easy for your B2B buyers. To streamline payments, you must integrate multiple payment options to offer your customers ease of paying. 

StoreHippo's B2B ecommerce platform in India comes with 60+ pre-integrated payment gateways that include digital wallets, mobile payments, credit cards, UPI, net banking, etc. With several payment solutions, you can enable your customers to choose their preferred payment solution and pay seamlessly. StoreHippo brands also have the provision of B2B wallets and credit management.

Conclusion

Building your own B2B marketplace needs advanced and unique ecommerce solutions. A robust B2B ecommerce platform like StoreHippo helps you set your business-to-business brand on an upward growth trajectory. With the changing buyer behavior, B2B brands need cutting-edge technology ecommerce solutions that make it easy to carve a niche in the Indian ecommerce market.

StoreHippo offers 360-degree enterprise marketplace solutions to help you create an engaging B2B ecommerce platform in India. You can also create a chain of multiple B2B sub-stores for targeted audiences with StoreHippo’s multistore ecommerce solutions. A SaaS-based ecommerce platform, StoreHippo helps cope with the market dynamics and create future-proof marketplace websites, irrespective of the business size and genre.  

Are you ready to create a unique marketplace for your B2B company? Explore the B2B ecommerce solutions from StoreHippo by starting your 14-day free trial.