How to set up a B2B online store to beat your competitors

By 2025, 80% of B2B sales will be done via a B2B online store or marketplace. With the pandemic-induced learnings and acceleration in digital adoption, global B2B ecommerce is projected to cross $20.9 in valuations by 2027.

Whether you already have a digital presence for your wholesale enterprise business or you are still contemplating how to set up a B2B online store, it is time to build a digital presence for your brand like never before. 

After all, you don’t want to miss the many advantages of having your own B2B online marketplace website. 

Still not sure whether going online is worth all the changes you will need to make?

How B2B Ecommerce has changed the Business-to-Business Industry

Building your B2B ecommerce website entails quite an overhaul of your existing system. However, it’s an exercise worth taking up without delay. To understand the importance of building a digital presence for your wholesale brand, let’s first do some fact checks on the latest B2B ecommerce trends.

• 74% of wholesale buyers find buying online easier than buying offline 
• 65% of B2B companies are exclusively selling online in 2022
• 4X growth in the number of B2B online marketplaces in the last 3 years since the pandemic
• 65% of B2B brands already have their B2B mobile apps
• 60% of enterprise B2B brands said they get bigger average ticket size with multi-channel buyer interactions 
• 78% of B2B buyers expect personalised engagements on B2B ecommerce websites
• 97% of B2B ecommerce buyers are willing to make self-serviced purchases digitally

Source: McKinsey & Company, Statista, Hubspot

Quite an elaborate view of buyer inclination and preference for buying on digital channels. And time for you to chalk out the plans about how to set up a B2B online store to establish your brand as the market leader.

In this blog, we will put together tips and solutions to help you decide how to set up a B2B online store to stay ahead of the curve and build a niche for your brand.

5 ways to make your B2B online store stand out among competition

Building a brand value for your business can pay rich dividends in the long run. To do so you need to align various aspects of your business in a way that they leave a lasting impression on your buyers. 

Here is a step-by-step approach towards building an enterprise brand like none other:

Build a conversion-oriented B2B ecommerce website

If you are still of the opinion that a bland B2B portal with just the functionality to order online would suffice, you are sadly mistaken. Every 3 out of 4 B2B buyers consider B2B website design to be the most important factor while deciding to go with a given enterprise brand. Add to this the fact that 80% of B2B buyers want the same buying experience from their wholesale purchases as they are getting on a B2C site.

The stats clearly indicate a flawlessly designed B2B ecommerce website not only brings customers to your business but also helps in word of mouth promotion of your business. Building a unique, easy-to-use and navigate site with provision for automated self-service can set your enterprise business up for more engagement, conversions and repeat orders. 

To do so, your enterprise wholesale brand would need a well-rounded B2B ecommerce solution like StoreHippo that comes with built-in design tools and device-optimized customizable themes. You can easily create wow stores using the drag-and-drop features of the theme designer. Additionally, a host of B2B features like RFQ, MOQ, form-builder, admin-vendor-client chat, tiered pricing etc. help customers make faster decisions and negotiations. 

Storehippo also comes with 60+ pre-integrated payment gateway and the provision of a credit wallet which makes payments frictionless and fast. With 300+ enterprise-grade features, StoreHippo solves all your queries regarding how to set up a B2b online store and helps in attracting the right audiences to buy from your B2b online marketplace.

Mobile Channel Optimization

Just as B2C buyers are addicted to window shopping on their mobile devices, similarly, B2B buyers also love searching and evaluating products and services on their smartphones. Want to know the huge way mobile has impacted B2B buying habits? Here are some stats and facts to keep you updated;

B2B M-commerce: Stats and Facts

• 85% of B2B buyers want the content on B2B ecommerce websites to be optimized for mobile devices 
• 90% of B2B buyers say they would buy again from the same buyer that offers a superior mobile experience 
• 70% of B2B buyers are using mobile channels more than they did in the pre-pandemic phase
• 40% of revenue on B2B online stores is driven by mobile channels 
• 20% faster purchases are done when buyers use B2B mobile apps 

Source: Google, Bugsnag, Boston Consulting Group, Digital Examiner

The stats say it all! If you want to race ahead of the competition you need to ace your mobile commerce channels to engage and convert your buyers. For this, you need to get hold of B2B ecommerce solutions that enable you to build multiple mobile touchpoints. 

So, without wasting any time, let’s jump straight to the tactics you can use to power up a solid mobile commerce strategy for your wholesale business.

• A responsive web design that will take the shape of any screen size it is browsed from, thus eliminating the need to constantly zoom, pinch and swipe.
• Build B2B mobile apps. We know you have a responsive site but apps offer added advantages such as enhanced personalization and offline availability besides being cost-effective and easily accessible. 
• Turn your B2B ecommerce site into PWA to reach a wider audience base even on entry-level devices or poor network connections.
• Incorporate easy mobile payment options in your B2B marketplace to facilitate seamless checkouts quickly. Add digital and store wallets that make payments simplified and secure.
• While you have made it easy for your customers to browse your brand on mobile how about according to the same privilege to your teams, sellers, distributors, delivery boys etc.? Yup, you got it, go completely mobile. Build mobile apps for admins, vendors, delivery boys etc. to enable all the stakeholders to run the business on the go.
• While working on how to set up a B2B online store, make sure your email campaigns too are mobile-friendly. You can do this by optimizing your email marketing strategy and using one of the best-in-breed mailing tools. 

StoreHippo B2B ecommerce solutions come with complete support for enterprise mobile commerce. Built on mobile-first principles, StoreHippo offers mobile-optimized themes. Also, the inbuilt mobile apps builder helps you make apps for your B2B portal without writing a single line of code. All stores built on StoreHippo are PWAs and offer native app-like browsing and buying experience even on entry-level devices.

StoreHippo also offers built-in mobile apps for admins, delivery boys, vendors etc. With its full-spectrum, pre-integrated payment solutions, buyers can choose their preferred payment options while purchasing on your B2B ecommerce website and apps. Additionally, you can easily integrate with your preferred marketing and mailing software to maximize your marketing ROI and boost conversions.

Personalized Buyer Experiences

So, why do we need to offer a personalised user experience? Because customers prefer it. And we all know happy customers spend more money. Personalisation not only allows you to anticipate your buyer’s needs but also broadens the buyers’ awareness of what you have to offer, thus directing them to products that match their immediate needs.

And with enterprise B2C brands bent on redefining the ‘have it your way’ experiences, it is high time your B2B ecommerce website takes personalisation seriously. Your wholesale organization should respond to changing buyer expectations with new strategies that deliver hyper-personalized experiences. From pricing to landing pages to checkout and delivery, enterprise brands should kill it at every level.

To begin with, when you are planning how to set up a B2B online store, think of different buyer segments and design multiple landing pages personalised for the specific requirements of your buyers. This can be done based on product categories, geolocation, brands or any other criteria as per your business. You can then add a language selection option to help your buyers better understand the product specifications on your website.

Instead of offering the same price to all your customers, your B2B ecommerce solutions should be capable of offering customer-specific pricing. And this should be done in such a way that whenever your clients log in to your enterprise webstore, they automatically see the right price without needing to call your sales team with their own personal discount.

In addition to that, you can also offer customer-specific catalogues. This you can do by using data on a client’s previous purchases to build up an individual order history. 

Armed with this insight into the customer’s interests and preferences, you will be one step closer to how to set up a B2B online store and offer personalised deals and discounts. You can offer them personalized deals and coupons. Plus, you can also offer them even more efficiency such as quick ordering by leveraging historical order information. Now, won’t your business customers love this? Ours would.

StoreHippo B2B ecommerce platform is built on the headless architecture which gives your developers and marketing teams the creative control to implement multi-level personalizations. With the inbuilt B2B ecommerce solutions like login-based pricing, pricing override, built-in discount engine, RFQ etc. you can offer personalized prices to your buyers. 

You can personalise the site design and translate your B2B online marketplace into 100+ languages (including design themes) using the built-in multilingual feature. You can also use the multi-store functionality to build customer-segment-specific stores and offer custom catalogs to your target buyers through different sub-stores.

Additionally, with StoreHippo B2B ecommerce solutions you can also offer personalised shipping and payment options to your buyers by using the 30+ shipping options and 60+ payment gateways.

Leverage Content for Brand Building

Content marketing is another effective approach where you can use blogs, case studies, videos, ebooks, market research etc. to attract, engage and convert your B2B ecommerce website’s visitors. It is also one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies as it helps support a business’ long-term objectives such as revenue, lead generation and most importantly, brand awareness. How?

First of all, it positions your company as an industry expert that people can count on. Secondly, it helps your target audience figure out solutions to complex niche-focused problems. Having said this, let’s move on to how we too can implement this strategy.

• Keep your content simple enough to understand by avoiding filling it with unnecessary jargon that your readers might find confusing. This is a crucial step while deciding on how to set up a B2B online store, and creating the content to target various buyer segments. Try to be user-friendly and professional at the same time.
• Blogging, but not the regular type. Take a different approach and apply content marketing in a way your competitors aren’t doing. For e.g. adding creative and attractive infographics, video content, engaging webinars etc. 
• Lastly, the personalization of your content i.e. creating content that not only reads good but also solves problems by touching pain points in different groups. One example is customizing different copy elements of the landing page of your B2B ecommerce solution based on audience data.

StoreHippo makes it easier for you to use content to your advantage. Our B2B ecommerce solutions come with a built-in blog engine that helps you create different types of content for your audiences. 

You can add any number of blog categories, write and publish a blog immediately or defer it to some other date, add pictures and images to the blog and even customize blogs to work as a customer touchpoint by adding a buy button.

The SEO-friendly B2B online store builder StoreHippo helps you optimize your blog content with built-in SEO tools, meta fields and provision for unique URL, URL redirect etc. Also, storehippo helps you create dynamic marketing pages on the fly thus helping you further with your marketing and brand-building efforts.

Make Selling Easy for your Vendors

It doesn’t matter how advanced an ecommerce site you create, there is no way Business to Business e commerce can offer a complete substitute for a salesperson, especially when it comes to a negotiation process between the buyer and the seller.

However, there are certain features you can implement to your wholesale ecommerce that can significantly streamline the kind of interaction one can expect between a business buyer and seller. Also, you can introduce forms and features that enable self-service and eliminate the need for a salesperson at every step of the sales process.

Right at the time you start thinking about how to set up a B2B online store you should also think of ways to improve the buyer-seller interaction on your website.  By providing buyers with an easy way to create and submit inquiries, RFQs (or Request of Quotes) and purchase orders electronically you can reduce the negotiations time. 

Sellers too, on the other hand, will find it easy enough to respond to quote requests and orders on the same platform and through the same mediums, in turn, facilitating an efficient negotiation process between the buyer and the seller.

Also, by adding means to connect your buyers directly with your sellers you can minimize the time spend in corresponding through forms and emails or other channels. By offering your sellers a feature-rich admin dashboard and well-rounded solutions to manage orders and inventory you can align your vendors’ businesses for growth.

StoreHippo comes with a whole list of features that make it easy for your sellers to sell on your B2B online marketplace. From offering a feature-rich intuitive dashboard to built-in order management features and the ability to add their preferred business software, StoreHippo has everything that makes selling easy.

Storehippo also comes with 3-party seller-admin-customer chat that makes it easy to close deals faster by making negotiations quicker and more real-time. Other built-in features of StoreHippo B2B ecommerce solutions like RFQ, MOQ etc also come in handy in making the sales cycle faster.

Conclusion

Reading all this, working on how to set up a B2B online store might seem like a lot of work to do. But all you need to accomplish all of the above-listed strategies is a well-rounded, feature-rich and cutting-edge B2B ecommerce website builder like StoreHippo.

Built on MACH architecture StoreHippo gives your business the scalability, flexibility and agility to build future-ready B2B online stores and marketplaces. 300+ enterprise-grade features and API-based architecture make it easy to integrate with the best-in-breed solutions and build a tailor-made B2B online store for your brand.

Eager to jump on the battlefield? Try our 14 days trial period to explore what a B2B ecommerce solution can do for you.