15 reasons why you need a B2B marketplace software like StoreHippo

The top two trends of the rapidly evolving Business-to-business industry are;

• Ecommerce is the way to make your B2B business future-proof ( 90% of B2B organizations have moved to digital selling)
• Brands with a B2B online marketplace are growing faster than competitors (7.2X faster growth of B2B marketplaces over B2B ecommerce)

Source: 360 Digital Commerce, McKinsey & Company

Wonder what makes these two pieces of information important for your b2b enterprise brand?

Yup, they indicate what your customers want.

And business-to-business buyers want sophisticated B2B ecommerce websites, amazing user experience, multi-channel presence,  multiple choices of products and vendors, ease of payment and everything that was the prerogative of B2C ecommerce buyers. 

However, there is a catch.

 The B2B buyers just want all of the above BIGGER and BETTER!

Why every successful  B2B E-commerce brand needs cutting-edge B2B marketplace software

Winning the B2B battle is all about offering your customers something over and above what they need and what others are already giving.

This translates into;

• Creating the unique brand proposition that sets you apart from the competition
• Building a B2B online marketplace that matches the ease, look and feel of B2C stores your clients keep shopping from
• Unifying, standardizing and modernizing  your business processes so clients get all information they need quickly and easily
• Introducing automation to assist with self-service and shorter sales cycle
• Personalized offerings and content to help with decision-making 
• Offering simplified ways to compare products/vendors/prices and make informed decisions
• Reaching customers on multiple channels like B2B marketplace websites and apps, PWA stores, social channels etc.
• Making checkouts frictionless and payments easy

And to easily and effortlessly offer the above experiences to your customers, your enterprise brand will need many wheels aligned in tandem.

While you can onboard the best vendors to offer your customers choices, implement the data-driven strategies to boost your sales and have the best teams to execute your plans, the engine that will drive the growth of your enterprise brand is your B2B marketplace software.

After all, without a modern, agile and feature-rich B2B marketplace software platform you will not be able to digitize and modernize your business for the tastes and needs of your buyers.

How does your enterprise B2B brand benefit from using the best B2B marketplace software

B2B brands opting for the digital route have two options to begin their ecommerce journey;

1. Build your marketplace website from scratch
2. Go with a SaaS-based turnkey B2B ecommerce solution

While your B2B brand can opt for building its online marketplace from scratch, going with option b) i.e; a hosted and managed SaaS marketplace platform frees you from the hassle of setting up large IT infrastructure and being on top managing things thereon. 

By opting for a ready-to-use solution to build your B2B online marketplace you can:

• Go to market in lesser time as compared to building a marketplace website from scratch
• Save on the development and maintenance costs which are taken care of by your B2B ecommerce solution providers
• Access top-notch features, plugins and extensions designed for diverse requirements of B2B brand
• Better control over the business and vendors with centralized digital admin
• No worries about scaling the business as you grow to new product lines or geographies
• Get battle-tested solutions that have been fine-tuned in live business scenarios
• Easily experiment with new business use cases and pivot to new business models
• Improve brand visibility across multiple digital platforms quickly and easily

Well, with such a comprehensive list of benefits, you can not only leverage  your B2B marketplace software to do amazing things for your business but you can also offer your customers the experiences and features that are missing on most other competitor sites.

The challenge however is, to find the holy grail of a B2B software solution that fits the bill. While there are many off-the-shelf B2B solutions available, choosing the right one for your brand can be confusing given the unique requirements of a B2B online marketplace.

Choosing your B2B marketplace solution needs careful consideration and well-rounded software that not only caters to the current requirements of your brand but is also designed to accommodate future needs.

StoreHippo B2B marketplace builder is one such ecommerce platform that has been built to address all the concerts of fast-growing enterprise wholesale brands. Let us check what makes StoreHippo the best turnkey ecommerce solution to power your B2B marketplace.

15-reasons that make StoreHippo the best B2B marketplace software for your business

StoreHippo's B2B ecommerce platform is designed considering the wide range of requirements of successful B2B marketplaces. With experience and expertise in handling marketplace websites across industries, StoreHippo comes with a host of features and solutions needed by enterprise brands looking to build innovative B2B marketplaces. 

Here is a list of features that sets StoreHippo apart from other B2B marketplace solutions:

1. One B2B ecommerce solution for all your needs

StoreHippo’s fully-hosted and managed B2B ecommerce platform offers one-stop solutions for building, running and growing a marketplace website for wholesale enterprise brands. Along with offering features to build your marketplace website, StoreHippo also ensures that the platform is easy-to-use for all the concerned parties be it the admins, vendors or your clients.

StoreHippo comes with 300+ built-in enterprise-grade features and 120+ integrations to help wholesale brands build their custom marketplace stores. From building a B2B marketplace website to running and growing it, and streamlining your fulfillment, StoreHippo comes with a gamut of features for managing every aspect of your wholesale ecommerce business. 

2. No dependency on Plugins and Extensions

Most of the turnkey B2B solutions need a host of plugins or extensions to create the end-to-end marketplace functionalities. StoreHippo on the other hand has native features, modules and solutions not only to build a B2B ecommerce website but also implement marketplace specific requirements easily. 

With StoreHippo’s plug-and-play solutions  you will not have to spend money and resources on buying additional third-party apps and plugins to build a fully-functional B2B online marketplace. Also, since you don’t have to sync multiple disparate extensions and plugins, your overall site performance improves dramatically.  

3. Technology that will future-proof your business

When you build your B2B marketplace it is essential that you have cutting-edge technology to power your growth. In the fast changing ecommerce environment, having next-gen technology at your disposal goes a long way in making your brand stand out. 

StoreHippo B2B marketplace software gives your multi-seller store the power of MEAN stack and MACH ( Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless) architecture. This means the stores powered by StoreHippo have elastic scalability, flexibility and agility to adapt to market dynamics.  

4. Comprehensive B2B marketplace software for every business model

While you begin your B2b online marketplace using one business model, going forward you might decide on pivoting to a new hybrid business model or may be going for B2B and D2C simultaneously. In the latter scenario, you might have to build a second marketplace website altogether if your B2b software does not support different business models.

Notso with StoreHippo at your disposal! Along with native B2B ecommerce and multi-vendor marketplace solutions, StoreHippo also has built in solutions for other business models like B2C, B2B2C, D2C, multi-store ecommerce, hyperlocal ecommerce etc. 

StoreHippo can also facilitate your foray into international  markets with its go-global features using which you can build a multilingual B2B online marketplace and accept payments in multiple currencies. With the multi-store feature you can build localized stores for different countries or audience segments or differentiate the look,feel, products of your stores on any other factor. 

5. Flexibility to build tailor-made solutions

The inherent scalability and flexibility of StoreHippo makes it easy for you to build your tailor-made marketplace website. Built on the decoupled headless architecture and with support for diverse business models StoreHippo reduces the time to build tailor-made solutions. 

You can easily tweak the frontend and the backend of the StoreHippo ecommerce website builder to build your tailor-made marketplace website. Building your custom or hybrid marketplace model ( say a combination of multi vendor and multi store, or combination of B2B+D2C) is also easy as you can combine two or more business models to create your own custom marketplace model. 

6. Mobile-First Solutions to take your business Omnichannel

This is the era of taking your business where your customers are, which means literally on 4-6 digital channels on an average, with mobile commerce being centerstage. Building just a B2B marketplace website does no longer suffice. Your brand needs to have a website, PWA stores, marketplace apps, have a buy button on your social pages and any other commerce-enabled digital channel. Sounds quite a mouthful, doesn’t it? 

With StoreHippo you can do it all. StoreHippo is designed on the mobile-first principle and all marketplaces and stores built on StoreHippo are PWAs. Using the inbuilt mobile apps builder you can build Android and iOS B2B marketplace apps without the need for writing a single line of code. You also get admin, vendor and delivery boy mobile apps to manage your business and fulfillment on the go. 

StoreHippo’s B2B marketplace software is built on the decoupled headless architecture, which means you can create new customer touchpoints easily using the same backend logic and APIs and take your B2B marketplace omnichannel.

7. 300+ Enterprise-Grade Features 

By digitizing your wholesale business through your  B2B online marketplace you set-up your brand for growth. Your multi-seller online portal ensures your brand is perceived as modern and has standardized automated processes that make bulk online buying and selling easy. 

Storehippo makes the process of modernizing your business easier and seamless by offering a gamut of B2B features along with 300+ enterprise grade features. StoreHippo’s business-to-business features like RFQ, MOQ, differential pricing, built-in form builder, user-roles, tax-rule engine (with GST support), bulk order processing, tiered pricing, pricing comparison etc. help in making the B2B processes simple and seamless.  Also, StoreHippo supports seamless integrations with the best-in-breed software to enhance the capabilities of your B2B marketplace software. 

8. Personalisation made easy

We live in an era of hyper-personalization. Business-to-business buyers are increasingly asking for more-and more personalized journeys.

B2B ecommerce personalization

• 80% of buyers trust a B2B brand that publishes relevant content for their buyer journey 
• 91% of buyers are more likely to purchase from brands that remember their preferences and offer relevant deals and recommendations

Source: Forbes, Accenture

The verdict is clear, you need to personalize your buyer journeys to sell more. And StoreHippo B2B marketplace software helps you achieve multi-level personalizations. From personalized landing pages, to prices, currencies, choice of language, preferred channel to buy on, preferred payment option and shipping solutions, you name it and StoreHippo has it. 

You can also design different design themes for different buyer segments or sales channels to engage and convert your buyers better.

9. Easy seller registration and Vendor Management

While you have all the best features in your marketplace, to make your brand a success you also need to have the best vendors onboard. Streamlined and simplified seller registration and vendor management are two very important features to look for in your B2B ecommerce solution provider.

StoreHippo keeps you ahead of competition by offering an easy to use seller registration module along with comprehensive vendor management solutions. You can onboard and approve/reject your vendors easily through your registration page and admin panel.  

Managing your vendors, their products, orders, commissions etc. is all simplified and streamlined in the StoreHippo vendor management module. You can also set-up percentage-wise or flat commission rules and create different hierarchies for your sellers, distributors, manufacturers etc. on your B2B online marketplace. 

10. Separate Vendor Dashboards and seller page

While admins have control over vendors it is also imperative that the vendors on your marketplace B2B ecommerce website have full control of their business. To help your vendors freely run their business Storehippo offers a separate vendor dashboard for each seller wherein your sellers can manage their products, orders, inventory, shipping, returns, refunds etc. 

You can also offer a unique seller page on your marketplace frontend to each vendor. By offering a separate seller page you can ensure your vendors get undivided buyer attention and a better chance to sell their products.  

11. Seller Ledger and Adaptive payments

Well, your sellers are also equipped to handle their business easily, so what’s the next thing you need in your B2B marketplace software to make running your business easier. You got it, you need to simplify vendor commissions, payouts etc.

StoreHippo comes with inbuilt seller ledger and adaptive payments features to simplify vendor payments. You get the complete details of transactions, payables, pending orders, invoices etc. in the seller ledger and can also set up ledger rules to manage the seller payouts easily.

StoreHippo also supports adaptive payments wherein, the order amount of a multi-product order is automatically split between different sellers. 

12. Security and User-Roles

Multi-level security not only safeguards your business and clients' critical information but also goes a long way in building trust and brand-value of your B2B online marketplace.

StoreHippo’s PCI-DSS-compliant platform comes with a range of built-in security measures to offer a secure buying and selling environment on your marketplace. By defining user roles and restricting unwanted access you can implement granular security on your marketplace B2B ecommerce website. You also get free SSL for your website. 

The built-in audit logs feature offered by StoreHippo B2B ecommerce solutions helps you to identify and fix errors quickly. StoreHippo offers robust security features to safeguard your business against cyber-threats and malwares.

13. Multiple Payment Solutions

Well, with all the above features, you can have your B2B marketplace all ready to launch. But how about the payments, how are you ensuring that checkouts are frictionless on your B2B online marketplace? 

Multiple payment solutions for B2B online marketplaces

• Credit/debit card
• Netbanking
• Credit or Wallet Management
• UPI
• Payment Gateways
• Digital Wallets

The simplest way to do it is by offering a variety of payment options to handle the complex payment process of business-to-business set up. To help you get payments easily for large and bulk purchases, with high-value orders StoreHippo offers a wide array of payment solutions. StoreHippo offers 60+ pre-integrated payment gateways and also has the provision for B2B wallet and credit management. Along with these, StoreHippo B2B ecommerce solutions also supports a wide spectrum of other payment options like netbanking, UPI, digital wallets, mobile wallets etc.   

14. Integrated shipping

The onus of managing the shipping is on the vendors on your marketplace website. However, offering shipping solutions in partnership with the best logistics partners goes a long way in building your brand value and differentiating you from competition. Having streamlined logistics also helps your vendors penetrate new geographies and widen their customer base.

StoreHippo not only offers an advanced B2B marketplace software but also offers 30+ pre-integrated shipping partners to help you streamline your shipping chain. Using the automated shipping solutions from StoreHippo, your vendors can also manage their fulfillment in a more efficient and cost-effective manner. 

15. Built-in Marketing Tools to grow your B2B Marketplace

Until now we checklisted the features that will help in building and running your wholesale marketplace efficiently. But what about growing your business? Wouldn’t you love it if your B2B marketplace software also comes with marketing tools to grow your business to new customer segments and markets. Here, here, your wish is granted.

StoreHippo B2B ecommerce solutions are built on a SEO-SEO-friendly platform that has a range of built-in marketing tools like a powerful blog engine to create personalized content, dynamic marketing pages to run your marketing campaigns, discount engine, abandoned cart recovery solutions, unified notifications (email, SMS, web and push notifications), dynamic forms to capture a variety of user-inputs etc. 

You can also integrate StoreHippo B2B marketplace software with your chosen marketing tools and solutions, various mailing software, chatbots etc. with storeHippo you have the proper arsenal to win the B2B e-commerce game.

Conclusion

B2B ecommerce is all set to continue its upward growth trajectory and enterprise brands can leverage the best B2B marketplace software to secure their share in this growth. Building your wholesale marketplace websites has the potential to unlock success that you have never witnessed before. All you need to achieve disruptive growth is the right strategy and a cutting edge B2B ecommerce solution.

StoreHippo has powered a wide variety of B2B online marketplaces for its clients and offered a gamut of features to help them create out-of-box solutions. Whatever be your marketplace idea, StoreHippo has the capabilities to build your tailor-made B2B online marketplace. 

Ready to explore the vast range of StoreHippo B2b features for your online marketplace? Schedule a Free demo right away.