How to grow your B2B business with multi-store ecommerce

B2B ecommerce buying is not a linear graph.  

The B2B buyers today look at a diversified shopping experience that treats them just like a B2C customer. 

Yes, 80% of B2B buyers expect the same buying experience as they get while shopping from a  B2C business. 

Well, attracting, converting, and retaining buyers on your B2B ecommerce marketplace can be challenging.

But what if we say you have a little trick that can help you go for targeted conversions and better customer engagement?

You got it, we are talking about offering personalized experiences through the  multi store ecommerce business model.

Building B2B marketplace success route through multi-store setup

Before we go into details let's first understand some latest B2B trends and stats that give better insights into buyer expectations. 

Here we go

• 80% of  B2B sales will be done online by 2025
• 18.70% is the expected B2B ecommerce market annual growth between 2021 and 2026
• 70% of B2B buyers prefer remote, digital self-serve business
• 73% of B2B buyers now want a personalized B2C-like experience
• 10+ touch points explored by average B2B buyers to connect with sellers 

Source: Statista, Business Wire

Here is what we learn from the above trends

The B2B landscape is reshaping thanks to changing customer buying habits and expectations. Fast-changing technology has caused huge shifts in market dynamics, forcing B2B companies to align their offerings for the new age buyers. Here are a few learning for B2B ecommerce brands to remain relevant in the market:

• Mcommerce has become a key channel in driving engagement and converting customers.
• Hyper-personalization is the new trend, B2B buyers are looking for personalized shopping experiences across all channels, like the UI/UX of the online stores, customized offers, and product catalouges. 
• B2B buyers expect their brands to be present on multiple channels and offer them an omnichannel shopping experience.
• The new age B2B buyers look for self-service demanding their brands to align their digital channels in a way that incorporates a self-serve model. 
• The B2B payment styles have changed, the buyers pay in parts, say 50% of payment in advance, and 50% of payment within 30 or 60 days from the order delivery date. Also, digital payments have overtaken cheques.

The inclination of B2B buyers towards a B2C-like experience is ever-growing. To offer the best-in-class buying experience to your customers, creating sub stores for different audience sets can be a smart choice. It will help you capitalize on the growing needs and demands of your buyers and offer a customer experience that is a win-win for both your B2B company and your buyers. However you need the best B2B ecommerce solutions to help you chart an upwards growth trajectory. 

How to grow your B2B business with multi-store ecommerce

The one thing that matters the most for a smooth customer experience is the convenience of buying. When your customers find it easy to buy on your ecommerce website, you have won them for life. 

Let us look at a few tips to grow your B2B ecommerce business with multiple stores:

Reach a segmented audience with multiple B2B stores

B2B buyers have specific requirements today, and as an enterprise B2B company looking at growth, you have to cater to different audience segments in ways they want. To do so, the best shot is to create multiple B2B storefronts that are personalized to the target audience and the specific requirements of your business-to-business buyers. Like, you can create multiple sub-stores based on the purchase volume of buyers. For the same products, you can create different stores and use the price override functionality based on volume and segment customers like small businesses, medium businesses, and enterprise businesses.

StoreHippo multi store ecommerce solutions with comprehensive features help businesses manage a spectrum of customers easily. With a single database, brands can allocate different or similar products, deals, discounts, offers, shipping solutions, payment gateways etc. to various B2B sub-stores. You can seamlessly build multiple marketplace apps and create multiple frontends to quickly convert your buyers using the same backend logic and APIs.  

Easy to scale and grow by adding new stores

Every B2B company looks at scaling and growing its customer base in the future. And with a multi store set up, scaling your business becomes easy. Wondering how? As you implement various marketing strategies based on the behavioral patterns and the purchase choices made by B2B buyers in the past, you track their behavior and offer them personalized product catalogs, deals, and discounts. You can create multiple B2B stores for different geographies, and present relevant products and pricing to the target customers to boost conversions.  

StoreHippo, the best B2B ecommerce solution comes with analytical tools to help you configure Google Analytics on your B2B ecommerce store and track customer behavior. You can also send personalized notifications or offer personalized discounts or special deals on your online store with StoreHippo. You can seamlessly launch multiple stores in foreign languages with StoreHippo go global features. It offers 100+ languages including RTL languages for your global customers. You can integrate multiple payment options in global currencies to facilitate ease of payments from cross-borders. 

Offer undistracted attention to the B2B customers 

B2B buyers expect their brands to offer them undivided attention combined with personalized buying experiences. A multi store ecommerce business model helps you bifurcate different products or brands to different audience segments. When you create individual B2B online stores for different products, your customers do not run to the competitors, instead, shop from your brand as you offer multiple products under one umbrella. With customized shopping, experience comes bigger ticket sizes and an increase in your sales volume. Say, for example, your auto spare parts B2B brand offers its manufactured wholesale products on one sub-store and related ancillary products ( oils, lubes, gears, nuts, tools, etc.) on another sub-store along with services from its partner network on a third sub-store, your B2b buyers will no longer hop on different websites to get the end-to-end services.

StoreHippo ecommerce solutions help you build and manage multiple stores from a single platform. You can perform day-to-day activities like product management, sales, order management etc. from a central admin portal. In just a few steps, you can create multiple unique storefronts and assign different or similar product catalogues to all the B2B ecommerce sub-stores. 

Experiment with targeted/localized marketing 

Targeted marketing with multiple stores has proven to be very powerful. Segmenting your buyers based on specific criteria like location, age groups, etc. helps you implement personalized marketing easily. The B2B buyers have their own unique needs, preferences, buying habits etc. which can be catered to easily with multiple stores.  

StoreHippo ecommerce solutions enable you to create multiple locations-based s tores in no time. You can experiment with different product-catalouges or promote your best-selling products with the price-override feature or simply create individual B2B ecommerce stores as per the needs and demands of your buyers. 

Streamlined inventory and order management

As B2B buying often entails bulk purchases, it becomes challenging to accurately track and streamline the inventories. As you build multiple sub-stores and direct a certain customer group to a particular sub-store, You can offer a seamless inventory and order management process to your sellers and customers.

StoreHippo, the best B2B ecommerce solution comes with bulk order processing to help save time and make your B2B inventory and order management process efficient and error-free. StoreHippo multi store ecommerce solutions offer a centralized inventory and customer data management system for you. 

Leverage price override on different stores to maximise profit

With multiple stores you can leverage pricing override to create a better profit margin on your diverse product catalogs. You can do a thorough market study, calculate your costs and margins, study how price elasticity impacts your business and profit margins, and then implement differential pricing on each store to maximize ROI. Creating multiple stores makes it easy to implement price override functionality based on stores and list the products and demand at a given storefront.   

StoreHippo B2B ecommerce solutions with multi store come with a price-override functionality where you can seamlessly list the same products at different prices depending on the location or the deal offered at each store. You can plan better profit margins by offering custom prices to different customers based on their order volume, order frequency, geolocation, etc. You can also facilitate multi-currency checkouts for better international conversions on your B2B website.

Strategic buyer data and analytics 

Every business that has access to a wide range of customer data and analytics can plan strategic business growth based on data-driven insights. Wondering how? Well, as you get your hands on rich customer data about the customer’s shopping behavior, purchase history etc, you can implement your marketing strategies attuned to the needs and preferences of your buyers. A B2B company that offers its customers exactly what they look for, is loved by all.

As you build multiple location-specific or product-specific B2B sub stores with the best B2B ecommerce solutions like StoreHippo, you capture the customer location and other relevant data. With the help of the data insights you receive, you can showcase just the right product to the right B2B customer. StoreHippo also offers an inbuilt form builder that helps you create custom forms to capture various customer data from multiple sub-stores easily.

Conclusion

Working to set up a B2B multi store ecommerce business might seem like a lot of work, but it helps you boost your business like never before. With multiple storefronts you can manage multiple brands and enter multiple regional and global markets to have a strong brand presence. A series of stores help you stay relevant with the latest ecommerce trends and connect with the B2B buyers. 

With the help of a well-rounded, feature-rich, cutting-edge B2B ecommerce platform like StoreHippo, you can not only build your sub-stores seamlessly but also grow your business manifold. The MACH architecture from StoreHippo, the best B2B ecommerce solution gives your business the desired scalability and flexibility to build future-ready sub-stores for your B2B company. With StoreHippo's 300+ in-built B2B features like omnichannel solutions, one-stop shipping solutions, marketing tools, apps builder for all sub-stores, etc, you can seamlessly secure your position in the B2B ecommerce market.

Eager to jump on the B2B multi store ecommerce bandwagon? Explore the wide range of business-to-business enterprise-grade features by starting your 14-day free trial now. 

FAQ

1. Are there any extra costs for managing multiple ecommerce stores for my B2B company?

When you choose StoreHippo to build your B2B ecommerce solutions, you do not need to incur any extra costs to manage different stores. StoreHippo multi store ecommerce solutions help your vendors manage all the stores efficiently by synchronizing the customer data, inventory, orders from multiple sub-stores, etc, all from a common central admin. With the central dashboard from the best B2B ecommerce solutions, StoreHippo, you can allocate different product lines through a common database. You can also integrate multiple payment and shipping partners on your marketplace for flexible payments and quick deliveries. With Storehippo’s built-in order and inventory management system , you can quickly assign different inventories to different sub-stores.

2. Can I connect different customer management systems with B2B multi-store ecommerce solutions?

Depends on your choice of multi-store ecommerce solution. With StoreHippo ecommerce solutions, you can easily integrate your existing CMS. StoreHippo comes with an API-based architecture that helps you to integrate with the software and service provider of your choice. You can seamlessly create a comprehensive customer management ecosystem on your multi store marketplace. StoreHippo also helps you seamlessly integrate with ticketing software, chatbots, live chat, etc to help you create customer support solutions for exceptional customer service.

3. Can I sync my inventory and orders across all my stores using the multi-store ecommerce solutions?

Yes, turnkey ecommerce solutions like StoreHippo help your vendors overcome the challenge of managing stocks with its hassle-free inventory and order management system. A B2B company that builds multi store ecommerce marketplace needs a well-rounded and feature-rich solution for the smooth functioning of its business operations. StoreHippo B2B multi-store ecommerce solution offers a built-in OMS to help you streamline your order and inventory planning. The efficient order management system from StoreHippo gives a rich insight into customer behavior and helps brands strategically plan their business growth.         

4. Is it possible to create unique designs for all B2B ecommerce stores? 

Yes, with StoreHippo the best B2B ecommerce solution, it is possible to create unique designs for all sub-stores. Different designs on all your sub-stores help you engage better with the audience. StoreHippo comes with a rich design themes library to help you create unique designs for each of your B2B ecommerce sub-stores. With the easy drag-and-drop feature from StoreHippo, even a novice user can create professional-looking website designs in just a few clicks without the need for coding. You can choose from 100+ device-optimized themes and mix-and-match different themes to create tailored designs. You can also create unique designs for your B2B mobile apps with StoreHippo.                                                  

5. Will my vendors need tutorials and guides to sell on multiple B2B ecommerce stores?

Different B2B ecommerce solutions have different guidelines. StoreHippo offers a rich help center that comes with detailed answers for everything you need to set up multiple stores with StoreHippo. Your vendors can seamlessly manage their stores, products, orders, deliveries, etc with the help center tutorials and guides. We also have a dedicated developers section that will help your technical team manage your B2B ecommerce marketplace seamlessly.    

6. Can I pivot to a different business model like B2B2C from a B2B multi-store ecommerce marketplace?

Yes, to be able to seamlessly pivot to different business models, you should choose the best B2B ecommerce solutions. StoreHippo supports a variety of business models like B2C, D2C, B2B2C, quick commerce, etc . You can also combine different business models to create a hybrid model with StoreHippo’s fully hosted and managed enterprise ecommerce solution. With the plug-and-play solutions from StoreHippo, you do not need to go for additional third-party apps or plugins to manage and experiment with different models. 

7. Is it possible to build mulitple B2B ecommerce mobile apps for my company?

Yes, you can build multiple apps for your B2B company when you choose an ecommerce solution built on mobile-first technology like StoreHippo. With the built-in mobile app builder from StoreHippo, you can create multiple Andriod and iOS mobile apps right from your B2B admin dashboard at zero additional costs and without the need for coding. StoreHippo also helps create PWA stores that look, feel, and work like mobile apps even on entry level devices and in poor internet connectivity. StoreHippo also offers mobile solutions for multiple users like admin, vendors, delivery boys, etc to help them handle their business on the go.        

8. Can I offer differential pricing to different customers on all sub-stores of my B2B ecommerce stores?

Yes, you can seamlessly offer differential pricing on all sub-stores of your B2B marketplace with StoreHippo ecommerce solutions. StoreHippo comes with a price override feature that helps you offer different prices to different customers on your B2B multi store ecommerce marketplace. You can set-up differential pricing and offer discounted prices based on order quantity, customer location, etc.             

9. Is it possible to experiment with targeted marketing on my B2B multi-store ecommerce marketplace?

Yes, it is possible to experiment with targeted marketing on your B2B multi-store ecommerce marketplace with the help of a robust ecommerce platform like StoreHippo. You can segment your buyers based on specific criteria like location, age group, buying preferences, etc. As you create multiple location-specific stores, you can add different product catalogs and promote different best-selling products in different stores. To market your brand to the target audience, you can create personalized stores based on your audience’s unique needs, preferences, buying habits, etc. with StoreHippo, the best B2B ecommerce solutions. 

10. Can I secure all my stores with the B2B multi-store ecommerce solutions?

Yes, with B2B multi-store ecommerce solutions like StoreHippo, you can create secure sub-stores for your enterprise brand. StoreHippo helps you maintain security in each of your stores with its PCI-DSS-compliant ecommerce solutions. You can protect your customers’ data and other sensitive pieces of information on your B2B marketplace with the high-end security features and audit logs from StoreHippo, the best B2B ecommerce solutions. You can build multiple PCI-DSS-compliant B2B ecommerce stores in a few easy steps.