How To Setup Online Store For Wholesale Building Material Business

Ecommerce market is booming across the world. One major area of wholesale ecommerce is the building material industry.  Did you know that the burgeoning construction material industry of India is expected to reach US $738.5 billion by 2022?

Yes, this industry is amazingly huge. And with the digitization and dynamic market trends, starting an online channel to fulfil the huge demand for construction materials can be a great business idea.

As many as 75% of the professionals in the construction industry plan to increase their investment in digital transformation in 2021 (Source: IFS survey study). Starting an online store for wholesale building material business can be a great idea owing to the high number of infrastructure projects in the country. The best part of going online in this sector is that building materials like cement, stones, sand, paint etc. are always in demand. Imagine if you could focus on design and innovation, brand and sales instead of giving all your time to business operations. 

Why create an online store for your wholesale building material business?

1. Designed for high-volume businesses

The wholesale businesses deal with bulk orders and have a tendency to grow and scale quickly. And when you are moving online, it is important to consider the scalability of your chosen ecommerce platform. Especially, wholesale businesses dealing with high volume orders require B2B specific features and advanced functionalities. Fortunately, StoreHippo ecommerce platform offers a scalable B2B ecommerce platform with exclusive wholesale business features like bulk order processing, multi-tier tax management, customized pricing and invoice generation, combination of wholesale and retail pricing, and much more.

2. Sell to customers across the globe

There is no limit to business growth and going global is a big step to global success. Moving ahead to global success is now much easier with the go-global features of StoreHippo. It allows you to accept multi-currency payments, offers multiple language support, multi-tier taxation and customized invoice support, and much more. 

3. Get a mobile-ready online store

Today, no business is immune to the huge popularity of mobile commerce. With the increasing growth of mobile shopping, it is the time to reach more customers with your mobile store. With StoreHippo, you can also launch a mobile B2B store to improve customer conversions and business outcomes. You can also leverage the benefits of PWA stores that look and work seamlessly on different devices, and mobile apps (Android/iOS) without any additional cost.

4. Onboard cement and paints dealers and distributors as vendors quickly

You can launch your online store for wholesale building material, attracting the vendors for building materials without any major challenges. A quick and easy vendor registration can make a big impact on your business. The wholesale business works mainly on vendors and it requires you to add new vendors every day that can waste a lot of your time and efforts. With StoreHippo, you can easily onboard vendors in a few clicks and help the vendors to easily process products, payments, orders, and customers. 

5. Implement pricing overrides to offer different pricing for different paints and cement brands

Pricing override is a crucial factor in B2B ecommerce. With different customer requirements, wholesale building material businesses need to deal with pricing differently. Handling each and every requirement and communication of the customers manually can be quite a task. It might also cause delays in negotiations with a lot of to and fro discussions? 

So what’s the way out?

The easy solution is to showcase different prices based on the customer requirements. But how to implement it? login or IP address, and order quantity. The pricing override feature of StoreHippo gives you the flexibility to add price variations as the customer relationship progresses based on the order volume and individual requirements.

6. Add custom forms to gather clients’ building materials requirements

The construction business requires detailed inputs about client requirements. And being in wholesale business requires high-end customizations to process the high-volume orders. While static requirement forms are way too conventional, the custom forms can be used to collect a variety of data like enterprise orders, setting up surveys based on IP or device used, marketing campaign surveys, adding custom fields to capture specific interest of customers, etc. StoreHippo allows you to build your custom forms that can be used for specific purposes and provide much better insights about user requirements.

How to create a B2B ecommerce website for wholesale building material business?

When you create a B2B ecommerce website, you get an additional sales channel for your business. This makes it very easy for you to reach out to customers globally. Are you still sceptical about creating an ecommerce website for your wholesale business? Check out these simple steps.

1. Planning the website

Define the specific modules required for the building material business, add custom workflows, and features required to run the business successfully.

2. Selection of the right B2B ecommerce platform

It is the most crucial decision you will take for your online business. Choose a platform that aligns with your long-term business scale, provide flexibility, and offer enterprise-grade features to handle your business efficiently. 

3. Choose the website design and theme

The new-age buyers expect a beautiful website with an amazing shopping experience. The rich theme library of StoreHippo can help you catch the attention of buyers, engage, and convert them easily.

4. Customizations

B2B ecommerce works differently than online retail business. It deals with varied business workflows, and manages customers differently. The B2B specific features like custom workflows, minimum order value, personalized enquiry forms offered by StoreHippo are extremely helpful for wholesale businesses. It also offers you to customize the backend of your online store without any hassles.

5. Business integrations

These integrations make the website functional. Set Up an online store that helps you with the payment, logistics, and marketing features, and also, allows you to add software like ERP, CRM, email market software, and alike.

6. Go live

When you are done with business workflows, integrations, and customizations, test your wholesale business website, and go live.

Why choose StoreHippo for your wholesale building material business?

When it is about ecommerce in the construction industry, the customers know exactly what they want. And the wish list of customers should be the most important consideration for wholesale building material business. The future-proof technology, advanced features, streamlined business workflows, and extended support makes sense with the current growth of the construction sector. Like, StoreHippo can provide the automation required to achieve these goals and fits well with the ecommerce landscape of the wholesale construction businesses.

The ready-to-go B2B ecommerce solution of StoreHippo serves the best for large scale businesses. It allows you to set up, customize, manage your ecommerce website with amazing features and a comprehensive B2B solution. The 300+ inbuilt features of the platform help you to build your online store for wholesale building material business without any IT hassles. Start your 14-day free online trial store to explore all the features of the ecommerce platform before you take the final call for your online business.