Customer service via email is no longer an acceptable option. Because B2B buyers demand even more attention than B2C customers, your website needs to have all possible customer care options, from live chats with customer service and sales reps to chatbots if outside working hours.
Optimize your platform for advanced search by adding online search tools and other helpful perks to help customers navigate your site and learn more about your products or call you if they require assistance. Customer self service portals are no longer among emerging trends but rather an outright necessity.
Consider adding digital self service features gradually to make customers adopt new functionality first before moving on to the next, more sophisticated features. For a business that offers multiple product lines, uses a large catalog, and operates in several different sectors, dynamic personalization can help to substantially increase online revenues.
Technology innovators have significantly improved marketing personalization tools, and we expect personalization and recommendation machine learning ML engines to become even better in the coming years. For example, you want to show a different view of your website to a first-time visitor than to an existing lead or a returning customer. With online store personalization, you can present the right content to the right person — to deliver relevant content and time your calls to action without overwhelming your customers with a multitude of different messages.
The more sophisticated artificial intelligence AI mechanisms now offer personalization techniques as a package: push notifications on mobile phones, email messaging, and content recommendations on social media and websites — all can become a customized and personalized customer experience from customer data gathered across different digital channels.
What this means is that instead of personalizing select interactions with the customer, you are now able to personalize an actual customer journey and walk them through it, offering personalized content at every touchpoint.
The strategy for video content marketing strategy is gaining more and more prominence in the increasingly crowded B2B marketplace. Since video marketing has become a go-to strategy to attract new and retain existing customers, you should consider making it a priority in your digital marketing efforts. Think of incorporating short marketing videos for your LinkedIn feed and organizing webinars and live talks with your sales representatives and industry experts on your website or preferred social media channel.
While not entirely a new concept, dynamic pricing has only recently taken the ecommerce industry by storm. Dynamic pricing is a powerful pricing strategy with a lot of hidden potential: it gives you greater control over your prices, allows flexibility without compromising brand value, and saves you money in the long term.
With the robust ecommerce platform and the right software tools that keep the guesswork out of the equation, you can achieve fantastic results that will have a positive effect on other aspects of your business. Particularly relevant for those operating their own B2B ecommerce marketplaces , value added services provide unique opportunities to retain and lock in existing customers, attract new ones, increase revenue, and stay on top of the current market trends.
In its most simplistic sense, value added services are those that you add on top of your existing product or service.
AIs may not be ready to craft high-quality content yet. With tools like generation analytics and predictive analytics, AI can participate more noticeably in the creation process and help with research, outcome tracking, microtargeting, and digital marketing. As machines develop better content editing skills, they could also help streamline content creation and reduce costs in the future.
Open source is a fantastic way to continuously improve ecommerce functionality while making the process a collaborative as opposed to proprietary effort of different developers. We can see this clearly with Virto Commerce, which has become one of the prominent open source platforms, having gathered a significant number of developers from different countries in its community.
Implementation speeds have increased dramatically in recent years. These days you can complete the entire implementation process within a few weeks.
Composable ecommerce platforms allow businesses to implement individual, specific functionalities keeping the rest of the business intact until all processes and features are implemented. Offering and processing a variety of digital payments is absolutely critical for ecommerce companies. Not offering a buyer the flexibility to pay with their preferred method is likely to result in a sale loss.
Thankfully, nowadays, sophisticated B2B platforms offer different payment options, such as PayPal, invoicing, e-checks, purchasing or commercial cards, physical checks, purchase orders, etc. Besides, some offer trade finance options , which allow companies to sell on credit and finance their vendors and buyers.
The growth of APIs has opened up new opportunities for ecommerce, allowing companies to go headless and experiment with different online sales channels.
Moreover, APIs enable businesses to build sophisticated ecommerce infrastructures where all vital internal and external applications are connected within one unifying and collaborative solution. By connecting and integrating multiple applications, such things as real time inventory and fulfillment services have finally become possible.
PWAs bring native-app-like experiences to cross-platform web apps and offer distinct advantages over traditional mobile apps and native ecommerce sites by combining the best features of both. Unlike mobile apps, PWAs are discoverable via search and can be promoted to users on any device.
B2B buyers, in turn, benefit from fast-loading mobile pages, quick and smooth web experience, cross-device compatibility, and offline work mode, among other helpful perks. In an attempt to keep up with the ever changing customer expectations, businesses have turned to augmented and virtual reality applications, one of the hottest B2B ecommerce trends that is increasingly becoming a part of the long term ecommerce strategy for many B2B companies.
One challenge facing distributors and manufacturers is to transform a classic B2B business into a B2B e-commerce business. This is necessary if we want to expand the client portfolio so that the business remains competitive. This means that it is necessary to move to the online domain in order for the business to perform and rise to the current expectations of customers.
The B2C shopping experience has changed expectations for B2B as well. Customers have become accustomed to the user-friendly purchasing process accompanied by an attractive site design and relevant product recommendations.
This has led to a shift in the way we place orders in the B2B environment, especially for those who work with products such as distributors and manufacturers. In B2B e-commerce, transactions take place online. The products and services remain the same as in the case of a traditional B2B, but the sales process takes place online. The impact is the same as when B2C transactions go online: their number and value increase.
Usually, the volume of B2B sales is higher than in the case of B2C, but this does not mean that the maximum growth limit has been reached. It is a well-known fact that in the B2B field the relationship between seller and customer is closer, because the customer base is smaller, and the sales agent, one of the main pawns of this process, makes considerable efforts to improve this relationship.
Also, during the sales process, the prices are negotiated according to the ordered quantities, which does not happen in B2C. Volume pricing is often confused with tiered pricing, but is different.
In this model, a defined price is set for a given number of units — in other words, volume pricing gives a price for all the units sold within a particular range. As with the volume pricing strategy, there is an incentive to bulk buy, since the average cost per unit drops when more units are sold.
Tiered and volume pricing can be demonstrated using sell prices for chairs — both models incentivise bulk purchasing. Good inventory management is critical for a B2B eCommerce store. These days, companies usually use integrated inventory and B2B eCommerce software to manage their B2B stock effectively.
This ensures your eCommerce store displays up-to-date and accurate stock levels to your customers — an important first step, since B2B businesses often deal with large quantities of stock that need to be delivered quickly. You can even use this system to set alerts when stock levels are low and reorder products. And remember that effective use of warehouse space is crucial too.
Last but not least, your inventory management data gives you with a wealth of insights to inform future business decisions. Inventory management software helps you manage stock and avoid letting customers down. These swift changes have forced businesses to rethink and improve on their online B2B practices — from what their digital interfaces look like, to their ability to electronically manage their business, to how their customers experience the purchase process.
Younger people who are used to digital transactions and technology are now heavily represented in B2B eCommerce. What does this mean for B2B business? Millennials have a preference for using digital channels — including social media — to find out about products, meaning an online presence is a must.
Millennials prefer video to find out about products, and are concerned with social and environmental considerations — two more factors that B2B businesses might think about taking into account. B2B customers are changing and so are their expectations of what B2B will look like. Many of the features they expect are borrowed from best-practice B2C eCommerce and provide a seamless and user-friendly experience.
This means your B2B store should:. Millennials are increasingly involved in B2B purchasing, and have a preference for using digital channels to find out about products and services. B2B buying is a far different beast from what it was just a few years ago. Online research is now extremely important for buying decisions: B2B buyers make around 12 online searches before making a final decision on where to put their purchase dollars.
This means that B2B sellers must utilise search engine optimisation and AI expertise to win customers. Related to AI and machine learning is how companies personalise their interactions with customers and strengthens their relationship with them. However, the reality is most businesses are way behind in their ability to do this.
B2B businesses that want to improve in this area should take the time to research who their customers are and how their different needs can be met within the existing business model. AI and machine learning technology can help you enhance personalisation.
Tools are now available that use data like how customers behave on your website and what makes customers click to personalise your content and offers. Article by Alecia Bland in collaboration with our team of inventory management and business specialists. Alecia's background is in ancient languages. When she's not reading a book with her cat for company, you can usually find her cooking, eating or trying to make her garden productive. DJ Papers were facing a growing problem: their bespoke backend system was hampering business growth and their inventory management was spiralling out If your business is stock based, then inventory may be its biggest asset — whether your business is a wholesaler, manufacturer or retailer.
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