10 critical B2B eCommerce mistakes businesses make: How to Avoid

Recently, the e-commerce industry has evolved with proven technologies, and even the B2B business sectors have recognized their potential and switched to the e-commerce bandwagon. The B2B online store creates a path of comfort to purchase and shop online. Purchasing behaviour and needs are shifting between B2B customers and buyers.

Approximately, three-fourths of B2B buyers find it more convenient to purchase online than from sales representatives or on retail stores, and 93% of people who have previously decided to buy, want to finish purchasing online.

As in case, you are a B2B e-commerce store owner, you are fully responsible for providing the online shopping experience to reach the customer requirements, expand sales and enhance brand credibility.

Top 10 Crucial B2B eCommerce Mistakes Businesses Make & Ways to Avoid These Mistakes

In this article, we look at some crucial B2B eCommerce mistakes in the business and try to avoid these errors while you are exhibiting. These points will help you reach the heights of a successful B2B e-commerce store.

• What if B2B Buyers don’t want to purchase online?

Most B2B buyers choose to online trade rather than trading directly with sales representatives. Although it is suitable for all kinds of B2B buyers, especially for millennials, who know the world is well-adopted for the internet. They like to purchase online, as they get all the search solutions online and sell products online.

As like above, almost a third of B2B buyers currently choose to shop online. They need actual time access to the data, self-service entry to accounts and orders, and full control over the buying process.

Recently, B2B buyers with great acceleration switched their buying behaviors from traditional to online purchasing, B2B eCommerce stores have been rendered the need of time to improve sales, revenue, and customer loyalty. Although orders are often difficult and require discussion with the seller, a B2B ecommerce store enables the buyers to explore, purchase, reorder, and browse the products in their places.

• Does Not Offer a Purchasing Experience Like B2C

Popular B2C e-commerce stores like Amazon, Flipkart, eBay, and others, offer a customer-friendly and customized shopping experience to their users. Like so, the users expect the same level of service from other e-stores such as quick, hassle-free, and convenient purchases from beginning to end. As with B2C, B2B buyers expect a similar experience from your B2B eCommerce stores. If you are a B2B eCommerce store owner, you need to give customized product recommendations, special offers especially on occasions, easy order process, timely delivery, and more to the B2B buyers.

B2C customers are accustomed to attractive e-commerce sites, as they prefer high-quality product pictures, AI-powered search, easy navigation, detailed product descriptions, and other B2C prime features.

• Neglecting The Significance of Mobile in B2B eCommerce

B2B buyers also utilize their smartphones for business purchases, like B2C eCommerce customers. Most of the time, B2B businesses make a huge mistake is ignoring the essentials of mobile for their business. Almost 60% of B2B buyers, use mobile for purchase and the same count of B2B sellers consider smartphones to play a huge role in returns.

The buyers complete their purchases from mobile phones, by researching the products, requesting price information and much more. So, if you built a B2B e-commerce store that is accessible even on mobile, it’ll be extremely helpful to engage with customers and improve your business. You can also integrate ERP systems and other features in mobile apps, as that will enhance the buying experience and engage everyone from customers to field salespersons and internal teams.

• Skipping Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The fact, that most B2B store owners consider that SEO doesn’t increase the B2B business is not true. The majority of the time, B2B buyers have found you in the non-branded searches for terms, they use when searching, so it would be beneficial if you use it. Ignoring SEO is a huge mistake among other errors in B2B ecommerce, because 89% of B2B buyers use the web for their research and 73% of commerce to B2B company sites emerged from the search engine.

For effective SEO implementation, you need to understand the search terms, your customers may use on Google. Then, you can carry out SEO practices to improve the content of your landing pages, product pages, and metadata. SEO provides you with vivid guidance on organic search, authority and on-site involvement for appealing and turning more customers.

• Absence of Custom orders

Providing the feature of negotiation on your B2B eCommerce site is a big mistake. B2B businesses are always made of huge quantities of purchases, as well, B2B customers are buying thousands of products simultaneously, thus, they usually like to negotiate with the B2B sellers. Several B2B eCommerce sites like Adobe Commerce enable you to display specific pricing and offers by sectioning them into categories. Once developed customer categories, you can provide them with customized buying options with special pricing terms.

Using quoting tools, you also can enable custom orders. In Adobe ecommerce, buyers can request a quote 24*7, which can be provided by merchants and the buyers can review.

• Ignoring EMI Features & Multiple Payments

In a B2C eCommerce store, we can expect a great deal of confidence that more customers will access our e-store. So, we can easily offer multiple payment features for a convenient payment and purchasing process. However the expectation for the same feature lags more in B2B stores. Why? B2B buyers may use various kinds of payment methods like mobile wallets, paper checks, NEFT, or IMPS. Try to avoid such big mistakes as you may not be able to accept the payment methods used by the user.

Have you ever known that B2B businesses, that offer adaptable payment modes have seen a 17% high in sales and a 21% increase in average orders?

Provide all kinds of payment modes like enabling users to use private accounts, credits, mobile wallets, checks net 30 terms and other modes mostly apt for B2B purchases. By doing this, you can offer convenient payment modes to your customers and engage them more in your B2B eCommerce store. The reordering should also be a single-click process to facilitate recurring payments. Numerous B2B business owners forgot that the payment system contributes an important role in the eCommerce platform. This big barrier will stop your increasing revenue by preventing your customers from buying your products.

• Missing The Detailed Product Information

Whether it is B2B or B2C customers, after viewing the results. More than 75% of the customers consider website design is essential, to find the products easily. They want high-quality images, detailed product descriptions with exact sizes, products, warranties, models, stock availability, price, and some other information.

The way you display your products makes it easier for your customers to make quick purchasing decisions. As well, as effectively improve product descriptions for search engines and offer customized product recommendations for turnover and high-value opportunities.

• Lack of Social Proof

There are many similar connections between B2B and B2C customers. Most B2B buyers are keen to check if they are purchasing quality products at a good price from a reputed company that has fulfilled buyers before.

Current millennials place more emphasis on their peer suggestions on social media, as they can interact with them both personally and professionally. So, it is a significant mistake not to provide social resources to your B2B customers. As we see the current world rapidly adopting the Internet. Therefore, your existence on social media platforms promotes your business and enhances your bond with customers. Also, you can share points on your social media sites and can update your customers with your new products, reviews, ratings, awards, case studies and other related resources.

• Giving Full Transparency in Pricing

This feature has been a controversial topic whether you have to be fully transparent in your pricing list or not. Many proponents have said that by doing this, you can gain trust and provide a reliable buying experience for your customers. On the contrary, opponents say that the competitors will cut prices with full transparency in pricing.

With your choice, you can adopt either both methods in Adobe Commerce. Using customer segmentation, you can develop groups of customers and display the personalized pricing and discounted pricing even after they log in to your store. As well, you can display the catalogue or products to the new visitors without the price rate, before they register or log in.

• Lack of Site Integration with Significant Systems

More than half of the B2B business executives consider that top technologies are needed for integrating e-commerce platforms. Unless integrate your platform with other systems like ERP, CRM PIM, and more, your business will be less efficient. Without integrating these systems, you have to manually enter the information for inventory, viewers, customers, orders, prices, and so on.

Doing this manually is a waste of time, resources, and money. So, choose the best e-commerce platform Adobe Commerce, which is ideal for your B2B business and incorporates your existing networks.

Read also: Benefits of Outsourcing Software Development

in this article, we have looked at the 10 crucial common B2B e-commerce mistakes that most businesses make and ways to avoid them. At Strivemindz, a leading E-Commerce development company, we have expertise in developing B2B ecommerce stores from the base. We know B2B’s UX should look like B2C, but performances should be centered on bulk selling of products to customers. Our expert team of dedicated E-Commerce developers will develop a dynamic, flawless, well-functioning, attractive and one-of-a-kind e-commerce store for you by employing reliable technologies and technical solutions. So, drop a message for additional details and services to know.