Recently, the e-commerce industry has evolved with proven technologies, and even the B2B business sectors have recognized their potential and switched to e-commerce bandwagon. The B2B online store creates a path of comfortable to purchase and shop online. Purchasing behavior and needs are shifting between B2B customers and buyers.
Approximately, three-fourth of the B2b buyers are more convenient to purchase online than from sales representative 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 full responsible for providing the online shopping experience to reach the customer requirements, expand sales and enhance brand credibility.
Top 10 Crucial eCommerce Mistakes B2B Businesses Make & Ways to Avoid These Mistakes
In this article, we look at some crucial eCommerce mistakes in the B2B business, and try to avoid these errors while you are exhibiting. These points will really 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 kind of B2B buyers, especially for millennials, who know the world is well-adopted for the internet. They definitely like to purchase online, as they get all the search solutions online and sell products online.
As like above stated, 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 been rendered the need of time to improve sales, revenue and customer loyalty. Although orders are often difficult and require discussion with the seller, B2B ecommerce store enables the buyers to explore, purchase, reorder and browse the products in their own places.
Does Not Offer a Purchasing Experience Like B2C
Popular B2C eCommerce store like Amazon, Flipkart, eBay and others, offering 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 like 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 ecommerce 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, as like, B2C eCommerce customers. Most of the time, B2B businesses making a huge mistake is ignoring the essential of mobile for their business. Almost 60% of B2B buyers, using mobile for purchase and as the same count of B2B sellers consider smartphones contributes 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 engages everyone from customers to field salesperson and internal teams.
Skipping Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The fact, most B2B store owners consider that SEO doesn’t increase the B2B business is actually not true. 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. Actually, 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 the SEO practices to improve the content of your landing pages, product pages and metadata. SEO provides you vivid guidance on organic search, authority and on-site involvement for appealing and turning into 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 quantity 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 enables you to display the specific pricing and offers by sectioning them into categories. Once developed customer categories, you can provide them 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 B2C eCommerce store, we can expect a great deal of confidence for more customers will access our e-store. So, we can easily offer multiple payment feature for a convenient payment and purchasing process. But the expectation for same feature lagging more in B2B store. Why? B2B buyers may use various kind of payment methods like mobile wallets, paper checks, NEFT, or IMPS. Try to avoid such big mistakes as you may not 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 kind of payment modes like enable to users to use private accounts, credits, mobile wallets, checks net 30 terms and other modes mostly apt for B2B purchase. 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 B2B or B2C customers, after viewing the results. More than 75% of the customers considering website design is essential, to find the products easily. They want high quality images, detailed product descriptions with exact sizes, product, warranty, model, 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, 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 resource 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 the 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 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 refer that the competitors will cut price 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 login 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 need for integrating ecommerce platform. Unless integrating 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 ecommerce platform like Adobe Commerce, which is ideal for your B2B business and incorporates with your existing networks.
In in this article, we have looked at the 10 crucial common mistakes that most B2B businesses do and ways to avoid them. At Strivemindz, a leading E-Commerce development company, we expertise in developing B2B ecommerce stores from 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 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.
