B2B E-commerce describes the trend going from longer sales cycles with a salesperson to a more
commoditized, online, self-service purchasing experience for business to business transactions.
With improvements in web technologies allowing more and more buyer’s journeys to be completed online, customers can be acquired with the customer doing most of the work themselves.
In fact, for many B2B buyers, performing the majority of their research by themselves online is vastly preferable and there are some incredibly hard-to-ignore statistics.
- According to Forrester in “The Death of a Salesman” 93% of B2B buyers prefer to buy online
- Buyers are generally 57% of the way to making a purchase decision before they even attempt to make contact
- According to Sirius Decisions, 67% of the buyer’s journey is done digitally.
It’s clear that B2B e-commerce is here to stay and dramatically changing the way buyers approach buying decisions. In fact, Forrester expects the industry to grow to $1.1 trillion by 2020!
So what can business to business organizations do to keep up with dynamic changes occurring in B2B buying? First, it’s important to know what some of the key features and benefits of this type of model are before diving in head first.
Features of B2B E-commerce
B2B e-commerce is a relatively new trend but the features that make it successful won’t be new to those who spend any amount of time working in digital.
Personalization
One of the major elements that separate B2B buying from traditional B2C, or even CPG e-commerce, is the amount of time, research, and decision making behind every purchase. Understandable; the risk of making a poor decision is significantly higher with larger purchases.
The buyer’s journey is complex, and an expert or salesperson is frequently required to guide customers through these decisions. Otherwise, they’re left confused, and potentially subsequently enraged.
J ourneys can be completely personalized with A/B testing software, chatbots, business intelligence and a multitude of other technologies that digitally allow users to choose their own path and find answers that previously required a salesperson. Most organizations can simply leverage the technology available to them to create this customer journey personalization.
The more personalized your B2B e-commerce store can be, the more successful your efforts will be.
Product Customization & Configuration
Along with the complexity of the journey, B2B services and products are historically unique as well. In B2C, every product is the same and consumers prefer it that way. When you shop for shoes, you know what it’s going to look like and how it will fit based on size.
In B2B, every business’s needs are unique; offering one single product won’t help the varying needs of B2B customers.
With B2B e-commerce, it’s possible to provide tailored customizations or configurations for products. Building out popular customizations of services or products on your website will improve efficiency and reduce costs.
Support
B2B e-commerce is about commoditizing the experience and enabling users to perform their research by themselves. However, this doesn’t mean they don’t want help!
Your potential customers will inevitably have questions as they conduct their research. And when they turn to you to find answers, it’s critical to be available at a moment’s notice to answer those questions and begin a conversation on your site.
In most cases, this won’t mean contacting a salesperson through a form you built on your site. Users will be looking for live chat, knowledge bases, or other quick solutions to quick questions. Going all online won’t mean less support, rather, it means providing more across all channels.
Payment
One major element that B2B business is stealing from B2C is online payments. Over half of all buyers prefer to pay online than they do by traditional methods.
Adjusting to the more self-service, ease-of-use future of B2B e-commerce means allowing for these various payment methods.
Benefits of B2B E-commerce
While keeping up with this burgeoning trend can seem difficult, the benefits for embracing this new way of business will certainly make B2B e-commerce worth it.
Ease of Use
One of the biggest benefits of embracing B2B E-commerce is the ease of use. While you may be required to provide greater support and content, the amount of potential customers that can be helped increases as your customers educate themselves. You may find that you can acquire customers without them speaking to a salesperson at all!
Ultimately, embracing the ease of use can mean improved scalability and efficiency that will have a significant impact on the bottom line and give you a competitive edge.
Customer-Centric Experience
Your organization can focus on creating a more customer-centric experience with personalization, self-service payment options, and on-demand support. Enabling the customer to help themselves and removing the burden of guiding individual customers will allow your team to focus more on what will help the customer the most.
Better Analytics
One of the biggest benefits of customers guiding themselves through the majority of the buying journey online is better analytics. As customers are passed from marketing to sales, the metrics and the analytics change. Additionally, they are likely being stored and analyzed on two different platforms.
By enabling your customers to help themselves through your website and online assets, you’re maintaining more of your data in one platform and tying more of your customer’s journey together.
Obility B2B E-commerce Services
Whether your company sells software as a service, wholesale products to businesses, or completely customized software and analytics installations, the benefits of B2B e-commerce can help drive more conversions at a lower cost. Obility’s expertise in the B2B sales cycle and optimizing for users’ digital experiences can help your company execute these progressive initiatives and gain an edge on the competition. Ask us your questions today and we’ll be happy to discuss your goals with you.