Top 10 Must-Have Features for Your B2B eCommerce Store

In the fast-paced world of B2B eCommerce, having an e-commerce online store that provides seamless and satisfactory transactions for your customers is crucial for success. With more businesses and people shifting towards online purchasing, having an eCommerce store that meets your customers' needs and provides a seamless and efficient buying experience is essential.

Many businesses have reasons for failing to succeed, attract, and retain their customers. However, businesses that have thrived all have one thing in common: they understand what their customers need and try to meet their customer's needs while providing them with a beautiful shopping experience.

You do not want your customers to go to your competitors because the purchase experience in your eCommerce store is not satisfactory. 

To help you stay ahead in the competitive landscape of the e-commerce sector, we have compiled a list of the top 10 must-have features for your B2B e-commerce store. This will help you if you want to build your e-commerce store from scratch, revamp it, or modify your current B2B e-commerce store.

What is a B2B eCommerce store?

B2B stands for Business-to-Business. B2B eCommerce refers to the online transactions of goods and services that occur between two businesses. So, a B2B eCommerce website is an online platform that is designed for the sole purpose of companies conducting transactions with other businesses. There are features and functionalities in the e-commerce websites that cater to specific needs of B2B transactions, like customised pricing, bulk ordering, account management, order integration, etc.

Essential features of B2B e-commerce stores

Below are the top 10 essential features that all B2B e-commerce stores should have:

User-Friendly Interface:

The user interface of your B2B eCommerce store should be sleek, intuitive, and easy to navigate. This means that your store should emphasize the user experience of your customers or clients. To do this, you must ensure your customers can quickly find what they are looking for and easily place orders without any confusion.

The template and design of your e-commerce store should be easy for customers to navigate because of how intuitive it is. They should not need help from others to manoeuvre their way around the e-commerce website. Your storefront should be customised in a way that aligns with your brand.

The colours, fonts, and logos you use have to be consistent. You should not make your customers unsure about your storefront being the same as your brand. Your eCommerce store should function flawlessly across various platforms like tablets, PCs, and smartphones. Adding features like product configurators, lead capture forms, customisation options, and rewards programs should be simple without hassle.

Integrating your system with other essential elements like social media, marketing automation, CRM, and ERP should be possible so that if customers want to access your social media handles, it will be easy for them. It should also be able to synchronize with your logistics and warehouse automation systems for effective operations. Your e-commerce store should also provide customers efficient ways to search and filter products based on brand, category, SKU, and other things to make searching for products seamless. Conversion rates will rise, and the buying experience will improve.

Product information management

If you are running a B2B e-commerce store, you know that your target audience and customers are experts in their field. This contrasts with B2C buyers who may want to buy things based on general needs or impulsively. So, your ecommerce store should manage product information well because your B2B customers pay attention to pricing information and technical details and are quite analytical. When focusing on product information management of your e-commerce store, ensure that the information you put out is credible and will get the trust of your customers.

In your digital catalogue, use images and videos to display your products while also including well-written product details. Features should allow the display and recommendation of related products for your customers to create a seamless shopping experience. Based on your customers' past shopping, you can recommend products tailored to their needs. Doing these will make your e-commerce store stand out from the rest.

Bulk Discounts and Large Purchases

Customers frequently buy bulk goods in the business-to-business (B2B) sector. Even if your products are currently listed in cases, packs, or pallets, it helps offer extra discounts depending on the overall order amount. You should be able to give bulk discounts to your customers. You can use your e-commerce platform to manage quantity thresholds needing bulk discounts.

Suppose you anticipate that these quantity discounts should correspond with customer-specific pricing levels. In that case, you may require the freedom to establish distinct discount tiers based on the customer groups that are part of your clientele. By doing this, you can meet the specific requirements and demands of different clientele groups and give them the discount they need.

Multiple Payment Options:

Offer a variety of payment options such as credit cards, bank transfers, ACH, third-party payers, purchase orders, and net payment terms to accommodate different B2B purchasing preferences and requirements, especially for businesses shipping servers internationally. If your eCommerce store has different payment options, you can attract diverse customers because you have payment options that match the countries or states where your clients reside.

Ensure to provide offline options alongside the typical online forms (credit cards, RTGS, NEFT, IMPS, etc.) when providing a range of payment methods. When an order is completed, and the client uses the order number to pay for it within 30 days of the transaction, that is an example of an offline payment method.

One must also ensure that the payment gateway is trusted and PCI-compliant. SSL/TLS encryption ensures secure financial transactions and protects sensitive payment information during transactions. A wildcard SSL certificate on your B2B eCommerce store ensures that the data transmitted between your customer and your business is secure and free from third-party access. With a wildcard certificate, you secure your main domain with premium encryption while extending protection to unlimited first-level subdomains.

Bulk Ordering Capabilities:

There are times when businesses want to place large orders, so browsing through the online catalogue on an e-commerce store can be time-consuming for your customers. This makes it necessary for your eCommerce store to enable bulk ordering functionality so that B2B customers can easily purchase large quantities of products in a single transaction.

This feature is especially important for wholesalers and distributors who want to purchase from your e-commerce store. Make sure clients add products to a bulk order form by entering the part number or SKU. They should be able to indicate the desired quantity for every item as well. The bulk ordering form should lead your consumer to the checkout page after choosing their products.

Good product images

Undoubtedly, online purchasing has made life easier for people who would not have the time to physically go to a shop to buy the goods they need. However, online purchasing has a downside: customers do not handle the products they intend to purchase. As a B2B e-commerce store owner, you should add good quality product images to your commerce store because it will make all the difference.

Do not just use stock images that can be gotten online. Take the time to take quality shots of your products. You can hire a photographer to help you do that. Videos showing your products will also help influence your customers' purchase decisions.

Easy Account Creation:

Every B2B eCommerce website must have a customer account, which starts with an account registration process. This method makes it easier for resellers to separate different customer purchase profiles and creates distinct logins for each customer.

It also makes it easy to suggest products based on their previous purchases for your customers. An essential first step in classifying B2B company users is account onboarding. It makes integrating an alternative registration process easier, enabling business ventures to register on numerous websites. It's also crucial in B2B to give resellers their login. It also helps your clients to manage their accounts easily.

Mobile Responsiveness:

One of the essential things you can do for your e-commerce website is to ensure that it is mobile-friendly. The majority of the traffic that will come into your e-commerce website will be from mobile devices. The reason is that we use our phones more than our laptops or desktops. We also easily access websites on our mobile devices. 

So, ensure that your eCommerce store is fully responsive and optimized for mobile devices to provide a seamless shopping experience on any device. Google and other search engines are not excluded from favouring websites that are mobile-friendly for their users. Ensuring your B2B eCommerce website is mobile-friendly will indeed help you rank on Google and other search engines, but there are other benefits. Your customers will love a good shopping experience, and this will help you get and retain clients. It also makes you a unique selling proposition that other B2B sellers do not have.

Strong Analytics and Reporting:

B2B and B2C eCommerce are distinct. B2C and B2B eCommerce are extremely dissimilar. A B2C website must monitor broad data such as the average cart value. However, business-to-business websites need a far more customized answer. This is because every human being is different, which means all your clients are different, which translates to them having different shipping needs, inventory management, and contracts with you.

They will, therefore, require customised solutions, which means you will have to monitor each KPI (Key Performance Indicator). So, your e-commerce store should integrate analytics tools that provide valuable insights into customer behaviour, sales performance, and inventory management. 

Having a business analytics solution that lets you customize your KPI tracking for every customer is crucial. It is necessary to have the ability to monitor certain contracts, actions, and catalogues. Every lead you pursue may result in a repeat, high-paying client, so you should use this data to make informed decisions and optimize your B2B eCommerce operations.

Excellent Customer Support:

Lastly, we offer excellent customer support through live chat, which can help convert a website visitor into a paying client. You should also have email or phone to assist customers with any inquiries, technical issues, or order-related questions they may have. Exceptional customer service can set your B2B eCommerce store apart from competitors. Most B2B e-commerce stores have recently added the "Request a free quote" option.

This will help your customers decide to purchase from your brand based on the price and available funds. Have a FAQ page on your eCommerce website that your customer can go through and get answers to their questions without necessarily contacting you directly. While building your e-commerce store or revamping, tell your website designer to include these features because they will help set your business apart from competitors.

Conclusion

By incorporating these ten must-have features into your B2B eCommerce store, you can create a seamless and efficient customer purchasing experience while driving sales and fostering long-term relationships that will benefit the long run. Stay ahead of the competition by continuously optimizing and enhancing your eCommerce store to meet the evolving needs of B2B buyers.