B2B buyers are buying online – Do you know what they expect?
Reading Time: 3 minutesAre you a manufacturer, wholesaler or industrial goods trader? Being part of the early stage of a value chain sometimes tapping on technology and consumer trends becomes unmanageable. It is also proven that such changes are adopted by B2C sellers first and then B2B. So all the entrepreneurs who are looking for B2B online sales should read this.
Being a B2B business owner, it is important for you to know what your customers actually expect from your brand and work upon the same when it comes to digital.
To provide ease to your buyers and reduce operational expense you shall look up to implementing B2B digitization. Here we have gathered top 4 expectations of B2B buyers,
1. A digital channel – eCommerce website to take orders
According to B2BecNews recent survey report, out of 111 business buyers of various industries, almost 48.3% B2B buyers buy products at least once per week. This number also includes 18% of B2B buyers that make online purchases multiple times a week.
So going digital is not a choice, it is a must-have channel to increase business. Hope you have read our article which mentions the reasons to sell your B2B products online. Below is the quick infographic of the same,
2. Essential B2B website features
According to the same survey report, 35% of the B2B buyers that prefer buying online have rated an average or fair/poor purchasing experience online. This means that the B2B eCommerce websites are unable to provide better customer experience.
When it comes to online buying, unlike B2C, buyers look for My Account with company details, credit limit, transactions history with the repeat order facility, partial payment, partial order fulfilment, site search with make-model-year, live negotiation, and many more… such features we have mentioned in our previous blog on highly essential features for B2B.
The first step is to have a basic product catalogue site (built on Wix or WordPress) where you generate enquiries. And doing promotions to generate leads. Once you start getting enquiries, you shall consider above-mentioned features and advanced platform (built on Shopify, Magento or Hybris) to make the most out of it.
Having a website is not enough, having an amazing one makes a difference.
3. Enough research resources online
This survey report also states that B2B buyers make enough research before making the purchase decision. Only 2% of companies finish their purchase research on the same day and make a purchase on a B2B website.
So, what your buyers expect from your B2B brand here?
They want you to provide as much information as possible for your products. Be it product details/descriptions, FAQs, their benefits, the solutions to their challenges, comparisons to other competitive products, space to get a quote or live chat and negotiate.
All these information helps you make your B2B buyers understand how important is to buy your products instead of your competitors’. And help search engine to grab content and keywords of your products to route right traffic to your website.
That brings product information management (PIM) and content marketing to the centre stage. You can manage your advanced catalogue using Pimcore, Akeneo, Informatica or many more tools available.
You shall also create content around usage of your products (in the form of web pages or blog). While doing that keep below in the mind,
- Talk about your products
- Explain how your products are helpful to your customers
- Work on the challenges that your customers face
- Things your customers should consider when buying the products that you sell
And, more.
4. SEO / Search presence
When I search as a buyer and if I don’t get the right information on the first two pages of Google results, I lose patience and visit the available list of websites. So it becomes vital for your B2B website to be easily accessible and available to prospects.
And, how is that possible? By improving the search engine presence using search engine optimization (SEO). Here are the things that you can do to improve the search presence of your B2B eCommerce store:
- Speed up the loading time of your website
- Make it mobile-friendly
- Keep effective content
- Work on technical SEO
- Optimize your website with on-page SEO
- Build high-quality links using off-page SEO and content marketing
So, that’s how your B2B buyers can easily find you on Google or other search engines.
And these are the basics – a journey to start with
The expectations of B2B buyers are evolving every day and they want to buy online with the ease. Not just that, they even want to have an amazing purchasing experience when buying online.
And When we know that 49% of the companies make their 50% to 74% of corporate purchases online, it’s the time you gear up. Build your online B2B store now, market it everywhere. It’s not a good idea to be late…
If you need our assistance in understanding technology, way to market and the features you need, you can write to [email protected]. We will be more than happy to be part of your success.
