10 Essential Features for Your B2B eCommerce Store Success

10 Essential Features for Your B2B eCommerce Store Success

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Choose your B2B eCommerce features wisely enough to make it a powerful and highly successful store.

An eCommerce store for a B2B business owner is a sure-shot way to see business growth drastically. And, I have reasons to prove the same.

B2B businesses operate differently in the offline world compared to how B2C works. But, when you understand the mindset of browsing and buying of the B2B audience, you see an improved customer experience and ultimately sales.

Here are a few highly essential features you must have in your B2B eCommerce store to make the online business processes easy, quick, and hassle-free:

1. Advanced Product Search
2. Customized Pricing
3. Order Management
4. Warehouse Integration
5. Online Negotiations
6. Customer Registration
7. Quick Re-ordering
8. Request a Quote
9. Simple Checkout Process
10. Split Shipping

Now, just knowing what to have is not enough. You need to use them in an effective manner to experience success.

10 Key Features for B2B eCommerce Site

Let’s discuss the top B2B eCommerce website features (in detail) that you must include in your online store to,

• Launch effectively
• Sustain in the competitive market
• Become successful

So, let’s begin.

1. Advanced Product Search

In the offline world, there is no actual product search.

Let’s check out how the customers come to know about your products in the offline B2B business:

• You call your existing customers about the new product arrivals
• Then, either you send your sales professional with the samples there or your customer’s check-in to your shop and you show them the samples
• Looking at the samples, they place an order with a specified quantity

But, since you are looking to take your B2B business on an online store, you need to make sure, you have an advanced search feature that helps your customers to browse through the products available.

What are the advanced product search options required for your B2B eCommerce platform?

• Product names
• SKU – Stock Keeping Unit
• Product description
• Short description
• Price range
• Brand selection

So, an advanced product search allows your customers to search for your products based on the above-mentioned options.

This helps your customers to find specific products easily and much faster.

2. Customized Pricing

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Now, B2B businesses do not offer the same pricing and discounts to each of their customers. And, I am sure, you are also following the same process.

So, how would it go on a B2B eCommerce platform?

Your online store needs to have functionality to allow you to add customized wholesale pricing for each of your products based on the following criteria:

• Discounts based on the number of products ordered
• Discounts based on how faster the payments are done
• Pricing based on the location from where the order is placed
• Pricing based on the payment terms agreed upon between you and your customers

Your B2B eCommerce store should also have pricing filters considering the commissions of brokers and sales professionals.

Well, this makes it easy for you to quickly move on to an online store, right?

3. Order Management

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For bulk orders, you might be maintaining a paper-based, an offline or an online inventory system that tracks the records of how many people ordered your products, when the order was placed, for how much quantity, at how much price, and what not.

The same thing is required to be imitated on your online B2B commerce store. While looking to launch your B2B eCommerce business, you need to check how your online store is going to manage multiple orders at the same time.

That functionality includes everything from what should be the minimum order quantity requirements, cancelled to updated orders.

So, this B2B eCommerce feature helps you track the process of your orders that are placed, shipped, pending, cancelled, updated, and delivered.

4. Warehouse Integration

Whether you have multiple or a single warehouse for your B2B business, you can integrate them with your digital B2B store.

Your existing inventory must be having the records of how many products are there in the warehouse, in how much quantity, what products are out of stock, and much more.

Your B2B eCommerce store needs to have the capability to integrate with all of your warehouses. This allows you to maintain the inventory at one place rather managing everything separately.

5. Online Negotiations

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Your B2B eCommerce store must have a feature that allows you and your customers to negotiate online for the pricing.

Once the orders are placed by your customers, they can connect with you for the negotiations. Once agree upon the final negotiated pricing, you can modify the payment amount from your end and update the order price.

This allows you to maintain the healthy B2B business relationships even on an online store.

6. Customer Registration

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Unlike B2C eCommerce store, you need to have your customers registered on your B2B eCommerce store.

The entire B2B product pricing is customized based on your customers, their order and payment frequencies, and much more.

Your existing customers need to register on your B2B eCommerce store to retain and take the benefit of all the terms, products, custom pricing, and account details.

Whether your customer is new or existing, he has to register on your B2B commerce store because without that, he cannot view the bulk and discounted pricing.

So, you must have a customer registration process before viewing the customized pricing or bulk ordering.

7. Quick Re-Ordering

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In the offline world, if your customer is looking to place the repeat order, he just gives you a call or message for placing the order.

You need to have a similar functionality in your B2B eCommerce store in which it allows your customers to place the repeat orders in just one click and edit the quantity (if required).

And, this essential functionality for your B2B eCommerce platform should be placed under the Account section of each of your customers.

8. Request a Quote

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In the B2B industry, there are chances for customized orders. And, these customized orders can have a changing product, quantity and pricing needs.

So, you need to have a feature on your B2B eCommerce store that allows your customers to request a quotation for the customized orders.

9. Simple Checkout Process

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The B2C eCommerce stores have the easiest checkout process. But, it is not going to be that easy for your B2B business and we know that.

But, how much easy your checkout process should be?

• Once, the order is placed, your customers should be able to see each detail of the products purchased
• Also, the tax exemption should be made appropriately
• You should accept almost all of the payment methods that have been accepted by your customers for years now
• The payment should be processed based on the credit limit defined for each of your customers

A simple yet advanced checkout process for your B2B eCommerce store helps you reduce the cart abandonment and improve the conversions.

10. Split Shipping

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Shipping becomes crucial when it comes to larger order shipments in the B2B eCommerce industry.

But, if done efficiently, shipping can help you get more orders easily and quickly.

Your B2B eCommerce store, whether a website or mobile app, should have the functionality to help you divide the larger shipments of your customers into the multiple ones.

Once this is done, you and your customers should be able to track and manage all of their order shipments easily and quickly.

This functionality of your B2B eCommerce store becomes essential because it leads to excellent customer experience and hence, boost the repeat orders.

This is Not the Conclusion

We discussed here the essential yet critical features of your B2B eCommerce store that can help you offer amazing store experience to your customers and hence improve your sales.