Do you supply companies that assist companies develop, rent, or handle their groups? Do you provide merchandise particularly to firms? Do you promote gadgets wholesale? If you happen to’re within the B2B area — or if you wish to be — it’s possible you’ll very effectively profit from a B2B ecommerce platform. It may simplify processes in your shoppers and your staff, and assist you to develop quicker and extra effectively.
Let’s take a more in-depth have a look at how a web-based storefront will help your B2B enterprise progress, and the way to decide on the appropriate ecommerce platform.
Why create a B2B ecommerce retailer
Nearly all of on-line shops you’re conversant in could also be B2C (business-to-consumer), supplying your canine’s meals, your son’s birthday presents, or your favourite specialty groceries.
However don’t be lured into pondering that ecommerce shops are only for consumer-facing organizations. They are often an extremely {powerful} software for B2B firms as effectively.
In a latest survey, 41% of B2B consumers acknowledged that self-service capabilities would enhance the method of doing enterprise on-line. That’s a giant quantity! And offering the power for shoppers to handle their accounts and carry out different associated duties is a spotlight of ecommerce performance.
For instance, as an alternative of calling to ask for a quote, a sourcing supervisor might submit a request on-line and discover out this data instantly, regardless of the time of day. They may additionally submit an order, and even signal as much as have your merchandise delivered routinely on a month-to-month foundation.
Or, in the event you present garden care companies for firms, a enterprise proprietor might log into their account to regulate the frequency of their companies, or see the following time you’re scheduled to cease by.
B2B ecommerce companies additionally go a great distance in direction of automating processes. They’ll take the load off of customer support representatives and increase gross sales staff members’ efforts by a number of the self-service duties we simply mentioned.
They’ll sync data between numerous distribution channels, making certain that every thing’s up-to-date and correct. And so they can take away the painful steps concerned in manually sending invoices and quotes, then following up with every potential consumer.
Lastly, a web-based retailer acts because the face of your organization and the hub of all of your advertising and marketing methods. You may hyperlink on to services in your advertising and marketing emails and promoting campaigns to spice up on-line transactions.
You may create helpful content material that guides prospects by your gross sales funnel. And you may monitor the success of your efforts to steer future choices.
Issues for selecting a B2B ecommerce platform
The ecommerce platform you select is basically the muse of your on-line storefront. Let’s dive into some components to contemplate when selecting one, and study why WooCommerce is the highest answer for B2B on-line shops.
Kinds of merchandise you’re promoting
There are an enormous number of potentialities for B2B firms. Listed here are a number of gadgets it’s possible you’ll promote, together with some examples:
Bodily merchandise
Suppose gear, printed coaching books, and cleansing provides. Storage and Dealing with Tools, for instance, provides eco-friendly buying carts to retail and grocery shops.
Digital merchandise
Gadgets like on-line programs, downloadable eBooks, and software program licenses. TipoType, as an example, gives font licenses to companies and freelancers.
Companies
Choices reminiscent of graphic design, accounting, and authorized assist. Your Profit Retailer is a service supplier, promoting healthcare protection that firms can embrace as a part of their workers’ compensation packages.
Wholesale gadgets
Promoting massive volumes of merchandise to retailers, primarily performing as their provider. Porta Professional Chem, for instance, sells moveable restroom merchandise to shoppers across the nation.
Memberships
Entry to a set of advantages and assets, reminiscent of a coaching video library or on-line discussion board. The Interactive Promoting Bureau, as an example, has a membership program with assets, programs, occasion invitations and extra, particularly for media and advertising and marketing firms.
Subscriptions
Recurring services or products, like a yearly license, weekly cleansing service, or month-to-month field of espresso pods for the break room. Design Modo sells digital subscriptions to design instruments, however subscriptions also can contain bodily merchandise or even newsletters.
As you possibly can see, these all fluctuate extensively from each other, however there can be overlap. You may promote each retail and wholesale merchandise. You possibly can promote each bodily and digital books facet by facet. Or you’ll have a subscription that features a weekly workplace cleansing, and a field of provides.
The purpose right here is, it’s possible you’ll wish to do enterprise in quite a lot of methods on the identical platform — ensure the platform you select helps all of them.
WooCommerce gives promoting performance for all the services listed above, and extra! In truth, all the instance websites talked about are utilizing WooCommerce. Promote one sort of product or a number of facet by facet. Enable anybody to buy, or prohibit capabilities to particular shoppers or wholesale clients.
It doesn’t matter what you wish to promote or the way you promote it, WooCommerce makes it potential.
Design flexibility
Simply as your services are distinctive, your model is, too. And, in fact, you need your web site to mirror the persona and traits of that model.
Good B2B ecommerce platforms will enable you full and complete flexibility to design and construct something you possibly can think about — with out having to edit code or rent a developer in the event you don’t wish to.
Since WooCommerce is an extension of WordPress, you possibly can harness the facility of the Block Editor to construct all your pages and posts. The Block Editor lets you drag and drop components — like paragraphs, headings, pictures, movies, and columns — to create your individual customized structure.
You may then toggle settings to customise colours, font types, and different design traits to make the web page your individual.
You can too use blocks to construct and design world web site components, from headers and footers to product web page templates. For instance, you may add associated merchandise, movies, or specs to your product pages. Or maybe you wish to add filters to your class web page sidebar. All of that is potential with out working with code or hiring a developer.
There are additionally a number of free and premium themes you possibly can select from as beginning factors in your web site design. Some are like clean slates, offering simply the fundamentals which you could really customise to your coronary heart’s content material. Others supply ready-to-go designs and layouts. Simply change pictures, textual content, and colours and get promoting!
Content material possession
For on-line companies, proudly owning your content material is completely vital. Your web site is a income — you possibly can’t threat the potential of it disappearing.
You see, many proprietary B2B ecommerce platforms can take your web site down with no warning in the event that they resolve that you simply’ve violated their phrases and circumstances. Meaning lack of income, time, and arduous work!
However whenever you use WordPress and WooCommerce, you personal and management what you create! Your web site is hosted wherever you’d prefer it and also you’ll by no means have to fret about WooCommerce taking down your web site. As a result of it’s simply that — yours.
Cost gateway integration
Cost gateways allow you to gather cash from clients and shoppers securely, then switch that cash into your checking account. There are professionals and cons of every software, and sure performance you’ll want in your particular enterprise.
For instance, it’s possible you’ll want to gather recurring funds, settle for a number of currencies, combine with categorical pay instruments like Apple Pay, or supply financing choices.
You’ll wish to be sure that the ecommerce platform you select works with the one you wish to use — particularly if your online business already makes use of one thing for fee assortment and invoicing.
WooCommerce integrates with a wide selection of fee options, together with:
You can too use a fully-integrated fee gateway from WooCommerce, referred to as WooPayments. It has a consumer pleasant interface, permitting you to handle funds and refunds from the WordPress dashboard. Plus, it’s free to get began.But it surely nonetheless gives world-class performance, like categorical pay choices, recurring fee assortment, and multi-currency assist.
See a full checklist of gateways and study extra about selecting a fee gateway for your online business.
Transport
If you happen to promote bodily merchandise, then delivery goes to be an vital issue in the case of selecting an ecommerce platform. Transport will be sophisticated, so that you want a software that means that you can arrange charges the best way you need, and that integrates with any delivery carriers you’re employed with.
That is very true in the event you ship massive volumes of merchandise without delay, or have particular necessities like refrigeration.
With WooCommerce, you will have a whole lot of totally different choices. Combine with conventional carriers like USPS, FedEx, and UPS, or specialty suppliers like Purolator and Aramex. Cost flat price delivery charges, supply free delivery, or cost based mostly on quite a lot of components like weight and cart complete.
You may even arrange sophisticated guidelines with the Desk Fee Transport extension. Handle every thing out of your WordPress dashboard with WooCommerce Transport or hook up with third-party instruments like ShipStation.
Learn extra in our ecommerce delivery information.
Integration with different software program
There are a wide selection of instruments that you could be already use to run your online business, or know that you simply wish to implement sooner or later. A few of these could also be advertising and marketing and customer support associated — assume e mail advertising and marketing platforms or CRM instruments to arrange buyer knowledge — however we’ll contact on these a bit later.
Others might embrace enterprise useful resource administration software program (ERPs), stock administration instruments, accounting software program, collaboration instruments, and so forth. The purpose right here is that you need to take the time to confirm that the platform you select works seamlessly with all the different sorts of software program which might be vital to your online business.
WooCommerce, for instance, gives high-quality extensions that make these kind of integrations seamless and quick. And if, for some purpose, one doesn’t exist already for the software that you simply want, you possibly can make the most of the REST API and rent a developer to create one for you.
Person expertise
Person expertise is vital for any enterprise, for quite a lot of causes. First, if a possible buyer or consumer visits your web site and it’s troublesome to make use of, they’ll most certainly hand over and store with a competitor as an alternative. Second, search engines like google and yahoo contemplate consumer expertise when figuring out rankings. Your job, for now, is to discover a platform that makes creating a wonderful consumer expertise potential. Listed here are some components to consider:
Website pace
Keep away from gradual load instances that may drive potential shoppers away! Your platform ought to be as light-weight as potential by default, and supply the power so that you can optimize for pace. Get prime pace suggestions.
A streamlined checkout expertise
The checkout course of ought to be as easy-to-use and easy as potential to forestall deserted carts. WooCommerce gives instruments for one-page checkout, categorical fee choices, on-site funds, and extra to assist with this.
Simple-to-use search instruments
Assist guests discover precisely what they’re on the lookout for with an intuitive search bar. WordPress has nice built-in search performance, however you may also use instruments like Jetpack Search, that gives a buyer pleasant interface with advantages that embrace immediate filters and spelling correction.
Intuitive buyer accounts or self-service portal
The companies that you simply work with need to have the ability to replace their accounts and orders with out an enormous trouble. Ideally, they need to have the ability to make easy modifications with no need the assistance of your customer support staff. Suppose altering subscription frequency, requesting a refund, updating fee data, and modifying a password.
Content material group
Search for a B2B ecommerce platform that helps you construction your menus, categorize posts and merchandise, and add options like breadcrumbs to assist with navigation. Since WordPress was constructed as a running a blog platform from the start, its content material instruments are unmatched.
Cell-friendly design
Your web site ought to look nice on units of all sizes — desktops, tablets, and cell phones. WordPress and WooCommerce are responsive by default, and there are many nice mobile-friendly themes you possibly can select from.
Safety
Safety is vital for any ecommerce web site, however arguably much more so for people who have a enterprise to enterprise operation. Not solely do you wish to keep away from placing your shoppers’ data in danger, you additionally wish to defend your arduous work and content material. That’s why it’s so vital to decide on a safe platform with loads of instruments to maintain your on-line enterprise secure.
To start, select ecommerce software program that’s constructed on a basis of safety. WordPress and WooCommerce, for instance, prioritize safety and, with a few easy steps in your finish, your web site and buyer data might be locked down.
Additionally search for a platform that makes it easy to combine options like real-time backups, automated malware scans, exercise logs, internet utility firewalls (WAFs), and different related instruments. These work collectively to offer a complete safety answer in your whole B2B ecommerce retailer.
Jetpack Safety is a wonderful instance of this. In a single plan constructed particularly for WordPress websites, you possibly can arrange:
- Spam safety
- Actual-time, off-site backups
- Computerized malware scanning and one-click fixes
- An exercise log that reveals all actions taken in your web site
- Brute drive assault safety
- A strong web site firewall
- Downtime monitoring
- Two-factor authentication
Past incorporating these kind of instruments, WooCommerce permits you to decide on your individual safe internet hosting supplier, which ought to ideally supply important options like SSL certificates, server-level backups, buyer assist, and extra.
Customer support and advertising and marketing
Advertising and marketing instruments, in fact, assist you to attain new prospects and encourage extra gross sales from current ones. Good customer support helps you retain consumers round and drive them to unfold the phrase about your organization. They’re each key to a profitable B2B ecommerce retailer.
The B2B ecommerce platform that you simply work with ought to make all your customer support and advertising and marketing methods potential, whether or not which means integrating seamlessly with instruments you already use or making it straightforward so as to add monitoring codes.
Listed here are some advertising and marketing and customer support capabilities included with WooCommerce:
Integration with CRMs
Hook up with the CRM of your selecting with extensions for Jetpack CRM, HubSpot, Salesforce, and extra.
Integration with assist boards and ticketing techniques
Add reside chat to your web site, create a assist discussion board, or combine with instruments like Freshdesk and HelpScout.
Consumer portal potentialities
Construct a consumer portal that permits clients to entry assets and documentation, talk together with your service staff, edit their purchases, and extra.
Content material creation capabilities
Usually create stunning, efficient weblog posts, touchdown pages, and extra to assist the remainder of your advertising and marketing efforts and educate potential clients. The Block Editor means that you can do all of this with out touching a line of code.
Integration with a wide selection of promoting instruments
Monitor visitors with Google Analytics, hook up with social media platforms like Fb and TikTok, publish Google adverts proper out of your dashboard, ship e mail messages, comply with up on deserted carts, and extra.
Simplicity for staff members
Give every member of your staff their very own account with permissions based mostly on their function. Accepted accounts can reply to assist questions, view and course of orders, administer refunds, publish weblog posts, and extra.
Electronic mail advertising and marketing
Electronic mail is likely one of the strongest advertising and marketing strategies at your disposal. Ship deserted cart emails. Keep prime of thoughts with related content material and updates. Welcome new shoppers to your online business.
And, with WooCommerce, you possibly can combine all kinds of instruments that may assist you to accomplish this, reminiscent of MailPoet. You may even implement buyer segmentation, to market to consumers based mostly on earlier habits, likes and dislikes, and different traits.
Further performance
The performance you want in your B2B eCommerce retailer is restricted to your organization. So assume by any particular necessities that you’ve. Listed here are some examples of important ecommerce options that will apply to you:
- Buyer particular pricing. Chances are you’ll wish to supply particular pricing for sure shoppers based mostly on the settlement you will have with their firm. This can be based mostly on consumer function (e.g. gold tier vs. silver tier) or every particular person enterprise you’re employed with.
- Invoicing. Let clients place orders with out fee, then ship an bill to their firm at a later time.
- Quotes. You may conceal costs and the “add to cart” button and require consumers to request a quote as an alternative. That is nice for tasks or orders with customized pricing.
- Deposits. Let firms place a deposit or begin a fee plan.
- Merchandise displayed based mostly on consumer function. If you happen to promote to various kinds of shoppers, it’s possible you’ll wish to conceal sure merchandise or classes based mostly on their consumer function.
- Worth calculation based mostly on measurements. Add a worth calculator based mostly on components like weight, space, size, and quantity. That is excellent for gear producers or customized design tasks.
- Wholesale capabilities. Arrange a wholesale ecommerce retailer with customized consumer roles and pricing, registration varieties, privatization, and guidelines for delivery, tax exemption, and extra.
- Quantity reductions. Provide bulk pricing and quantity reductions to clients based mostly on the variety of merchandise they buy or the overall of their cart.
Scalability
The B2B ecommerce platform that you simply select ought to by no means maintain you again. Be careful for ones that base charges off of gross sales, variety of clients, or quantity of web site visits. Your platform also needs to load shortly, whether or not you will have 100 guests or 100,000.
WooCommerce can scale with you to any dimension. There’s no restrict to the variety of merchandise or variations you possibly can have (in reality, this check web site had a million!).
It’s constructed to deal with massive volumes of orders and visitors spikes. It’s a totally free B2B ecommerce platform, although it’s possible you’ll wish to use paid extensions, and the pricing isn’t based mostly on components like gross sales or clients.
One of the best half? You may select any internet hosting supplier that you simply’d like. That implies that, whereas you’ll have a shared internet hosting plan proper now, you possibly can at all times improve to a VPS or devoted server as your visitors will increase with out impacting your on-line retailer.
With Woo, high-volume shops qualify for distinctive advantages like devoted assist and discounted extensions. Study extra about how our staff will help your online business develop.
Ease of use and administration
Within the enterprise world, time is cash. And you may’t afford to waste time on a platform that’s arduous to make use of, troublesome for brand spanking new workers to study, and that requires a developer to make even the smallest of modifications.
When you can rent a developer to handle your web site in the event you’d like, you actually don’t must to be able to take advantage of your WooCommerce retailer. As we talked about earlier, the Block Editor lets you rearrange, add, and delete components by merely dragging and dropping.
Wish to revise your merchandise? You are able to do so by clicking buttons and modifying fields — no code obligatory!
Retailer managers can entry every thing from stock administration and web site analytics instruments to order data all in a single platform. And in the event you use instruments like Jetpack CRM, WooCommerce Transport, and WooPayments, you possibly can deal with label printing, funds, refunds, quotes, and extra immediately out of your dashboard as effectively.
Plus, WooCommerce gives unmatched buyer assist and thorough documentation that will help you each step of the best way.
And in the event you do wish to rent knowledgeable to develop, preserve, or customise your retailer, try our checklist of WooExperts. They’re vetted, high-quality companies prepared to assist!
Examples of B2B ecommerce companies
Do you will have a wholesale retailer or different B2B operation and need a bit of little bit of inspiration? Let’s have a look at a number of examples of shops utilizing WooCommerce to run a B2B operation.
1. Porta Professional Chem
Porta Professional Chem is a provider for the moveable restroom trade, promoting gadgets like bathroom paper, sanitizer, and cleaners to companies across the nation. Their store was constructed solely with their B2B shoppers in thoughts.
Utilizing instruments just like the B2B for WooCommerce extension, they hid pricing for almost all of their merchandise, making these simply seen to logged-in clients. New guests can simply request a quote for an merchandise in the event that they’d like, or buy a number of choose merchandise with out creating an account.
Transport charges and pricing for current clients relies on particular consumer roles assigned to every one. The web site additionally has {powerful} options like a mega menu to make discovering gadgets simpler, accounts that clients can handle on the backend, and invoicing capabilities.
2. Fuji Electrical
Fuji Electrical has been an innovator in industrial energy electronics gear for a century! They serve industries reminiscent of energy technology, automotive, manufacturing, and medical with gadgets from blowers and pumps to semiconductors and generators.
Contemplating their extensive scope, their web site wanted to enchantment to quite a lot of audiences. They’ve an easy-to-use product finder software that enables consumers to pick their trade and site to find out methods to entry particular gadgets. Additionally they incorporate options like breadcrumbs, search instruments, and nested menus to information consumers to the appropriate merchandise.
Lastly, they created detailed product pages that embrace all the knowledge their company shoppers may want. They embrace photographs, detailed descriptions, specs, manuals, efficiency graphs, and hyperlinks to their customer support staff.
3. OKdo
OKdo is a know-how firm that sells merchandise centered on single-board computing and the Web of Issues. They provide {hardware}, software program, growth assist, and manufacturing to hobbyists, enterprise homeowners, industrial designers, and resellers.
They used APIs and customized integrations to connect with all of the instruments that they want, together with fee mechanisms, e mail service suppliers (ESPs), third-party logistics (3PL) companies, and ERP integration options. OKdo additionally has totally different variations of their web site out there to worldwide customers based mostly on their location.
Their product pages are chock full of knowledge like photographs, movies, wishlist instruments, specs, critiques, reference docs, and extra. Plus, they’ve a data hub with tons of useful data for every sort of buyer.
4. ISC Gross sales
ISC Gross sales is an industrial gear provide firm with greater than 17,000 merchandise listed on their B2B ecommerce retailer. To make sorting by all of these gadgets simpler, they’ve quite a lot of product selectors that slender down the product class based mostly on clients’ wants.
Additionally they make use of filters, classes and sub-categories, search instruments, and detailed product listings to assist consumers discover the appropriate match for them. For some merchandise, they’ve buttons to request a quote somewhat than pricing.
5. Gorilla Printing
Gorilla Printing is a large-format printing firm based mostly out of New York. They ship nationwide, and promote every thing from banners and signage to flags and car wraps.
Their customization course of permits companies to pick particulars like dimension and materials, and even add their information immediately on the web site. If an organization isn’t fairly certain what they’re on the lookout for, they will fill out a quick quote type to get some assist.
6. OTRUSA
OTRUSA is a world wholesaler and retailer of tires for industrial gear. They characteristic an easy-to-use filtering software that lets consumers slender down their search by dimension, ply score, and model — or they will merely sort in what they’re on the lookout for.
Different options embrace an intricate filtering sidebar on product class pages, industrial credit score financing, reside chat capabilities, and even a membership program that features reductions.
FAQs about B2B ecommerce platforms
Nonetheless have questions? Let’s tackle a number of the commonest ones.
What’s a B2B ecommerce platform?
A enterprise to enterprise (B2B) ecommerce platform is software program that gives all of the instruments that you must promote to companies on-line. It goes past your primary on-line retailer, permitting entry to specialised performance like wholesale pricing, invoicing, quotes, bulk reductions, and extra.
In the end, high-quality software program will assist the B2B enterprise mannequin, making issues as straightforward as potential for the corporate utilizing it, together with their shoppers.
What’s WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin that features all of the ecommerce options that you must promote on-line, from product listings to checkout and cart performance. It’s extraordinarily versatile, with a big library of free and premium extensions that add on to the already-powerful core performance.
WooCommerce is run by Automattic, the corporate behind WordPress.com, and is utilized by an enormous number of shops. Ecommerce outlets from small handmade artisans to massive enterprise companies make the most of its {powerful} instruments to search out success.
Is it potential to run a B2B/B2C hybrid ecommerce retailer?
Sure, completely. It is a enterprise mannequin that’s fairly widespread, in reality. With a software like WooCommerce, you possibly can promote the identical merchandise to each B2B and B2C clients on the identical storefront.
For instance, the B2B for WooCommerce extension lets you:
- Disguise merchandise and gadgets based mostly on consumer function. For instance, you could possibly have some gadgets out there for B2C clients, with others seen simply to the companies you’re employed with.
- Configure buyer particular pricing for various consumer roles. So that you may need one set of costs for normal consumers and one other, with reductions, for wholesale consumers.
- Enable B2B clients to request a quote. You may even customise the quote type fields only for your online business wants.
These are just some examples. You may customise your WooCommerce retailer to suit no matter your wants are. The important thing right here, although, is to personalize the expertise (and your advertising and marketing methods!) for each B2C and B2B clients, so each really feel like their wants are being met.
How do I select between B2B ecommerce platforms for my enterprise?
The appropriate ecommerce software program for your online business to enterprise firm will rely on the particular wants you will have. We’ve supplied a fairly complete checklist of issues, from pricing and performance to safety and advertising and marketing capabilities. Sit down together with your staff, make a listing of what you wish to accomplish together with your retailer, and be sure that the platform you select checks all of the bins.
WooCommerce and WordPress are versatile and {powerful} sufficient to fulfill the wants of practically any enterprise to enterprise operation. Not solely does it supply extensions to fulfill the wants of B2B organizations, it additionally gives glorious assist, safety options, content material creation instruments, and extra.
Is WooCommerce an enterprise-grade ecommerce platform?
WooCommerce is a wonderful alternative for enterprise companies. It gives all of the performance wanted to scale and is constructed for a big quantity of orders. Enterprise shops will profit from limitless flexibility, full content material possession, and free core software program no matter your gross sales quantity. Study extra about how WooCommerce scales.
You may additionally wish to contemplate WordPress VIP, a complicated answer constructed particularly for enterprise organizations. Along with the superb options which might be already included with WordPress and WooCommerce, you profit from complete safety, top-level internet hosting, knowledge analytics, and content material instruments designed across the wants of enterprises.
What are the various kinds of B2B companies?
Since B2B merely stands for “enterprise to enterprise”, this will cowl a wide selection of organizations. Listed here are a number of of the commonest sorts:
- Product-based: Promote bodily gadgets to different firms. They is likely to be wholesalers, distributors, or producers.
- Service-based: Promote companies to different firms. Suppose accounting, session, or insurance coverage suppliers.
- Software program-based: Promote software program that helps companies in some capability. This consists of invoicing instruments, safety companies, and extra.
A retailer on a B2B ecommerce platform may present all or any of those choices to their clients, and the construction of their operation might look totally different. The vital issue is that they’re promoting to companies, although they could additionally promote to customers.
Construct and develop your B2B ecommerce retailer with WooCommerce
Whether or not you’re a longtime B2B firm or simply beginning out, WooCommerce gives all of the instruments and adaptability that you must develop. You may create and customise with out writing or modifying any code in any respect, or work with a developer to design an intricate promoting platform.
It harnesses the facility of WordPress to offer unmatched content material capabilities, and consists of a number of extensions that assist you to customise the web expertise in your clients. Plus, it may assist enhance your advertising and marketing methods and even make your staff extra environment friendly.
In search of extra data? These guides will help:
Able to develop? Get began with the prime B2B ecommerce platform immediately.
