FAQs for Platform Design and Implementation of B2B Digital Commerce Platform Answered

The pandemic has brought with it a plethora of changes such as moving processes online that businesses from all industries are adjusting to stay in the market, including the B2B industry. While B2C companies had already given digital marketplaces a shot pre-pandemic, B2B companies needed to find a way to adopt these digital commerce strategies.

As the world took to staying indoors and socially distancing, B2B businesses had to figure out an effective way to remain in business. This is where they understood the need for a digital commerce platform. To implement a new ecommerce platform, companies needed clarity on what exactly the customers are looking for to tailor their offerings, accordingly. Research by Statista suggests that most B2B companies across the globe turned to ecommerce platforms for sales during the pandemic as a result of the changing B2B customer expectations.

Fig: Share of B2B companies selling through digital commerce channels before and during the pandemic in 2020, by country.

Today, with customer experience taking over price as the biggest differentiator, a B2B company has to dive deep into creating better CX for their customers. They have to create and implement the right platforms and strategies to keep up with the dynamic needs of the B2B customer. This can raise a lot of doubts about picking the right tools and platforms. Here are a few B2B FAQ examples shortlisted from what most companies deal with while making the right decision -

Q1. What is our desired goal and does our strategy support it?

The first step you must take while preparing yourself to move to digital commerce is to figure out your end goal from this shift. You must clearly define your expectations from moving sales to ecommerce and make sure that you have a strategy that helps you achieve your goals.

Ask yourself and your teams some questions – Why do we need an e–commerce platform? Which teams do we assign to manage this? Is this manageable for us? Are we moving towards achieving the bigger, final goal with this?

Your desired achievable goals can range from – improving sales and CX to growing customer reach and reducing administrative costs.

Q2. What are some critical features of B2B ecommerce sites?

A B2B business must make sure they offer simpler options like the ones a B2C company would offer its customer. As the B2B space is a bit more complex as compared to B2C, an engaging, personalized, yet simple customer experience has got to help you increase sales. Make sure the platform offers you the basic features below -

• Simple payment methods with sufficient alternatives
• Customized product catalogs
• Good responsiveness
• Customer support options with self-help capabilities
• Automated order management
• Personalized discounts and promotions

Q3. How do you integrate and host the platform?

While picking an effective ecommerce solution, you must keep in mind that it has to effectively integrate with other systems like your ERM and CRM. While an in-house platform would give you more visibility to data, a cloud-based solution can just offer you more B2B features at a lower cost.

Q4. How can an ecommerce platform give you an edge over the competition?

B2B marketers of today have found multiple ways to reach out to customers. One good way to reach out to more people and increase conversion is through SEO. With the right SEO strategies, businesses can reach their customer acquisition goals quicker with targeted marketing and marketing automation. Coupled with a solid B2B ecommerce strategy in place, your business can truly harness the power of digital and expand its online presence.

Q5. How do you make money through your B2B ecommerce platform?

Distributors can sell advertising space on their ecommerce platforms and websites, allowing manufacturer partners to list and promote products. With co-op advertising in place using catalogs or websites, this kind of push can help you establish strong relations with other manufacturers.

Q6. Do I integrate online and offline buying?

With the majority of B2B buyers looking for a good omnichannel customer experience, it is a mistake for companies to think that their online and offline selling methods can work parallelly instead of being integrated. A new B2B company adopting these strategies must figure out how to integrate these two methods to make sure that their brands are not just serving their existing customers but also acquiring new ones. To effectively stay at par with the competition, they must find effective ways to compete with tech giants offering top-class CX across multiple channels.

Q7. How do you pick out the right B2B ecommerce platform?

With a large number of companies offering different ecommerce platform solutions to help you reach out to larger customer bases and increase B2B sales, picking the right option can be challenging. To make the right choice, you must have full in-depth knowledge about your business’s pain points and solutions. With this, make sure you pick out the right solution in terms of the price and features offered.

For more information on picking out the right ecommerce platform tailored to your demands to enhance CX, you can connect with our Digital Marketing experts at marketing@altudo.coand have a more detailed discussion.