7 Key Consideration for Choosing Best B2B Ecommerce Platform

Most of the people have heard about the massive scale of ecommerce and see the influence of the best B2B ecommerce companies like Alibaba and other major ecommerce online B2B platform. In the last few years, ecommerce business has grown remarkably.  

Today, you can buy with anyone where ever they are in the world. The large range of products and manufacturers are available and allows you to settle exactly for what you need. You can determine what you desire on the internet in just a few clicks.  

With the growth of the ecommerce industry, you can be sure that the competition of ecommerce business also increased among entrepreneurs. Nowadays we've thousands of B2B ecommerce solutions are available to us all would say that they are the best in some unique way.  

It's thought almost every day new B2B ecommerce software solutions are being created with the most advanced features. Yes, before choosing the B2B ecommerce solution you should compare its feature with alternative solutions. 

What is the B2B Ecommerce Platform? 

B2B Ecommerce platform is also mean by Business to a Business electronic commerce platform which includes an online sales portal, sale of the product and services between companies.  

This is against B2C (Business to Customer) which describes online business accomplished between a business and individual customer. Where B2C ecommerce is relatively simple, B2B transaction is much more complex.  

In B2C, fixed pricing, shipping is straightforward and low quantity Whereas B2B prices are highly variable because business is much larger entities, the quantity of product and service are much larger and have much more complicated shipping requirements.  

Additionally, B2B ecommerce markets have to deal with much more complex tax and regular burdens.   

• B2B ecommerce is defined as ecommerce between companies. 
• B2C ecommerce is defined as a business between a business with customers. 
• C2C ecommerce is simply commerce between private individuals or customers. 

There are different types of business models on the ecommerce website. If you're the small business you want to make money by selling things online, then you need to source from a B2B website platform. 

What is the Main Focus of the Best B2B Ecommerce Platform? 

While composing the list, we would've focused on the main features where every B2B ecommerce platform should have. 

Complex pricing options 
Top B2B ecommerce platform companies frequently offer different prices for different business partners. 

The most flexible checkout process and delivery 
The checkout process should always suit your company rules & regulations for payment and shipping.

Navigation & Search 
The quality of the ecommerce platform is evaluating by user navigation & their experience. Every customer can able to easily find what they need and place an order as quickly as possible. It is also very important for every B2B online store to have a relevant and high-quality site search. 

Customer Registration 
Best B2B ecommerce software usually requires mandatory registration to provide their customer with a special price for their product, deals, and coupons. 

Mobile Commerce, Email Marketing & Newsletter 
An ecommerce website should be accessible for the mobile user also and associate with the customer on day to day basis via email newsletter. 

A certified ecommerce trust mark proves that website reliability when comes to purchase goods and services. 

Essential Features of the Best B2B Ecommerce Solution 

1. Access Controls Option, Roles, & Permissions 

In B2B each customer may be represented by different users with different designations and responsibilities.  

This is the way it is very important to make sure that user has access to view the information which is needed to perform their work.  

Generally, there is always an admin, who can create other customer and grant permissions, customers and unauthorized users. 

2. Personalized B2B Product Catalog Management 

B2B ecommerce store has personalized product catalog management features which is probably the most different and well known among B2B ecommerce features.  

It enables vendors to customize the product catalog into specific corporations, divisions, business units, and even individual customers.  

Each group has access to a catalog where they will be purchasing manager can view purchased content and products. 

3. Multiple Shopping Lists 

Corporate vendors used to work on different projects like trade show displays, printed materials or products/equipment which is used for different business units these may want them to manage it and save multiple shopping lists on their login in your B2B ecommerce software.  

This may allow the customer to save their shopping list for their future use and this will help them to quickly purchase their saved products. 

4.Multiple Organizations, Websites & Stores 

Various businesses manage multinational brands that operate across various countries, currencies and tax & rules regulations.  

Consequently, these scalability features and localization capabilities of your B2B ecommerce solutions will become a very important requirement for your business, this feature also helps you to stand alone in the crowd. 

These features for B2B ecommerce solutions are generally labeled as out of the box features.  

For example, Purchase Commerce enterprise option delivery an ecommerce solution along with flexible and robust multi-vendor ecommerce website management capabilities which allow the organization to easily control their multiple businesses from one central admin console.  

If you want to build your custom ecommerce solution from scratch, then make sure that you don't overlook with scalability requirement. 

Additional Features for B2B Ecommerce Solutions 

No need to have all the B2B ecommerce features should be in your ecommerce platform from Day 1 but being flexible enough to offer on customer feature requests is one of the best B2B ecommerce platform features in itself.  

So, ensure that your B2B ecommerce solution or platform can rise to the challenge whenever the time comes.  

As references, consider B2B ecommerce features what Purchase Commerce offers to its users. Contact us if you think your ecommerce business could benefit from these, too. 

Key Consideration of the Best B2B Ecommerce Platform 

The process of choosing the right B2B ecommerce platform shouldn’t be a terrifying effort for you. You need to understand some key factors that can either make or break the successful B2B ecommerce platform. 

Even there are enormous features that need to run or build the B2B ecommerce platform, you must focus on this following consideration that gets you in starting the platform in the right direction. 

Create an Attractive B2B Ecommerce Platform 

Branding & Design 

Branding is about to make things look pretty. Building and managing a regular brand presence which is really about building trust. When customers on your B2B ecommerce website platform after browsing your main website, this will be much more comfortable by pressing the checkout button. 

Having your logo, brand colors, fonts, and design styles are compatible across your B2B ecommerce platform which builds trust. 

Not all B2B ecommerce vendors allow this type of customization, for this reason, most of the vendors used to look for another platform for their B2B ecommerce solutions.  

Branding and design customization features are meant to make your B2B ecommerce solution stand out among the crowd of ecommerce solutions. If you've someone on your team who is well experienced in coding and graphic design, you should update the look of your ecommerce platform.  

By updating the graphics and image on your B2B ecommerce platform for the festive season and holidays change, will make sure it continues to rise. 

High-Resolution Image 
 
A high-resolution image feature is also a very important one to include on your B2B ecommerce platform while the customer browser your digital catalog.  

This is also a part of the specialty of the B2B ecommerce platform where customers can see directly what they're getting before they purchase it.  

On the other side, if a customer can't get the full view of the product that you're offering, they may not purchase it. Make sure that your B2B online store allows for product description and other custom fields like size, color, dimension, etc. 

These features may look simple, but you would be surprised to hear that not all the top B2B ecommerce companies offer this functionality and also, they don't allow for more than one image for the product. A high-resolution image is very necessary for any kind of industry. 

Control What Your Customers See on your B2B Ecommerce Software 

Product Determination & User Experience 

Branding and design are just a piece of the B2B ecommerce software problem. It may be even more important than a clean design is assuring for your ecommerce website is easy to navigate, so that customers can find the relevant products by what they are available to them. 

Make sure easy to use, vendors are implementing their B2B ecommerce website with various product catalogs this will showcase their seasonal product on a single line.  

This functionality is a key factor for manufacturers and distributors in various industries, such as outdoor and sporting goods space. 

Once customer landed on the product catalog of your ecommerce website, though, they'll drop down even further to the specific product they're looking for.  

Best B2B ecommerce software solution allow the customer to find products in three different ways: 

1. Search & Find - In this modern world, we need search functionality on your ecommerce website, but it's very hard to achieve it. Make sure that your B2B ecommerce website is followed by the search engine which is robust, fast and able to account for common spelling mistakes and incomplete search queries. 
2. Category - The product category should be easy to understand. It's very common for the vendors with too many product categories, but it just makes things harder for customers. Any category that's too specific and shares characteristics across multiple types of products on your B2B ecommerce website platform will work best as a filter.  
3. Filters - Filter option is typically the last step to narrow down the choice for your customers. By definition, the filter takes many of your online product out in a customer's shopping cart. So, it is very important to consider the filter you choose to make available to your customers. 

Customer Personalization & Information Sharing  

Before creating a product, the catalog makes sure that your B2B ecommerce website platform is easy to navigate, vendors need to be able to offer the user experience to their customers as well as ensure that your customer sees only what they're supposed to see. 

The most common requirement for personalization that we've seen across industries, though this will be the ability to offer different prices to different customers. Many vendors offer more than one price to the various customer through multiple pricing tiers. Some of the manufacturers and distributors have even more compact pricing than that! 

Itis very essential to your B2B ecommerce website must be powered by vendors with vast experience in the B2B sales platform because these types of complications are not common in the B2C world. 

Even though we're on the topic of displaying correct pricing information, let's take a minute to discuss something elsewhere whether you want your customer to see inventory.  

When it comes to displaying inventory information, our B2B ecommerce platform goal is to be genuine and manage your customer's expectation which directs by encouraging them to buy from you and not from your competitor. 

Conclusion: 

B2B ecommerce site will be always a profitable one since it opens the global market for your product or services. Are you thinking of getting an ecommerce website similar to any of the websites which are explained above?   

There is a lot of B2B ecommerce platform option are available in the market for you to choose before starting the best ecommerce platform, but eventually, you'll need to choose a vendor where you can handle your specific branding, user experience, customization, and integration requirements. 

Purchase Commerce will help you to build your ideal best B2B ecommerce website platform. You can customize your B2B ecommerce website as per your specific request with Purchase Commerce. If you have an idea about starting a B2B business then contact us to grow your ecommerce business.