What is the best B2B eCommerce Platform

Do you offer services that aid businesses in their growth, hiring, or manage their teams? Do you supply products specifically to companies? Are you able to sell wholesale items?

If you're in B2B (or want to be -- you may very well be able to benefit from an eCommerce B2B platform. It will make life easier for the clients you serve as well as your staff as well as help you expand quicker and with greater efficiency.

We'll take a review of how an eCommerce store can help your B2B business, and how to choose the right platform.

What is the reason to create an eCommerce B2B store

The majority of online stores you've heard of are B2C (Business to Consumer) that provide your pet's food, your child's birthday gifts, or even your preferred specialty food items. Don't fall for thinking that eCommerce stores are just for consumer-facing companies. They can be an incredibly efficient device for B2B companies as well.

A recent study found that 41 percent of buyers from B2B said that the self-service feature would improve the process of doing business on the internet. It's an impressive number! The ability of customers to manage their accounts and perform other associated tasks is one of the highlights of the eCommerce capabilities.

As an example, instead of calling to ask for an estimate the Sourcing Manager might send a request via the web and get the information promptly, regardless of moment of the day. They could also submit an order or opt to sign up for having the products you offer delivered to them every month. If you offer lawn maintenance services to retailers, the business manager could login to their account to adjust the frequency of their services or check out the next time you're scheduled to drop by.

B2B eCommerce stores can also go a long way towards automating processes. They can take the load from customer service agents and sales team members through some of the self-service tasks mentioned earlier. They can transfer information across multiple distribution channels and ensure accuracy and up-to-date information. And they can take away all the hassle of manual sending invoices and quotations, then following up with each and every potential client.

Finally, an online store acts as the brand's image and the hub of all the marketing strategies you employ. The store can be linked directly to your products or services within the marketing emails you send out and your advertising campaigns. You can create valuable material that helps prospects navigate your sales funnel. And you can evaluate the results of your efforts and steer the future direction of your business.

The factors to consider when choosing an B2B eCommerce platform

The platform that you select for your eCommerce is the base of your online storefront. We'll look at some of the factors to consider when choosing one, and examine why is the most effective solution for B2B online stores.

What kind of items that you're offering

There are a huge variety of options for B2B companies. Below are some products you can sell along with some examples:

• Physical products. Think equipment, printed training booksand cleaning products.  Storage and handling equipment  For instance, Storage and Handling Equipment supplies eco-friendly shopping carts to the grocery and retail stores.
• Digital products. Items like online courses, downloadable eBooks, and software licences. TipoType For instance, provides font licenses for businesses as well as freelancers.
• Services. Services include graphics design, accounting and legal advice. Your Benefit Store is a service provider, selling healthcare coverage for companies to add to their plans for employees.
• Wholesale goods. Selling large volumes of products to retail stores, basically serving as their supply. Porta Pro Chem is one example. It sells portable restroom products to clients around the country.
• Memberships. Access to a range of benefits and other resources like a video library or online forum. It is the Interactive Advertising Bureau, as an example, has a membership program with resources, courses, event invites and more, geared towards marketing and media firms.
• Subscriptions. Services or products that are recurring, like a yearly license, weekly cleaning service as well as a monthly supply of coffee beans for your breakroom. Designs Modo sells subscriptions for design tools but subscriptions can also involve physical goods as well as even newsletters.

As you can see these differ greatly between them, however, there may be some overlap. It is possible to sell retail and wholesale products. You could sell both physical and digital publications together. You could also have a subscription that includes an annual office cleaning as well as a set of cleaning products.

It's important to note that your business can be conducted in a variety of ways -- ensure that your chosen platform is compatible with every one of them.

sells functionality on each of the items and services listed above, as well as other services! Indeed, each websites mentioned make use of . Sell one type of product or several side-by-side. Anyone can purchase or limit capabilities to particular customers or wholesale clients.

What ever you'd like to sell, makes it feasible.

Design Flexibility

As your goods and services are distinctive, your brand is, also. And, of course, you want your website to reflect the character and traits of your brand.

A reliable B2B eCommerce platform will allow you complete and total flexibility to design and build any kind of product you think of -- without having to modify code or employ an expert developer, even if you don't wish to.

Since is an extension of WordPress, you can harness the capabilities to use using the Block Editor for the creation of all your blog posts and pages. The Block Editor allows you to drag and drop components -including headings, paragraphs, images, videos, and columns -- to create your personal layout. You can then toggle options to alter colors, font styles, and other aspects of the design to make your page completely your own.

Ownership of Content

For online businesses, owning the content you publish is essential. Your website can be a source of revenue and you shouldn't be putting your money at risk by exposing it to the possibility of it disappearing. You see, many proprietary eCommerce platforms could shut down your site without warning in the event that they decide that you've violated the terms and conditions of their platform. It could mean losing money along with time and labor!

However, WordPress is a software tools that can help you reach your objectives. Your website is hosted wherever you'd like it to be and you have full control and control over it. You'll never have to worry about removing your website. Since it's simply- it's yours.

Integration of payment gateways

Payment gateways allow you to receive money from clients as well as clients in a secure manner, and later transfer it into your bank account. There are pros and cons for every tool and a specific features you'll require for your specific company. In particular, you could have to take recurring payments or accept multiple currencies. connect with express payment tools like Apple Pay, or offer financing options.

You'll want to make sure that the platform that you select is compatible with the platform you'd like to work with, particularly in the event that your company already has an existing payment system or invoices.

It is compatible with a variety of payment gateways, including:

Shipping

If you are selling physical goods, then shipping is going to be a crucial factor when it comes to selecting an eCommerce platform. Shipping can be a bit complicated, therefore you'll need a software which lets you create fees in the manner you want, and that integrates with any shipping carriers you deal with. This is particularly true when you are able to ship large quantities of products at once, or require specific requirements such as refrigeration.

User experience

Experience for users is essential to any company, and for a variety of reasons. For instance, if a prospective buyer or client comes to your website and finds it difficult to use, they'll likely give up and shop in a rival shop instead. The second reason is that search engines take into account the user experience when they determine rankings.

Your task, right now, is to find a platform that makes creating an exceptional user experience. There are a few things to think about:

• Content organization. Choose an eCommerce system that can help with menu organization to categorize your products and posts, and add features like breadcrumbs to help with navigation. Since WordPress was built to be a blog platform right from the beginning, its content tools can't be beaten.
• Mobile-friendly design. Your site must look stunning across devices of every size such as tablets, desktops as well as phones on mobiles. WordPress is designed to be responsive, by default. there are a lot of fantastic themes for mobile that you can select from.

Marketing and Customer Service

Marketing, of course, assists you in reaching new customers and encourage more sales from current customers. Excellent customer service can help maintain customers' loyalty and help them to spread the word about your business. They're both key to a successful B2B eCommerce store.

The system you're working with should make all of your customer service and marketing strategies possible, whether that means integrating seamlessly with applications you're already using or making it easier to add tracking codes.

Here are some examples of marketing and customer service skills that are included with :

• Integration with CRMs. Connect with the CRM of your choice with the help of extensions to Jetpack CRM HubSpot, Salesforce, and many more.
• Integration with ticketing and support forums platforms. Add live chat to your website, or create an online support forum or connect using tools like Freshdesk and HelpScout
• Content creation capabilities. Make frequent beautiful, powerful blog posts, landing pages, and more to support your other marketing strategies and help educate prospective customers.
• Integration with a wide range of marketing tools. Track traffic using Google Analytics, connect to social media platforms like Facebook and TikTok as well as make Google ads directly on your dashboard, and send emails messages, monitor abandoned carts, and many more.
• Simple for members of your team. You can give each member of the team a separate account that has access to the account based on the role they play. Accounts that are approved can answer support questions, view and process orders, administer refunds, post blog entries as well as more.

Extra functionality

The functions you want for your B2B eCommerce store is specifically tailored to your business. Consider any specific specifications you might have. Here are some examples:

Scalability

A B2B eCommerce platform you pick is one that should not hinder your progress. Watch out for ones with fees based on sales, number of customersor website visits. Your platform should also be able to load fast, regardless of whether you have 100 visitors at once or 100,000.

You can expand your business to whatever size you want. There's no limit to the number of products or variations you can have (in actual fact, this test site was 1 million!). The platform is designed to manage large volumes of orders and traffic spikes. It's a completely free platform however, you might want to use paid extensions, and pricing is not dependent on the number of sales or clients.

The best part? It is possible to choose any provider you'd want. That means that, while you may have an existing shared hosting account in the moment, you could upgrade to a VPS or dedicated server as the traffic grows without affecting your online store.

User-friendliness and Management

In the world of business there's a saying that time is money. It's not a good idea to waste time on a platform that's hard to use or difficult for new staff members to learn, and that requires a developer to make every single modification.

While you can hire a developer to manage your site if you'd like, you certainly don't have to in order to make the most of your online store. Like we said earlier, the Block Editor enables you to move, rearrange, and delete elements by simply dragging and dropping. Are you looking to modify your product? You can do so by clicking buttons and making changes to fields -- no code necessary!

Store managers can access everything from inventory figures and site analytics to order information all in one place. When you're using software like Jetpack CRM, Shipping, and Payments, you'll be able to manage label printing, payment and refunds, quotes and more directly from your dashboard as well.

If you're interested to engage a professional to develop, maintain or modify your store, check out our list of WooExperts. They're high-quality, well-vetted companies willing to assist!

Create and expand your eCommerce B2B store using

If your business is a reputable B2B business or are new to the market, this platform provides all the features and flexibility that you require to expand. In addition, it could enhance the user experience for your clients and even increase the efficiency of your employees.

Do you want to grow? Begin with the most popular B2B eCommerce platform right now.