Key Things To Look For In B2B eCommerce Software to Make Running Your Business Easier
Business-to-business sales have long been thought of as the poor relation when it comes to internet sales. Whereas the public has embraced buying online with a passion, B2B sales seem to have lagged behind. Perhaps this is something to do with the demographic of CEOs, MDs and Marketing Directors, but even as far back as 2015 Google was pointing to a shift in the way B2B sales were undertaken.
With the rise of millennials in influential roles, B2B sales have been on the increase leading Forrester to estimate that by 2020 that B2B sales in the US would be worth $1.13 trillion. This significant behavioural shift means that wholesalers must look to increase their market reach with software that not only works, but takes the effort out of managing the diverse needs of their customers.
Seeing the market potential for your business is easy, but trying to find eCommerce software that helps you reach your goal can be frustrating. Don't know where to start? Well here's some of the problems you might be facing and some suggested solutions to them:
Pain points with B2B eCommerce Software:
1. Not being able to give a customer a special deal
It's likely that you'll want to give certain of your customers their own pricing scheme, not just site wide, but product wide. That's particularly important if they want to buy one of your products in bulk and are looking for a specific discount. That's often how a deal is made, so find software where Customer Specific Pricing is easy to set up. It'll make life so much easier, and enable you to
is particularly useful if you want to provide individual customers with certain deals on certain products. Naturally these prices should be for your customer's eyes only, but knowing that you can provide specific prices will help to gain business from them. For more information on this please read our latest blog.
2. Change of pricing en masse
Nothing is more tedious than putting prices up or down. Of course Excel can be your best friend, but eCommerce software should include the ability to change prices up or down en masse. And once the changes are made they should appear immediately on site.
3. Accessed controlled areas
With retailers using the internet to search for products online, much as consumers do, thought should be given as to how to present your products online to those looking for them on the internet. This could mean dedicating landing pages, including your home page, to information specific pages that give researchers the information they want. By keeping these open to Google you can increase your market reach, and encourage your visitors to become wholesalers so that they can access products and pages.
4. Page speed on mobiles
With Google announcing this July that page speed will become a major ranking factor for mobile searches your site now needs to load quickly. This is obviously not so important for access controlled pages, but those pages that you have left open to promote your business online must meet Google's new requirements. It's very unusal for Google to give advance warning of such a major update to their algorithm. However, it would appear that Google are hoping online businesses will sort out any issues with their page load speeds to facilitate a better experience for web visitors.
5. Mulit-currency
6. Stock control
7. No cohesion in the software running your business
Maybe you feel sympathy for one of our clients who expressed frustration at having to go from one software program to another just to try to work out what on earth was going on in his business. Not that the solutions in themselves were bad, in fact they're pretty good. However, he found himself daily having to dip in and out of different interfaces, different screens, different reports, which was exasperating whilst trying to manage every day events.