What is the best B2B eCommerce Platform

Do you offer services that help businesses grow, hire and manage teams? Do you supply products specifically for companies? Do you offer items for sale wholesale?

If you're in B2B -- or if you are planning to join -- it's possible that you'll profit from a B2B eCommerce platform. It will make life easier for your clients and your team and allow you to grow faster and more efficiently.

We'll take a review of how an eCommerce store can help the B2B industry as well as how to select the right platform.

What is the reason to create an eCommerce B2B store

A majority of the online retailers that you've come across are B2C (Business to Consumer) that provide your pet's food, your son's birthday presents, or the best specialty foods you've ever bought. But don't be lured into thinking that eCommerce shops are only for consumer-facing companies. They can be an incredibly powerful device to B2B firms too.

In a recent survey, 41 percent of shoppers from B2B indicated that capabilities for self-service would improve the process of conducting business online. That's a big number! And providing the ability for customers to control their accounts, as well as complete other associated tasks is one of the highlights of eCommerce functionality.

For example, instead of calling to ask for an estimate A Sourcing Manager can send a request via the web and get the information immediately, no matter the time of day. You can also place an order or opt to sign up for having your items delivered on a monthly basis. Also, if you supply lawn care services for retail stores, a business owner could log into their account and adjust the frequency of their services, or see the next time you're scheduled to visit.

B2B eCommerce stores can also go a long way towards making processes easier to manage. They could take the strain off of customer service representatives as well as sales team members with some of the self-service tasks we just discussed. They can sync information between multiple distribution channels and ensure that everything's up-to-date and accurate. They can also eliminate all the hassle of mailing invoices or quotes manually in the process of following up with every prospective client.

Finally, an online store is your brand's face and the hub of all your marketing strategies. You can link directly to the products and services you offer in your emails to customers and in advertising campaigns. You can create valuable information that can guide prospects through your sales funnel. And you can monitor the effectiveness of your efforts to steer the future direction of your business.

Considerations for choosing a B2B eCommerce platform

The eCommerce platform you pick is the base of your storefront online. We'll look at some of the factors to take into consideration when selecting the right one. We'll also look into why is the most effective solution for B2B stores.

The types of goods you're selling

There are a huge variety of opportunities to consider for B2B companies. Below are some items you may sell, along with some examples:

• Physical items. Think of equipment, printed booksand cleaning products.  Storage and Handling Equipment  For instance, Storage and Handling Equipment supplies eco-friendly shopping carts to supermarkets and retail stores.
• Digital products. Items like online courses, downloadable eBooks, and software licences. TipoType is one example. It offers font licenses to businesses and freelancers.
• Services. Offers include graphic design, accounting, and legal help. Your Benefit Store is a service provider, selling healthcare coverage for companies to include as part of their employee's packages.
• Wholesale products. The company sells large amounts of its products to retail stores, basically serving as their supply. Porta Pro Chem For instance, offers portable toiletries to customers all over the world.
• memberships. Access to a range of benefits and other resources, such as a training video library or online forum. The Interactive Advertising Bureau, for example, offers the membership program, which includes tools including courses, invitations to events and much more, targeted at media and marketing companies.
• Subscriptions. Recurring products or services, like a yearly licence, weekly cleaning service and monthly boxes of coffee pods for the room to break. Modo Design Modo sells subscriptions to design software, however, subscriptions may also include physical goods or maybe even newsletters.

You can tell that they all vary widely between them, however, there can also be the possibility of overlap. It is possible to sell retail and wholesale products. You can sell both digital and physical books together. You could also offer a monthly subscription which includes an office clean-up every week, and a box of cleaning supplies.

The point here is, you may do business through a myriad of methods and make sure the platform you choose supports all of them.

provides selling functionality for all of the products and services mentioned above, as well as other services! In fact, all of the example sites mentioned make use of . Selling one product or several side-by-side. Allow anyone to purchase, or limit access to certain wholesale or retail customers.

No matter what you want to sell, makes it feasible.

Design Flexibility

As your goods or services are distinct and unique, so is your branding as well. Of course, you want your website to reflect the character and characteristics of that brand.

A good B2B eCommerce platform will allow you complete and total flexibility to design and build anything you can imagine and not have the ability to alter code or engage an expert developer, if you don't want to.

Since is an extension to WordPress, you can harness the capabilities to use using the Block Editor to create all of your posts and pages. The Block Editor enables you to drag and drop various elements- like paragraphs, headings video, images, and columns to design your personal layout. It is then possible to toggle the settings to change color, font style, and other design characteristics to make the page individual to your.

Content ownership

If you are a business online, having control of your content is absolutely critical. Your website can be a source of income and you shouldn't be putting your money at risk by exposing it to that it will disappear. It's true that many of the proprietary eCommerce platforms will remove your website without notice if they determine that you've broken their terms and regulations. It could mean losing money, time, and hard effort!

But WordPress and are software, tools to help you achieve your objectives. Your site is hosted where you'd like it to be and you are in complete control and ownership over it. It's not necessary to think about removing your website. It's because it'syours. it's yours.

Payment gateway integration

Payment gateways let you collect money from customers and clients securely, later transfer it into your account at the bank. The pros and cons to the various tools, as well as specific functions you'll need to have to run your business. As an example, you might require recurring payment and accept different currencies. You could also use express pay services like Apple Pay, or offer finance options.

Make sure that the platform that you select is compatible with the platform you'd like to work with, particularly when your business is already using some sort of payment processing or invoices.

integrates with a wide array of payment processors, such as:

Shipping

If you are selling physical goods that require shipping, it is likely to be an important element when selecting an eCommerce platform. Shipping can be a bit complicated, so you need a tool that lets you create fees in the manner you want, and that integrates with any shipping carriers you deal with. This is especially true if you deliver large volumes of goods at one time, or require specific requirements such as refrigeration.

User experience

The user experience is crucial to any company, and for various reasons. If a prospective client or customer visits your website and finds it difficult to use, they'll most likely give up and shop in a rival shop instead. In addition, search engines look at user experience when determining rankings.

Your task, right now, is to find the right platform to make the best user experience feasible. Below are some things to consider:

• Content management. Choose an eCommerce platform that lets to organize your menus, categorize posts and products and include features such as breadcrumbs to help with navigation. Because WordPress was built as a blogging platform at the very beginning, its content tools are unrivaled.
• Mobile-friendly design. Your website should appear great on devices of all sizes including tablets, desktops and even phones on mobiles. WordPress is responsive by default, and there are a lot of fantastic mobile-friendly themes you can choose from.

Marketing and customer service

Marketing, of course, assists you in reaching new customers and encourage more sales from existing ones. Good customer service helps you keep buyers around and drive them to spread the word about your business. Both are essential to running a successful B2B eCommerce shop.

The system you're working with should make all of your marketing and customer service strategies work, no matter if that involves integrating with the existing tools or making it easier to include tracking codes.

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

• Integrating with CRMs. Connect with the CRM of your choice with the help of extensions for Jetpack CRM, HubSpot, Salesforce, and many more.
• Integration with ticketing and support forums systems. Add live chat to your website, set up forums for support and integrate it using tools like Freshdesk and HelpScout
• Content creation capabilities. Create regularly beautiful, efficient blogs, landing pages, and others to help with your overall marketing strategies and help educate prospective customers.
• Integration with an extensive array of marketing tools. Track traffic using Google Analytics, connect to social media platforms like Facebook and TikTok and create Google ads directly on your dashboard, and send emails messages, follow up on abandoned carts and much more.
• The simplicity for your team members. You can give each member of the team a separate account that has permissions based on their role. Accounts that are approved can answer support questions, view and manage orders, handle refunds, post blog entries, and more.

Additional functionality

The functionality you need in your eCommerce B2B store is specifically tailored to your business. Consider any specific specifications you might have. Below are some instances:

Scalability

A B2B eCommerce platform that you choose should never hinder your progress. Look out for platforms that base fees off of numbers of transactions, the number of customers, or volume of visitors to the site. Your website should perform well, no matter if there are 100,000 visitors on one time or 100,000.

You can expand your business to whatever size you want. There's no limit on the amount of products or variations you can have (in actual fact, this test site included one million!). The platform is designed to manage large quantities of orders as well as traffic spikes. It's a completely free platform however, you might want to use paid extensions, and pricing is not based on factors like sales or customers.

What's the best thing? It is possible to choose the hosting service you'd want. That means that, while you might have a shared hosting plan right now, you can always move to a virtual private server or dedicated server when you increase traffic without having to alter the online shop you have.

User-friendliness and Management

In the business world, time is money. It's not a good idea to waste time on a platform which is difficult to navigate or difficult for new staff members to understand, and needs a programmer to create every single modification.

While you can employ a web developer to handle your website if you'd prefer but you don't need to do so in order to get the most of your store. As we mentioned earlier, the Block Editor enables you to move, rearrange, and delete elements by simply dragging and dropping. Want to revise your products? It's easy to do this through the use of buttons, and then changing fields. No codes required!

Store managers have access to everything from inventory figures and site analytics to order information all from one location. If you're using products such as Jetpack CRM, Shipping and Payments, you'll be able to print labels, paypal invoices, refunds, quotes and more directly through your dashboard, too.

And if you do want to engage a professional to develop, maintain, or customize your store, check out our list of WooExperts. They're vetted, high-quality agencies ready to help!

Build and grow your B2B eCommerce business with

No matter if you're an established B2B firm or new to the market, this platform provides all the features and flexibility needed to expand. In addition, it could enhance the experience of customers and can improve the efficiency of your staff.

Do you want to grow? Get started with the top B2B eCommerce platform today.