Knowing which features to look for when investing in a B2B eCommerce platform will help save considerable time and money and spare your business numerous headaches. Furthermore, choosing a platform with all the recommended functionalities will allow your business to stay ahead of the competition.
This article will lead you through ten essential features that a good B2B Commerce platform should ideally have to catapult your business into the digital world successfully. Furthermore, we have included some optional but nonetheless nice-to-have features.
10 Essential B2B eCommerce Platform Features
The following ten B2B eCommerce features are the ones that should be present on your chosen platform. Please note that they also apply to marketplace management platforms.
B2B buyers are considerably different to B2C customers. For example, the various job functions in their organisation will likely need tailored access to varying levels of information in your system. A good B2B eCommerce platform will be capable of accommodating that by granting differing access permissions, both at user and administrator levels.
It is common for B2B accounts to have various user types within the same organisation, particularly where a company has several divisions and multiple operating units. Each user type will invariably have differing roles and require different purchasing rights.
Therefore, a good B2B eCommerce platform should be capable of handling a range of different complex corporate account structures. Moreover, customers will want to do things like create purchasing rules, etc., so make sure your chosen platform allows them to make their own configurations.
Customers increasingly prefer to do things for themselves. For example, rather than deal face-to-face or over the ‘phone with a salesperson, they now want to find product data online and then request and receive quotations electronically. Furthermore, they will want to track or amend orders by themselves.
Having flexible self-service options will enhance customer experience, and that is beneficial in nurturing strong business relationships.
Your customers may have several brands operating internationally. Therefore, your platform must be capable creating multiple websites and storefronts catering to multiple languages, currencies, and tax jurisdictions.
Detailed technical and marketing literature, such as product descriptions and datasheets, certifications, promotions, instructional videos, etc., are essential to marketing your products. Furthermore, the literature should address your customers’ questions and concerns upfront without needing them to contact you.
All good B2B eCommerce platforms have a content management system (CMS) that can tailor marketing material and other documentation to each customer’s individual needs.
This is linked to the CMS mentioned above. All good B2B eCommerce platforms allow for the creation and management of personalised catalogues, which will enable your customers to find the exact products they need quickly.
Ideally, the product catalogues should be tailorable to individual companies and their various divisions, business units, and even individual buyers within them.
Pricing of products in B2B eCommerce can be very complex because different prices will be needed for each customer based on factors like payment terms, volume, discounts, and pricing rules. Therefore, good B2B eCommerce platforms will have integrated capability to create multiple price lists for each customer taking account of those factors.
Your chosen platform needs to offer multiple shopping lists to customers. This is because they may have several business units, each of which might run several projects or product lines concurrently. Furthermore, each business unit may have different purchasing requirements.
Good B2B eCommerce platforms can gather vast amounts of data on your customers’ purchasing habits and allow you to manipulate and present that data precisely how you want it. The data can then be used to help you better serve your customers’ needs and for marketing purposes.
Nowadays, everything in life seems to be in a constant state of flux, including businesses and the markets in which they operate. The way we do things must evolve to accommodate changing demands and altered conditions. Therefore, a B2B eCommerce platform must be capable of supporting unlimited custom workflows for your and your customers’ current and future processes.
Optional ‘Nice-To-Have’ B2B eCommerce Platform Features
While the ten features covered above are essential, here are three additional ones that can lift a platform to an even higher level in terms of enhanced user experience and increased operational efficiency:
Unfortunately, buyers can be rather demanding, each having different wants and needs that they expect sellers to accommodate, and invoicing and payments are no exception.
Therefore, it would be a good idea to choose a platform capable of managing a range of payment methods and gateways, currencies, tax rates, bespoke credit terms, etc. while integrating with your own internal financial and accounting systems.
The benefits of integrating a B2B eCommerce platform with existing accounting and financial systems have already been covered. However, integration does not just end there. Having the capability to integrate other existing or future systems such as e-commerce logistics will not only further automate your business but will also reduce or even eliminate human errors that can plague data entry and transfer operations.
Irrespective of how advanced they may be, B2B eCommerce websites can never replace an actual salesperson. That said, a good B2B eCommerce platform can significantly streamline the buyer-seller relationship.
One way to simplify the negotiation process is to allow customers to electronically submit inquiries, RFQs, and purchase orders through the same platform used to manage responses from the seller’s side.
Everybody Wins When You Choose the Right B2B eCommerce Solution
Your B2B eCommerce website is likely to be the very first thing new customers will see of your brand, and it is something that your current customers will frequently interact with, too. And while it goes without saying that the website should look professional, it is equally important that it serves customers’ needs and expectations.
Therefore, before looking for a suitable B2B eCommerce platform, you need to understand your customers properly. Think about their wants and needs while considering how those might look in the future. Only then can you go about identifying a platform that meets your customers’ expectations and fulfils the requirements of your own business.
Such careful thought when choosing a B2B eCommerce platform will pay dividends in both the short and long term; not only will your business operate more efficiently, but your customers will also appreciate how it helps their businesses.businesses.
