With the steady demand for online shopping, not just with consumers but businesses as well, a thriving company needs to familiarize itself with not just B2C eCommerce but B2B eCommerce and general eCommerce SEO services. Of course, the main way that most businesses sell is direct to the consumer, but selling to other businesses can be just as lucrative if done correctly.
Why Have Ecommerce Marketplaces Changed?
A B2B marketplace is a digital platform that allows businesses to connect with other companies to conduct operations, typically transactions or negotiations. This type of platform helps businesses place orders and transactions entirely online with the added bonus of a simplified and expedited transaction process all in one convenient place.
The B2B platform has existed for over two decades, becoming a vital source of trade for many small and medium businesses. However, a lot of large companies are still hesitant to change the way that they’re used to doing business. They are used to working directly with suppliers due to concerns about scale, quality, and reliability. Of course, that all started to change when people began to realize the potential of modern technology and digital marketplaces.
Most B2C enterprises, consumer brands, and retail sellers nowadays have enhanced the usage of digital platforms to get higher margins for their companies. So why should B2B eCommerce be any different? As long as you know the correct practices to follow, you can improve your opportunity to sell with other businesses too.
7 B2B Ecommerce Tips
Below are some of the most helpful tips that you should follow to ensure the greatest chance of success with eCommerce.
- Divide Customers Into Personalized Groups
Dividing your customer base into personalized groups is referred to as customer segmentation. It’s a good idea to do this so that you can identify how to best communicate with consumers in each group based on their age, gender, sexuality, interests, and spending habits. Depending on the information you gather, you can determine key customer behaviors and create an effective marketing strategy.
While this practice is mainly used for B2C selling and strategies, it can also be helpful when dealing with companies. Instead of separating by individual customers, you can divide the businesses by industry, the average age of employees, social campaigns, and goals. Along with finding the best way to attract both customers and businesses alike who want to buy your products or services, you can aim your marketing efforts at your most profitable and loyal group to save both time and money.
- Utilize Mobile/Social Shopping
In today’s technology-dependent society, the number of people shopping through mobile devices has increased dramatically, and B2B consumers are not an exception. With mobile and social shopping, B2B buyers can complete transactions and negotiations from absolutely anywhere. In fact, many people, especially younger users, prefer mobile and social shopping to shopping on a desktop.
In the United States, mobile commerce income via smartphones was predicted to produce sales of $221.2 billion in 2021. Going even further than that, mobile eCommerce sales are expected to exceed $400 billion by 2024. Why miss out on a rapidly growing platform? Having a mobile shopping option will do nothing but boost your sales.
- Keep It Simple
Unlike a B2C eCommerce store, where features and benefits can be pretty straightforward, a B2B eCommerce store tends to over-complicate its product or service. When you’re working on your eCommerce website, you have to make sure that you give any website visitors a clear understanding of who you are and why they should buy your product.
Limit Technical Terms: Don’t confuse visitors with too many technical terms that are used widely in your industry. It’s common that even your most valuable customer won’t have extensive industry knowledge, let alone know what they need help with, so it’s important to keep things simple.
Don’t Overcomplicate It: Avoid adding too much copy, too many colors, or too many images to your eCommerce website. Use simple navigation and a few complimentary colors so that any website visitor won’t be distracted or confused about what to focus on.
Explain and Help: Try to use more copy that focuses on features and how your software or product can help rather than using flashy or obvious sales techniques. Most people don’t like to be sold to. Instead, show them how you can improve their lives and increase sales for their business.
- Invest In Ecommerce Platforms
With eCommerce B2B on the rise, the number of B2B eCommerce platforms has increased significantly to help B2B businesses adapt more quickly. Whether you’re new to eCommerce or are just starting your B2B website, investing in eCommerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento, Opencart, and WooCommerce can help improve your eCommerce presence significantly.
B2B eCommerce platforms give your business the opportunity to utilize several specialized features, such as B2B customer portals, bulk orders, and volume pricing, to help you run your B2B website smoothly while also saving you some time. The drawback is that when you start selling across multiple channels, you’ll need a dashboard of all of your inventory in real time. Similarly, you’ll also likely want to use a single source of truth for product information, such as a product information management system, so that you don’t have to enter product information manually on each channel where you sell.
- Offer Flexible Pricing
By offering flexible pricing options, you can increase sales for your eCommerce store. When customers are looking for products and services from a fellow B2B, they don’t want to be tied down to any major expenses, especially if they just found your brand.
You’ll want to start by creating a solid eCommerce Pricing Strategy. An eCommerce pricing strategy is simply a set of rules or processes that you should use to price your products. You want to make sure that you’re not just focused on being the cheapest option but rather allowing for competitive pricing in the marketing based on who your biggest competitors are; this could mean using:
- Subscription-based payments
- Yearly contract payments
- Pay-as-you-go features
- Payment tiers (basic, mid-tier, etc.)
- Join Customer Review Websites
Reviews can either help grow your business or block you from a possible sale. In any industry, B2C or B2B, the reviews associated with your store are critical to getting companies to trust you. The majority of customers who shop online read reviews before making a purchase. In fact, 72% of customers refuse to make a purchase until they’ve read reviews.
The best eCommerce stores show off their good reviews and awards to build credibility and trust with brands. Think about the possibilities. If a business manager you have a good relationship with uses your products or services and is willing to leave a review, their review might sway other managers to buy from your store.
- Utilize Ecommerce SEO Services
Search engine optimization statistics suggest that 39% of global e-commerce traffic comes from search engines. Simply put, just having a website has never been enough to help your business grow. Investing in eCommerce SEO services is a must for a B2B or B2C company that wishes to succeed.
Quality SEO can drive awareness of your brand and allow the B2B community to find you. With 1.17 billion unique searches every month, you want to make sure that your company is at the top of that list when people search for topics or keywords related to your business. SEO can be as simple as using a hashtag or as advanced as utilizing high-level keywords to rank on the first page of Google. The best place to start is with a great SEO strategy to build your website structure and meet your SEO goals.
Shift Refresh is an SEO marketing agency in Ohio that helps businesses smash their competition and emerge as a leader in their respective industries with the help of our retail digital marketing services. We are ready to help your business not only grow but thrive. To learn more, call us at 1-888-467-3249 or visit our website
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