By optimizing your business to business (B2B) store for the digital landscape you can help increase revenue from existing customers and even attract new ones. According to Gartner, 80% of B2B transactions will take place on digital channels by 2025. 

As highlighted by 360 Research Reports, there is 18% annual growth in B2B eCommerce. This shows the potential for digital storefronts who optimize and streamline their purchasing process by using enterprise commerce platforms. For a B2B store, online transactions are the lifeblood of your organization’s structure. These optimizations can help you and your clients have a better online experience, which will ultimately lead to an increase in sales. In this article, we'll dive into ten specific tips to help you reach your potential audience and increase revenue of your B2B store.

Short on time? Here are the key takeaways

• B2B transactions will primarily take place online, so optimizing your digital store to be more efficient for customers can help increase sales. 
• Optimize your store with an enterprise commerce platform.
• Effective optimizations for your B2B store include adding geolocation features, product bundles, a rapid order system, creating a product comparison tool, promoting associated products, restricting product assortment, ordering via quote, making shopping collaborative, creating FAQs, and offering tiered pricing.  

Tip #1: Add geolocation to offer closest products first

When running a business and ordering products, convenience and efficiency are always important. To help your potential customers, you should incorporate geolocation features into your B2B eCommerce store. By utilizing geolocation data you can offer your clients the closest products first, streamlining their ordering process and reducing shipping times. 

For example, you are a coffee supplier that sells to hotel or restaurant chains. Your returning customer needs to reorder their coffee supplies. When the staff logs into their account to reorder coffee supplies from their usual supplier, they are asked to input their location through their postal code. The eCommerce platform can use this geolocation data to filter the product listings and show the closest options first. This will show the hotel or restaurant that the coffee supplies they typically order are farther away. But another very similar product is located closer to them. 

Tip #2: Create a product comparison tool

For businesses that are centered around more technical products, a product comparison feature would be highly valuable. Buyers of technical products are usually looking for very specific sizes, technical specs, and more that can be overwhelming when trying to search the many options for products online. By providing a framework for the customer to compare your most similar products can help with making informed decisions and avoid confusion. 

As part of a b2b order management software, this tool could allow buyers to compare various aspects of your products side by side. The more clear your products are to them, the better the experience and the more likely they are to buy more and be a repeat customer. 

For example, let’s look at DeSter, a company that specializes in packaging solutions for airlines. Of the products they offer, there are two types of food boxes that are for in-flight service. One is  adapted to withstand heat and another is not. A client that is looking to purchase food boxes for their airlines may find it confusing to understand the difference between the two options. By utilizing a product comparer, DeSter can make it clear to the customer what the key attributes are of the products. This will ultimately help the buyer make an informed decision and create trust for DeSter as a brand. 

Tip #3: Promote associated products

Another strategy that will help with closing a sale and keep satisfied customers coming back is to promote associated products. If what a customer is looking for is out stock, associated products are strategically promoted to show related or alternative options. Not only are you being proactive but you are also creating a customized shopping experience.

For example, let’s look at a business that specializes in providing products and machinery for lawn care companies. One of their most sold products is a specific portable water pump, which is currently out of stock. A repeat customer comes to their website in need of the water pump for an upcoming project and sees that it is out of stock. Instead of leaving the customer empty handed and allowing them to find the product somewhere else the storefront employs the associated product strategy with their checkout software. This means that the customer is shown alternatives to the water pump that is made by a different manufacturer and is very similar to what they were originally looking for. 

Tip #4: Restrict product assortment

When a customer comes to your B2B storefront, the overall goal is to save them time and enable the best choices. Searching through endless product catalogs can quickly become overwhelming and time-consuming for buyers trying to find the right product. To address this challenge, you can create restricted product assortments based on criteria and prioritize showing offers based on pertinent guidelines. Below we dive into examples of both restricted product assortments and pertinent products. 

Restricted Product Assortments: A major French retail chain similar to Target, sells products to their locations in the Middle East. However, regulations in several Middle East countries limit the sale of alcohol. To ensure compliance and buyer satisfaction, Monoprix offers restricted product catalogs that eliminate alcohol products from showing in regions where alcohol sales are restricted. 

Pertinent Product Assortments: Imagine a construction company that supplies materials to builders. They might limit product assortment by certain pertinent criteria they’ve identified in the marketplace, such as recyclable or anti-seismic materials, based on local regulations. They might also know that a specific region has a preference for local wood, and restrict product assortments thusly.

Expert Advice: With a headless ecommerce platform, you can easily tailor your product assortments to specific audiences or market segments. By restricting product offerings based on relevant criteria, like customer preferences, you can streamline the shopping experience on your B2B store. 

Tip #5: Offer product bundles

Product bundling can increase sales by being strategic to your clients needs and offering several relevant products at a competitive price. Product bundling entails offering complementary products that are similar to your best-sellers at a great price. By thoughtfully curating your customers' needs, you can enhance loyalty and trust as a brand. 

For example, during the Easter season, a company that is a supplier for wholesale chocolate can offer a bundle that contains premium chocolates and woven baskets. This bundle will be attractive to businesses that want to simplify the purchase of seasonal products. Another example would be distributors of painting supplies. A great product bundle would be of supplies such as paint cans, brushes, and rollers with protective coveralls. This bundle offers a convenient solution for buyers that are working on a painting project. 

Tip #6: Implement a rapid order system

By implementing a rapid order system in the ecommerce catalog, a B2B store can offer its customers a seamless solution for purchasing products. A rapid order system can be implemented in many different ways. For simplicity we will break it into two categories: reorder and new order. 

Reorder: By accessing their order history, customers can simply reorder the same products in one click and change the quantity if need be. This is a valuable feature for a vendor management portal, and a great time saver for B2Bs since the validation workflows are long and complex. This ultimately creates a great customer experience because it eliminates the need to manually search for products again.

New order: Through a new order system, customers should be able to drag and drop an excel sheet into their eCommerce platform. This tool allows customers to place orders quickly and efficiently. 

Both tools not only create a great customer experience but also saves customers time. 

Let’s look at an example of a fashion shoe supplier that sells that has large customers like Foot Locker. With a rapid order system in place Foot Locker can re-order their “classic” collection ensuring their popular products are always in stock without the hassle of picking each individual product. 

Tip #7: Promote one-stop-shopping: Order via quote

Create efficiency for your customers by enabling ordering via quotes. Through this tool, customers will avoid the hassle of searching through complicated email transfers and sending quotes back and forth. Suppliers can also manage and track quotes in a dedicated area. For B2B that has high transaction volumes efficiency is necessary. Quote management software not only ensures accuracy but also streamlines the buying process.

Let’s consider an example in the medical field where a supplier specializes in providing equipment for MRI machines. A client is in need of a quote for 300 gradient coils for new MRI machines. Using the one-stop-shopping tool the supplier creates a quote directly in the eCommerce platform. The customer then accesses the quote also in the platform, eliminating any back and forth email exchange. The customer can review, negotiate or approve the quote quickly and efficiently.  

Tip #8: Make shopping collaborative

Anyone, in any role, should be able to play a part in ordering online. Sales teams should be able to place orders for clients, while clients themselves can create wishlists or modify orders based on their needs and roles. Employees can work together by creating wishlists that are then reviewed by their superiors. These tools allow everyone involved in the shopping process to have their own role and permissions to make the task simple and collaborative. Through an eCommerce cloud platform, like DJUST, everything is centralized in one place so there are no more Excel sheets or PDFs flying around that can lead to mistakes or extend the buying process. Making shopping collaborative will enhance your overall customer experience and create more customer loyalty. 

Imagine that you are a fashion company selling intimate apparel. You supply to department stores like Nordstrom. Through the eCommerce platform, a junior buyer from Nordstrom creates a wishlist for the upcoming season and input is given from their superiors to refine the selections. This guarantees that the final choice of products meets the needs of Nordstrom for the upcoming season. 

Tip #9: Create an FAQ page

One solution for addressing common questions and elevating some of the work from your customer service team is to create a FAQ page on your B2B website. FAQs are a heavily used resource and can be a huge boost to the customer experience on your B2B store since it’s a tool for finding answers to common questions and resolving an issue before it is brought to your customer service team. A product detail page simply can’t contain all the information available to answer any question, and the FAQ page can really help. 

For example, DeSter, a company that specializes in packaging solutions for airlines that was mentioned previously, can utilize FAQs by having readily available information about products, sustainability, how ordering and shipping works, and options for customization. 

Tip #10: Offer tiered pricing for volume orders

Encourage customers to buy more of your product by implementing a tiered pricing structure based on the number of items purchased. Incentivize larger orders by clearly laying out your pricing model through the eCommerce platform. Tiered pricing will also encourage long-term trust and loyalty by showing your customers that your products have value. Price list software is key for implementing this strategy.

For example, a wholesale distributor of office supplies that has corporate clients can benefit from tiered pricing. When a corporate client wants to restock their office supplies, they will be encouraged to order from the wholesale distributor since they will get significant savings when restocking their entire office’s pens, paper, and more.  

Expert Advice: DJUST offers a comprehensive solution for optimizing your B2B store. Our products can assist you with everything mentioned in this article and more.  

The bottom line

To drive revenue and attract more customers, B2B stores need to optimize and adapt to digital channels. This can be done through many great features such as geolocation for personalized recommendations and product comparison tools for informed decision-making.

In order to implement strategies like this you need great software that allows you to have a modular approach to B2B eCommerce. By saving your customers time and creating efficiency, you will see a growth in your B2B sales with customers coming back for more.