logo
logo
Sign in

Solving the B2B E-commerce Checkout Experience

avatar
lee carl
Solving the B2B E-commerce Checkout Experience

In the past decade, digitization has fueled immense growth in online revenue, both for B2C and B2B companies.

The B2C world has leveraged on artificial intelligence and automation to deliver increased customer convenience.

Due to this, buyer expectations for convenience have increased, pushing B2B companies to adapt selling strategies that suit the needs of their online consumers.

Customer and product nature, however, remains vastly different for B2B and B2C companies, making it impossible for the B2B industry to mirror web layouts of B2C giants like Amazon and Alibaba.

B2B Shopping – Unique Features

Consumer relationships with business customers are complex and dynamic. For one, B2B consumers expect customization in everything from product specifications to delivery.

  1. Pricing Variations

Incorporating complex pricing tiers for a single product is necessary for a successful B2B e-commerce website.

These tiers may be dependent on the specific customer, order bundling, and product group.

Individualized product and service configurations are critical to a successful B2B transaction.

  1. Multiple Stakeholders

According to a recent CEB survey, an average of 5.4 people is involved in one B2B shopping experience.

This data indicates that different consumer teams (including product supervisors, procurement experts, and quality assurance managers) are included in addressing various features of the product they are shopping.

Product customization, therefore, extends beyond the adjustment of superficial features demanded by one team.

  1. Personal Supplier-consumer Relationships

For decades, B2B consumer relationships have been highly personal. Built on human-trust that comes with sales representatives, these consumer relationships need individual attention.

B2B e-commerce must be conducive to such personalized business-consumer traits.

Ensuring hassle-free cross-geography delivery, pricing and quotation features, and dynamic customer-service systems is a necessity for successful B2B businesses.

A B2B vendor who wishes to see profits via e-commerce must incorporate all these features while maintaining an engaging website design and robust consumer service strategies.

Learn more about several optimization features that make the checkout process convenient and attractive for buyers and thereby help ensure B2B customer retention.

  1. Clean Navigation Process

Due to the complexities involved in a B2B customer relationship, many companies have e-commerce websites filled with cumbersome navigation features.

B2B buyers know their exact needs and do not need excessive product recommendations or extensive searches to shop for their desired products.

If customers spend a lot of time searching for products through different navigation layers on your website, they are likely to become impatient even before the checkout process begins.

Ensure optimum clarity of product navigation and avoid internal navigation jargon to make the shopping processes friction-free for buyers.

Incorporate traditional B2B shopping workflows and custom catalogs for registered buyers to give conventional customers a sense of familiarity.

  1. Streamlined Checkout

Modern B2B customers do not have the patience for a confusing checkout process involving multiple pricing details and a tiring registration process.

A transparent checkout process is less likely to result in cart abandonment. To avoid losing potential buyers, make your checkout portal compact, concise, and hassle-free.

Restrict checkout to a single page if possible and reduce distracting headers and footers. Offer both registration-based and guest purchasing options to avoid driving away consumers.

A significant way to boost customer engagement is by displaying checkout progress with interactive graphics. Delivery-related details, shipping costs, handling time, and “edit order” options are also recognizable features of the checkout page.

  1. Payment Optimization

B2B purchasers look for payment methods that go beyond credit cards, debit cards, and cash. Ensure that your website offers price quotation forms and purchase order payments, displays bulk quantity discounts, and options for customized prices in addition to electronic and cash payment methods.

Above all, do not let payment details remain unprotected at any stage. Any breach of customer privacy will cause a loss of trust in your brand.

  1. Avoid Redundancy

Many B2B e-commerce checkout portals require buyers to fill in shipping and billing details every time they shop for products. Modern customers hate such repetition.

Automation makes it possible to eliminate redundant checkout features. Ensure that your website’s checkout portal has auto-fill features for addresses and previous order details.

To further consumer convenience, make your ecommerce site a part of your omnichannel customer servicing strategy.

Keeping aside these primary attributes, industry specifications will dictate the ideal checkout experience for your B2B consumers. Manual B2B systems allow for personalization.

Ecommerce platforms must catch up with this need by incorporating enhanced purchasing information gateways, guided navigation techniques, product cataloging, and pricing segmentation.

Analyze operational data to understand the sales cycle lengths and consumer preferences better before choosing the perfect Salesforce solution for your B2B web checkout portal.

To make your website more buyer-friendly, borrow the best checkout page optimization practices from the B2C industry while keeping layered pricing and product customization features intact.

 

Source: B2B E-commerce Checkout

collect
0
avatar
lee carl
guide
Zupyak is the world’s largest content marketing community, with over 400 000 members and 3 million articles. Explore and get your content discovered.
Read more