Top B2B E-commerce Trends
According to global research firm Forrester, B2B online sales are projected to reach $1.2 Trillion by 2021. In order to get the most of that market share, small businesses particularly in the CPG manufacturing and distribution sector will need to keep up with the following top B2B e-commerce trends.
Go mobile already!
Back in 2015, Google released a report entitled “The Changing Face of B2B Marketing”, that stated that 42% of B2B customers use mobile devices to do everything from research brands and products to price and attribute comparison to purchasing. These buyers are increasingly younger – many of them are millennials who have the same user experience (UX) expectations for B2B websites and mobile apps as they do B2C platforms. To stay competitive, you must update your brand’s website to be aesthetically pleasing, informative and easy to navigate and make purchases on a desktop computer as well as a mobile device.
Website Integration
It is becoming increasingly essential that a company’s e-commerce platform integrates with ERP add-ons and other third party tools for a dynamic fulfillment process. The inSitu Sales platform seamlessly integrates with SAP, Quickbooks, Microsoft Excel, Freshbooks and now, private access with Xero. This allows a company’s various teams from field Sales to Marketing to Warehouse Management to share updated product and customer information in real time, online and off.
Dynamic personalization
The inSitu Sales platforms make it very easy to provide B2B customers with a customized fulfillment process experience. Digital catalogs can be customized with customer-specific pricing and product assortments. Field salespeople are able to customize, revise and create new sales territories and routes as often as necessary. Customer-based reporting and analytics can be created and shared on the go.
Simplifying the fulfillment process
B2B e-commerce customers are demanding that payments, shipping/delivery, and customer support processes become easier, faster, more flexible and reliable than ever before. inSitu Sales platforms can certainly assist your company with all of these functions. Make it difficult for your customers to cancel or update orders, delivery dates, quantities and locations at your own risk! To automate customer service, try Zendesk so that customers can help themselves quickly by accessing Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), troubleshooting tips, live omnichannel support or an AI enabled Answer Bot.
Increase Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
CRO is the process of improving the conversion rate of web store visitors to purchasers. The rate for B2C e-commerce sites is typically 2-3%, but for B2B e-commerce it jumps to 10%. It is imperative that companies make it very easy for customers to find pertinent product information and make purchases quickly and easily. Your company should be dedicated to constantly improving the user experience with A/B testing, updating content, changing the navigation or infrastructure of a website as needed, and integrating other platforms or tools. It may even be helpful to poll or informally request feedback from customers to gain insights on where improvement should be made.
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