Post Link: B2B e-Commerce: How it's Different From B2C

B2B e-Commerce: How it's Different From B2C

When considering how to structure the customer experience you’ll deliver to your business andconsumer customers, it’s important to appreciate and consider the key differences that existbetween these two buyer personas and the nuances in how they make purchase decisions.Let's take a look at B2B e-Commerce, and how it's different from its B2C counterpart.

The Buying Process

Unlike consumer purchasers, B2B buyers typically have purchasing products as part of their jobresponsibilities. Rather than a leisurely stroll down 5th Avenue on a Sunday afternoon,procurement is an important function that will either accelerate or impair your partner’s ability togenerate revenue.

In a first time order, products are purchased in bulk, commonly with a larger overall volume ofeach individual product and usually with a wider mix of categories in order to fill the display for anew addition. Often, B2B businesses will offer samples for first time buyers and choose to addthese at the time of fulfillment.

In a repeat or reorder scenario - there is an important emphasis placed on speed of execution,accuracy and expedited fulfilment as the buyer looks to replace an empty shelf as quickly aspossible.

For these reasons, B2B buying experiences need to allow users to easily add high volumes ofquantities across multiple categories, break quantities down by multiple ship dates, and toquickly access order history and duplicate past orders in a reorder scenario.

In both cases, the buyer is making an investment in your line and often taking significantinventory risk onto their balance sheet by choosing to do business with you. To aid thedecision-making process, it’s important that brands provide specific, relevant content for B2Bbuyers.

B2B Specific Content

B2B buyers purchasing from you online typically need to educate their retail staff or salesrepresentatives on the merits of your product and the retail unit economics (price, margin) ofeach SKU, so that they might effectively on-sell the product to others. Even if your buyers arepurchasing your products as an input to their existing business, they need to be knowledgeableand conversant in the particular value your product delivers.

As a supplier, it’s important that your retail training program is complemented by a self-servelibrary of product education resources like sell-sheets, training videos and merchandisingguidelines. Not only does this help to minimize unnecessary customer service calls; bettereducated buyers have better sell-through rates and higher rates of customer retention.

Customer Access

A pretty major difference between publicly available B2C e-Commerce stores and a fully-functioning B2B e-Commerce portal is the level of access provided by default to a user on themanufacturer or distributor’s website.

Typically, any anonymous buyer on the internet can access a B2C website and browse theselection and pricing, while B2B environments require validated identity and accessrequirements. In other words, they are “invite only.”

The approval workflows required for a given B2B buyer to gain access to your store will alwaysbe somewhat unique to your business, but may include important requirements like creditchecks, territory evaluation to avoid retailer/dealer territory conflict, minimum order volumeagreements or other terms or conditions.

While these common stipulations do cause somewhat of a new B2B customer registrationbottleneck, the “always logged in” nature of B2B e-Commerce affords some great opportunitiesfor very personalized and targeted marketing based on purchase history, behavioral triggersand more, since every interaction on the platform is tied very specifically to a unique, knownaccount.

Customer-specific Pricing and Promotional Structure

Besides the initial customer “registration approval,” B2B e-Commerce sites require a loginbecause of the importance of customer-specific pricing––often on a per-product basis––that

needs to be correctly presented to a given buyer. Pricing terms are also commonly set on a per-account basis. Without this, buyer confidence is lost and the buyer will be forced resort to offlinechannels without the option of convenient online ordering.

In B2B, “gold,” “silver,” and “bronze” pricing tiers applied by customer group are so common asto be almost expected by buyers. Here’s an example of Typical “Tiered” Customer GroupPricing:

Customer Group List Price Discount Wholesale Price

Gold $1 30% $0.70

Silver $1 20% $0.80

Bronze $1 10%$0.90

Some B2B businesses also choose to apply more complex pricing and eligibility for eachindividual product they sell, often based on an account’s past purchase history for that SKU.Here’s an example:

Individual Customer Product SKU 001 Price Product SKU 002 Price

Customer A $1.05 $4.50

Customer B $0.98 $5.00

Customer C $1.03$4.75

These pricing structures are not nearly so commonly afforded to consumers, and they’re usuallyunsupported or at least very difficult to manage on B2C e-Commerce platforms.

There’s a host of other critical nuances that are mostly unique to the B2B purchasing use case:

Minimums and case packs●

Complex product variant structures that are company or industry specific●

MSRP and MAP information●

Customer-specific payment ship method eligibility●

Sales tax exemptions●

At Handshake, we passionately believe that despite the nuances, there is an importantoverriding concern critical to both providing a great customer experiences for both B2B andB2C channels: a simple, beautiful and intuitive user interface. Make your site a joy to use, andgood things will happen.

We strive to power a superior customer experience using the best of modern web and mobiletechnologies, while tailoring the environment to the unique characteristics of B2B buying.

What makes your B2B buyers unique from your consumer customers? What’s different abouthow you do business with them? In what ways are their expectations similar? Let us know in thecomments.Post originally located at: https://www.handshake.com/blog/b2b-e-commerce-how-its-diff-rent-from-b2c/

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