Making B2B Ecommerce Work For Your Business

By: Andy Wagner - Portaltech

published 1293031910

B2B ecommerce has grown steadily in recent years to a point where it is considered a normal part of business for many companies. As B2B customers become more "online savvy" with ever increasing expectations, companies are having to review their B2B ecommerce channel to make sure that it provides great service, and is not alienating suppliers and customers alike.

There are several unique aspects to a B2B transactional website that you must get right - underlying platform, key features and functions, business processes - but it is becoming increasingly important to adopt many of the features and online practices seen in consumer facing websites.

Successful B2B websites need to offer more than an "online ordering pad". They need to provide customers with the more personalised, online shopping experience that they have come to expect in their consumer lives. Companies that want to ensure that their B2B transactional websites are able to drive new business, improve conversion rates and increase revenue should consider the following issues when reviewing a new platform and implementation partner.

Search & Merchandising

While the "Quick Order Form" is still an expedient feature, there is no reason you shouldn't take the opportunity to present customers with other product options or accessories during that process. Up-Sells and Cross-Sells are standard features on a B2C site for good reason - they increase sales and Average Order Value. In addition to a proper search mechanism that uses product name, manufacturers code and keywords, good product catalogue navigation increases the likelihood your customers will find what they're looking for on your site. Key elements for proper navigation include the ability to navigate by both product and brand.

In order to facilitate these features, the new platform should have a modern product database (PIM) that allows you to enhance and link the product information so that it can drive effective navigation, search and merchandising capability. Ideally, the platform should include merchandising features and be flexible enough to allow you to upgrade to more high-end solutions without requiring you to re-platform again.

Shopping Basket & Checkout

The aim of any successful shopping basket & checkout is to provide maximum flexibility and convenience around delivery and/or collection in order to increase conversion and customer retention. If you have a traditional bricks & mortar business, it is even more important to get this right as integrating the online channel with your store channel can provide a more consistent proposition for your customers, without alienating your store operations team.

A relatively simple way to offer better service to your account customers is to provide them the ability to create "Job Lists" which can easily be "dropped" into the basket for purchase. These lists allow your customers to organise their purchases around their projects and customers, making it easier for them to provide "quotes" and place orders when ready. The platform should also cater for multiple delivery addresses and ideally manage these in a customer address book.

Again, if you have branches you should consider allowing your customers to place an order online and collect at their local branch or a different branch if more convenient. This will reinforce the relationship your customers already have with their local branch staff as well as provide more immediate customer service should it be required. Your branches will also play an important role in promoting the use of your new website and should therefore be thoroughly trained, aware of how it works and ultimately become an advocate of the cross channel experience.

From a procurement perspective you should also look for the ability to work with multiple pricelists and account limits. How you implement multiple pricelists is down to your business processes - by customer groups or individually negotiated per customer - but it will be critical that any new platform can manage multiple pricelists across the same product catalogue. This is the first step in providing a solution that more closely supports your customers' established purchasing processes. Taking this to the next level, you should look to create customer account spending limits that can be managed by a customer directly. They should be able to create individual purchasing accounts and set "spending limits" accordingly for each purchaser. Further services would include the ability for your customers to generate spending and order history reports on a periodic basis. Lastly, ensure the platform is capable of managing system generated emails to keep your customers informed of order status including partial orders sent, completed order and possibly even scanned proof of delivery if appropriate.

Other methods of purchase should include payment by credit card. You may also want to consider implementing a "punch out" system for even tighter integration with your customers, although this can quickly become a very complex project in its own right.

Knowledge Base

Another valuable lesson to be learned from the B2C market is that in addition to being a trading vehicle, your B2B website should provide a wealth of product and "know-how" information to increase customer retention. Many studies have shown that the more product information you provide the better the conversion rate will be. The more information you provide your customers with to support the use of the product range, the more likely they will be to return to your website. This becomes even more important if you've implemented promotion and merchandising capabilities, as the types of information your customers are looking for provides a perfect opportunity to merchandise appropriate products and services.

Business Processes & Project Sponsorship

While this is not unique to a B2B website project, it is worth reiterating that it is critical to review your business processes alongside any new ecommerce website implementation. Many of the topics discussed above, while providing the opportunity to increase revenue and customer retention, will impact your existing business processes and back-office systems. In many cases you will need to make changes to them in order to fully support functionality implemented in the new ecommerce website. This process is best managed in partnership with your chosen ecommerce platform supplier as they will be ideally positioned to help you understand what the business will need to do in order to support and maximise the investment and provide the expected returns.

Anybody who has been through a business process change will tell you it can be painful at best. For this reason it is imperative that you secure proper project "sponsorship" at a decision-making level within the business to ensure the required changes have senior backing to see them through to implementation. In addition to a "project sponsor", you also need to ensure you have input from the affected areas within the business as well as allocating the appropriate time required to review and modify the existing business processes. Make this effort part of the ecommerce website implementation plan as there will be technical project dependencies linked to those decisions!

Find out more at www.portaltech.co.uk