The world of B2B commerce has changed in the last couple of years. Clients expect an easy to use solution similar to what retail customers enjoy. Below we explore some of the must-have features and solutions that you have to offer your wholesale customers to make sure they have a pleasant experience and of course, buy more of your products.
The Ability for Customers to Self Manage Their Orders
Wholesale customers want to be able to order what they want and when they want without the need to pick up the phone or speak to a sales agent. Your e-Commerce store can provide this to your customers, 24/7. This allows them to search your full product offering, ask for quotes, place orders and reorders easily, and also log in to check their order status.
Makes Sales Available to B2B customers
Use retail sales techniques to market specials to your wholesale customers. Create special collections for on sale items, use suggestive text throughout the sales process to notify them of these items. This could be a popup when they land on-site, on product pages or when they land at checkout. Use non-intrusive messages that inform instead of annoy so they now what is on offer.
Website Copy Geared To Inform
Wholesale customers have different needs compared to their retail counterparts. Make sure that product descriptions and sales copy reflect this by highlighting what the product could mean for the wholesale buyer, and their customers. Help them understand why your products are the best and use video, images, and text to help inform them.
Mobile-Friendly First
Make sure you design from the start with mobile in mind. In the past B2B customers would sit in front of a desktop computer when ordering. That is no longer the case in today’s fast-paced world. Teams are on the move, and more often than not, do their buying from a phone or tablet device, on the road, or in the boardroom. Make sure your initial design is 100% mobile friendly and keep testing regularly.
Speed Optimisation and Image Loading
Keep your site running blazingly fast. Don’t make your users wait or give them a bad experience with a buggy site. Well built Shopify sites load almost instantly providing a great experience for visitors. You could further speed up your site by using a recommended Advanced Search Tool that indexes product data offsite. This takes the load away from your shop and will provide the visitor with a fast and seamless experience.
Make sure all images are resized and speed optimized. Don’t only check the site speed of the home page. Often we find that product pages are neglected with a negative impact on conversion rates right where you need it the most.
Use Landing Page To Drive Conversions
Create category-specific landing pages with ideally one Call To Action per page. This will help drive leads to the single action you deem most profitable. Connect landing page events to Google Ad Tracking to get even more analytics data that show you where your ad budget is going to.
CTA’s That Drive Sales
Use Call-To-Actions throughout your site to help drive prospects to certain actions. That might be signing up for your newsletter, clicking through to the Sales section, or any desired action you need from your visitors. Make use of a copywriter to write or edit existing CTA’s with your Wholesale customers in mind.
Must-Have Ordering Features
Wholesale customers have different needs to retail so ensure that you are providing the ordering experience to match those needs. This includes:
- Bulk Orders
- Bulk Discounts
- Min Order Quantity
- Order Forms
- Re-orders
Educate your B2B Customers
Informational content can make your brand stand out above the competition.
Make intelligent use of of the following in your site:
- Informative blog posts
- Product descriptions
- How-To Videos
- Newsletters
- FAQ sections
- Infographics
- eBooks
And lastly, webinars can help your B2B customers understand your products better and in turn, how they can help drive sales on their end.
Customer Reviews & Case Studies
Customer reviews ads social proof, building trust in the products. It also helps shoppers understand how it helped other buyers. Reviews might even boost your SEO by boosting clickthrough rates.
Case studies can showcase to potential buyers how your products or services have impacted other businesses.
The Final Step in Purchasing Funnel
Make sure your final pages are frictionless and easy to navigate. Make it clear what the next step is, try and be upfront about any additional charges, and don’t leave any surprises in this section.
Immediate Invoicing and Fast Payments
Your customers now have the ability to checkout on their own and buy your products. The system generates the invoice immediately when the order is placed and sends it to the customer. This saves you and your staff time by not having to manually create and send invoices.
This also improves the speed at which you get paid, improving your cash flow, and helping to get the products shipped to the customer faster. A win, win for everyone.
Study Your Analytics
Regularly check your Shopify Reports dashboard to see where you can improve your site. Check what products are popular or which ones might be falling behind in sales. See where your users are coming from and compare that to what you are spending your marketing budget on. If most of your ad spend is going to Social Media, but that medium provides few conversions, then it might be time to reconsider and adjust.
All of the above will help to improve customer satisfaction, reduce frustration, and improve the customer journey. This in turn will help to get your B2B customers to come back and spend more. The benefits of improving your B2B offering with an e-Commerce solution is manifold. It opens up new ways to reach and market to your customers and will improve your profits and reduce costs.
A Final Note
Outsourcing the Development
Outsourcing the Wholesale Shopify development of your e-Commerce store is the smart choice to make in the short and long term. Our team can get you online in record time.
It will save your time, that of your staff, improve the time it takes to take your product to market, and reduce costs in the long term. We know how to get the right solution in place for your unique business needs. We've learned many lessons through all our past projects. This allows you to benefit from our extensive experience in the e-Commerce space.
