Creating Great Digital Shopping Experience for B2B Dealers

There is a huge difference between the buying experiences provided by retail companies to their consumers and to their wholesalers. Retailers often strive hard to create a great intuitive B2C consumer experience yet hardly make efforts to smoothen the B2B purchase process. Here we are discussing few aspects that can be done to improve B2B shopping experience.

Online Access for B2B

It is desirable to provide online access to B2B dealers via separate portal in your e-commerce site rather than working over phone with them. It will not only streamline the ordering process but also provide an improved wholesaler experience.

Address B2B needs

While designing the B2B portal you have to keep in the mind that the needs of wholesalers are quite distinct than usual customers. For instance, usually an e-commerce site is built such that a buyer can add a single product to the shopping cart and then choose a size or quantity. But a wholesaler would need multiple products of varying sizes, colours and quantities. Also the products may be needed for multiple locations and the site must provide these flexibilities to B2B dealers so that they also can gain the same frontend experience as B2C customers. Presently, business sites are not addressing the B2B needs and hence dealers have to place their orders by phone or via a spreadsheet.

Give login credentials to dealers

As the B2B needs are quite different from B2C needs, the dealers must be given login credentials to unlock multiple levels of access so that they can use the site differently than usual B2C customers. For example, the dealers often need to replenish their inventory that has come down. By using their login credentials they can just add to cart what they need, for example, fifteen size 8 jackets in green, four size 10 jackets in purple, and six size 6 jackets in blue. This purchase can be done in minutes and this flexibility in turn simplifies their own selling process.

Allow saving multiple carts

B2B dealers may have brick and mortar stores at multiple locations and in that case they may need the ability to save multiple shopping carts. They may be creating multiple orders and may be leaving carts in different levels of order completion. This could be quite challenging for site builders to offer dealers the ability to switch orders as well as store WIP (Work In Progress) orders. But all can be accomplished with a user-friendly interface that is consistent. There are many e-commerce platforms out there like Drupal, Magento, etc., which are quite promising and you can build a user interface for your B2B dealers to provide them with seamless purchasing experience and in turn build trust and long term B2B relationship.

View more information on Outsourcing E-commerce Développement, E-commerce Développement Spécialiste and Magento Certified Solution Specialist.