B2B Functionality 101

A good eCommerce platform can handle two things: B2C functionality and B2B functionality. As consumers ourselves, we feel pretty confident about what we like about sites that we purchase items from. Whether it’s shopping for clothes on a personal level or shopping for our business - we know what to expect from the overall purchasing process. There’s nothing more frustrating when something doesn’t go right. So, what happens when something goes extremely well and enhances your buying experience? From a business standpoint: you get repeat customers and increase revenue. From a user’s perspective: you’ve found a site that you are comfortable with, and are willing to go back time and time again.

As an online store owner, you want your customers to feel like your website is providing these positive online buying experiences. You want them to feel comfortable with your website. For yourself, you want an easy to use platform that makes entering, updating and syncing data as easy as possible. But, most importantly, what you want from your online store is for your customers to get the most out of your site with little to no issues.

It’s important to know the “must have” functionality of a great B2B eCommerce site to enhance your customer experience and increase rate of purchase.

Complex Customer Pricing

One of the first and most important B2B features is complex customer pricing. Tailored pricing for different accounts or customers is not a new concept. Companies have provided discounts and custom pricing for many years, but now, it’s a feature that most eCommerce platforms have available upon setting up the online store. Choosing an eCommerce platform that has this capability is key.

According to Lumoa.com, “At least 80% of B2B buyers are not only looking for but EXPECT a buying experience like that of a B2C customer”.

Most B2C sites show pricing for everyone and it’s easy to set up one price per product, but, with B2B, it’s much more complicated on who gets what price. Giving customers the ability to log into a site and see products, announcements and pricing catered to them is a “must have” for many businesses. You can choose to show before discounted prices, nudging the customers to see what a big discount they are getting. You can set up a discount rate date - using a marketing urgency strategy to get customers to purchase faster. You also need the ability to show discounted pricing based upon volume purchasing; whether by item or total purchase.

Reorder Button

Another important feature would be the Reorder Button. The reorder button resides within the online portal of a customer's account order page.

Giving repeat customers the option to click a simple reorder button from a previous order is easy. Since most businesses who order in bulk usually do it on a timeline (for example, bi-monthly). They love the idea of having everything as easy as one click away from ordering everything they need. Not having to go in and recreate an order; adding line item by line item, saves your customers time and money and allows them to focus on other business tasks.

Import and Export Tool

Another must have feature for B2B organizations is the Import / export tool. This allows for an easy upload of all your images and marketing data to the site with one simple data upload; getting a quick-to-market website up and running with little to no issues.

Accounts Receivable (AR) Portal

Another great tool for customers who need to get paid fast is having Accounts Receivable (AR) Portal functionality at their fingertips. Your customers can log into the site and pay their invoice or outstanding balance online. Nothing seems easier than a click-to-pay button on a website.

PracticalEcommerce.com says that in 2021, we can expect B2B companies to streamline their accounts receivable infrastructure. This could be as simple as moving away from manual processes such as physically mailing and accommodating payments in new ways.

So, what does this mean for B2B companies? Having live data from your ERP and offering an AR portal through the Customer Portal is an easy and effective way to get paid faster and increase your AR turnover.

Conclusion

Having these features and functionalities at your fingertips will help you get the most out of your online business. With Nomad’s help and experience, we’re confident that you’ll increase current revenue and build long term relationships with your customers. You also gain loyalty from your customer by providing them with a well built, safe and secure website which they’ll continue to get value from.