Are you planning to take your B2B company online? If yes, firstly it is important that you choose the right E-commerce platform. Since you are dealing with B2B customers, your E-commerce requirements will be unique to your business. B2B E-commerce is far different from B2C. Many complexities are involved in running a B2B E-commerce store. Hence your platform should have a specific set of features that can benefit your B2B business.

Features to Look for when Choosing a B2B E-commerce Platform

Multilingual and Multi-currency

If you want to expand your business reach into multiple countries, it is imperative that your B2B E-commerce platform has multilingual and multi-currency features. Without these features, you are missing out a lot of business opportunities. For instance, no multilingual functionality means only English-speaking visitors can use your website. On the other hand, with these features, you can make your E-commerce store accessible to users across the globe and increase sales.

Approval Workflow

Unlike B2C customers, B2B clients follow an approval workflow to process orders. In a B2B environment, approval workflow is a series of steps that have to be taken to approve an order. Every order goes through different stages of review, before finally getting approved. So make sure your E-commerce platform has the provision to accommodate this process of making a B2B purchase.

Customer Specific Catalog and Pricing

In a B2B environment, every customer will buy different products at different prices as per the contract. So you cannot implement a one-for-all pricing system. It doesn’t make sense to display the same set of products and pricing for every B2B buyer. So make sure your B2B E-commerce platform allows you to set up customer specific catalog and negotiated pricing based on logins.

Responsive

Mobile usage among B2B buyers has increased tremendously in recent years. According to research from Boston Consulting Group, 80% of B2B buyers are using mobile devices at work. Moreover, 60% of B2B buyers have reported that mobile played a very crucial role in a recent purchase. This clearly proves how important it is to embrace B2B mobile commerce and make your site responsive. So if you are serious about increasing B2B sales, having a responsive site is the first step in that direction.

Reorder

Many times, B2B customers want to purchase the same set of products again. Creating that same order from scratch can be frustrating for the customers. So in order to simplify their purchasing process, your B2B E-commerce solution should have a one-click reorder functionality. Allow your customers to access their order history page, so that they can easily select previously ordered products. This functionality can help customers to reorder products quickly and moreover can play a crucial role to boost Online B2B customer relationships.

Bulk Order

For your B2B customers, ordering in bulk should not be a complicated task. Make their ordering process easy by displaying a simple bulk order form. This functionality will allow your customers to add multiple products in bulk without the need to access every product page. This functionality provides an easy way to place large orders onto your site. Customers have to simply enter the part no. and quantity in bulk order form to place order.