10 B2B Ecommerce Trends to Get Serious About
B2B Ecommerce is Garnering Serious Attention
As companies continue to operate B2B models, sales channels and customer expectations change. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and on-going digital transformation, B2B ecommerce is becoming a necessity with distributors and manufacturers in efforts to adapt to the changing market.
The following are 10 trends causing distributors and manufacturers to take B2B ecommerce efforts seriously to be successful:
- 53% of B2B buyers name content and product details as a top feature when selecting B2B sellers.
Showcase the product information buyers are seeking. Znode allows for catalog management at any level including: web-store, segment/profile, account, and user. Znode’s complex B2B rules include complex pricing and multi-warehouse shipping that can be applied to a catalog as well. - 68% of B2B buyers preferred doing business online versus with a salesperson, and when they engaged with sales, buyers wanted a consultative experience.
Prepare sales reps with the information to consult prospects and customers. Znode’s Sales Enablement Console empowers sales reps with data captured in the ecommerce platform. Sales reps can view customer activity along with access to create and manage Accounts, Users, Quotes, Orders and more, allowing sales reps to provide more value to every customer relationship. - 40% of B2B buyers identified back-end integration with [...] enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems as a key feature for suppliers to offer.
Providing a digital sales channel that facilitates buyers demands for product and order information can require complex integrations. Znode's architecture was specifically designed for extensibility. Znode includes a commerce connector for exchanging data between Znode and other business systems including ERPs. The commerce connector supports both real-time and batch data exchanges and includes over 30 prebuilt common interfaces. - 90% of B2B leaders already believe that customer experience is crucial to their companies’ strategic priorities.
Znode enables the creation of unique brand experiences and more engaging customer experiences. Enable B2B buyers to explore, self-serve, leverage mobile and other new business models through IoT. Create personalized experiences by utilizing user profiles, unique catalogs, and pricing models that can be easily configured in the Znode administration console for specific buyer needs. - 59% of B2B buyers name site search as the most important feature when selecting B2B sellers.
Znode’s feature-rich native site search drives conversions and great customer experience by empowering administrators to manage search across multiple stores with automatic indexing, reducing management complexity, scale issues and heavy technical demands. - 72-86% of B2B ecommerce implementations are re-platforming efforts.
Reasons for re-platforming in B2B ecommerce include: multi-store management capabilities, product catalog management, customer experience enhancements and integration flexibility. Znode’s API-first architecture allows for a flexible data model that addresses re-platforming reasons as well as providing the scalability for future growth. - 57% of B2B executives stated that ecommerce integration was another top technology need.
As B2B sellers are selecting third-party tools to enhance ecommerce platforms capabilities the total cost of ownership of the ecommerce technology stack continues to rise. Znode is a full-stack API-first ecommerce platform with a native OMS, PIM system, CMS and features the flexibility to scale as the business grows. - 65% of customers have cut ties with a business due to a poor customer service experience.
Znode’s native order management system (OMS) makes managing customer expectations and order lifecycle easier. CSRs can create a better offline experience by managing order details including editing orders, managing shipping, providing customer support for issues related to orders or accounts, and applying discounts in the moment. - 44% of B2B organizations have the ability to create additional revenue streams through B2B ecommerce platforms.
Multi-domain, multi-store, multi-catalog, multi-everything platforms without limits for sales channels are the future. Znode is able to serve current business requirements and allows the flexibility to serve future business models in an all-in-one platform eliminating future technology-stack costs. - 79% stated API-driven headless commerce was the top investment of the companies interviewed by Gartner.
Znode’s API-first approach to ecommerce (also known as headless commerce) allows distributors to extend ecommerce beyond the desktop experience to mobile apps, vending machines, and future applications yet to come.
Getting serious about B2B ecommerce starts with understanding B2B ecommerce requirements and the implications of meeting those requirements. The complexities of B2B ecommerce cannot be understated and is showcased in these B2B ecommerce trends. The future of B2B ecommerce requires flexibility and scalability from an B2B ecommerce platform.