eCommerce has experienced exponential growth over the past few years, and the current COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated this trend! Customers have flocked to eCommerce spaces over the past two years because of their safety and convenience, compared to brick-and-mortar stores. This is especially true of B2B sales. Reformulating approaches for a peak customer experience on your B2B eCommerce platform, then, is critical in the new digital age—because this trend isn’t going away.
To give you an idea of how large the eCommerce market has gotten, a 2019 survey found that roughly 1.92 billion people purchased goods and services on eCommerce platforms. By 2023, eCommerce is expected to account for more than $6.5 trillion in sales—22% of all retail sales made across the globe.
B2B, or business-to-business, eCommerce sales are soaring too. In 2019, the global B2B eCommerce market hit $5.7 trillion. The market is expected to grow by 17.5% each year from 2020 to 2027, which shows B2B eCommerce’s immense potential.
These numbers indicate that both B2B eCommerce and eCommerce in general will only continue to grow in the coming years. As such, B2B platforms need to develop a more improved and seamless B2B customer experience by pairing with an experienced and proficient eCommerce integrations provider. This allows you to develop smart online merchandising strategies that can cater to your customers’ wants and needs.
Adopting integrated eCommerce tools will help you optimize your B2B eCommerce platforms, connect with more consumers, and build stronger relationships with your customers. With the right tools, you can provide B2B clients with smoother and more seamless customer experience on your eCommerce platforms.
Your eCommerce Website Is Everything
As a B2B company with an online shopping platform, your website is everything when it comes to delivering a quality customer experience. It serves as your calling card across the digital space and helps potential customers find you and learn more about you. How your website looks and works can make or break a potential client’s decision to do business with you.
Nobody wants to visit a slow website, and in the digital space, every second counts. You must optimize your website for both desktop and mobile viewing. The faster your site is, the better you will be able to hold visitor attention. Studies find that websites that load within two seconds have a bounce rate of 9%, while pages that take five seconds to load experience a bounce rate of 38%. This disparity showcases the potential opportunities lost because of slow page loading time.
Payment Integrations for Easier Checkout
In the online merchandising world, having safe, secure, and fast payment gateways is a crucial part of the sales process. Payment gateways allow transactions to happen between merchants and customers, and use security protocols and encryption to protect customer data.
An efficient integrated payment process makes checking out much easier for your customer. Your customers can conduct their transactions in a matter of seconds, which positively impacts their overall user experience. These payment gateways function as a middleman between the businesses’ websites and their corresponding payment processors.
However, some businesses suffer from inefficient payment systems. Over 23% of customers abandon their shopping carts if a site’s payment process is too complicated, if the site asks for too much information, or if the site does not offer multiple payment methods. As such, providing a seamless payment experience is key, and can set you apart from your competition. This is why it is important for businesses to optimize and integrate their eCommerce payment systems.
Enhance B2B Customer Experience With Smart Merchandising, Intelligent Search, and Predictive Recommendations
With countless eCommerce platforms across the web, it can be difficult to stand out. Along with a strong marketing strategy, you need to prioritize the way your online merchandising works. Form and function must go hand in hand to produce a seamless and appealing store experience that engages your site visitors.
To draw in customers, visual merchandising is key. This significantly enhances your customer’s overall shopping experience, which encourages conversions and could boost revenue.
By developing an attractive storefront and presenting your products and services in a way that is both functional and visually appealing, you will improve your customer’s user experience and build a stronger relationship with them. To enhance B2B eCommerce customer experience on your platform, there are three key components to consider: smart merchandising, intelligent search, and predictive recommendations.
Smart merchandising, as described above, is the practice of strategically designing your visuals to boost sales and provide a better customer experience. E-merchandising is all about product presentation— product layout, color scheme, and your brand story. All of these elements must be cohesive for an effective e-merchandising strategy.
Meanwhile, intelligent search uses AI to find the exact products or services your customer is looking for. This cuts down on search time and shows customers exactly what they need. Finally, predictive recommendations can either introduce alternative product or service suggestions or assist customer search efforts on your eCommerce platform. This makes the shopping journey much easier and quicker, and your customers get the assistance they need.
Find the Best eCommerce Solution for Your Business Today
Investing in your website, adopting efficient payment integrations, and enhancing overall customer experience are crucial to your success as a B2B eCommerce platform. With the right eCommerce tools, you can optimize your eCommerce platform and maximize your ROI. However, these may be tricky to accomplish on your own, so finding an eCommerce solution provider is your best bet in improving your eCommerce platform.
This is where Zobrist steps in.
Zobrist is your all-in-one provider for each and every eCommerce solution you need. Whether it’s keeping your website updated, optimizing your site for mobile and desktop, integrating a payment platform, or simply building out a more robust eCommerce marketing strategy, Zobrist can develop a solution tailor-made to fit your needs. Zobrist even offers integrated analytics and cloud hosting capabilities, so you can maximize the way that your website operates on the back-end as well.
Reach out to Zobrist today if you’re ready to optimize your B2B eCommerce platform!
