We all know the superficial differences between B2B and B2C eCommerce. One targets individual consumers, the other targets business users acting on behalf of their enterprises. While an eCommerce platform may work for either market type, there are a number of considerations to review during the eCommerce engineering process that will ensure you launch successfully.
Let’s review the differences between the two and discuss some strategies for improving eCommerce engagement.
Business users live in a world of value exchange. How will your product help them better serve their customers? If B2B buyers can’t see a potential benefit in a partnership with your company, you’ll have no chance of winning their business. It’s up to you to make these value propositions clear by speaking to them on their terms.
The typical B2B buying process has several defining characteristics:
Every business decision needs the input of multiple stakeholders across sales, marketing, finance, and more. You’re not speaking to a single buyer—you’re speaking to a team of buyers, each of whom will have his/her own pain points that you’ll need to address in your messaging.
Considerations for your eCommerce Platform:
B2B buyers are logical and information-driven. They perform extensive research on their options before committing and prefer content with concrete statistics they can use to justify their decisions to their stakeholders. This is a defining feature of B2B eCommerce: As many as 98 percent of B2B buyers do research before signing.
Considerations for your eCommerce Platform:
Business buyers don’t just purchase from the first company that catches their interest. They tend to form long-term relationships with their vendors, speaking with specific reps, asking questions, and establishing trust before committing their resources.
Considerations for your eCommerce Platform:
Of course, other issues—such as price—certainly matter too, but price actually matters less to B2B buyers than you’d think. There’s this idea out there that every business is budget conscious and penny-pinching, but often, the opposite is true. Budgets can be flexible, and many companies are more than willing to invest a little extra for companies that can earn their trust, reduce risk, and eliminate uncertainty.
eCommerce vendors selling directly to consumers have a different set of goals.
B2B buyers might be willing to do weeks of research before buying, but consumers aren’t. B2C purchases tend to be smaller in scale and finished quickly. Shoppers want fast overviews and easy-to-understand value propositions to help them make decisions on the spot.
Considerations for your eCommerce Platform:
B2C shoppers tend to make purchases based on perceived emotional benefits—in other words, desire and motivation. They don’t care about generating profit; they care about products that make them happy and improve their lives. This plays into the immediacy of their shopping process, as they often don’t research products until the moment they need them.
Overall, there are many areas where B2B and B2C converge, and every eCommerce store owner must provide an intuitive and easy to navigate website and storefront or risk losing customers. However, it’s also crucial to be aware that there are significant differences between the two and use the considerations we discussed above to create the most relevant buying experience for your target audience.
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