What Tech Stack to Choose for Your B2B eCommerce Strategy

B2B eCommerce Strategy

B2B ecommerce is a highly competitive industry. What used to work a few years ago doesn’t anymore. Many B2B companies were happily using the same old/traditional approach of reaching out to their customers. 

But one thing that the pandemic taught this industry was that bulk buyers were now more interested in placing their orders online rather than over the phone or email. B2B customers demanded an improvement in the way business was being conducted. 

As a result, the creation of B2B ecommerce websites for bulk buyers became a necessity for b2b companies. But creating an eCommerce website isn’t the only prerequisite for running a successful online business. When you’re running a B2B business, the success of your business comes down to one thing alone, and that’s delivering a seamless customer experience.

This is where what technologies you’re using comes into play. Choosing the right tech stack is one of the most important aspects of running a successful B2B eCommerce business. The right tech stack can help you create a smooth flow of information, achieve synergy in your day-to-day operations to bring about maximum efficiency, and ultimately boost your conversions. 

» Things You Need to Take Care of Before Choosing a B2B eCommerce Tech Stack.

B2B platforms work differently, and the technologies used for running such a platform should be able to overcome the unique challenges of this specific industry. 

That said, here are some questions that you need to ask yourself before choosing a tech stack for your b2b business. 

› Is it Flexible & Scalable? 

If you’re just starting out, or even if you’ve been in the B2B business for some time, then you need to ensure that your B2B platform has the capability to grow as your business grows. 

B2B platforms require flexibility as each customer comes with a unique set of needs. If you wish to cater to these needs, then your platform must be capable of keeping up with the additional features added to the platform. And additional features and plugins can render your platforms somewhat incapacitated. 

The additional load of new features & plugins can affect the overall performance of your website. Therefore, you need a B2B platform that can handle the load. 

Furthermore, as your B2B business grows, the number of products on your platform will also increase along with the volume of traffic. This increase is usually welcomed by B2B business owners as it means higher revenues and profits. However, your platform should be able to take the additional load without any problems as well. 

If your B2B website starts getting slower or experiences problems in its functionality, then the damage to your website may be more than your expectation.  

Therefore, you must choose a tech stack that offers a solution to all such problems so that your website runs smoothly whilst giving a seamless customer experience even with an increasing load.

› Has it Been Tested Before? 

Using cutting-edge technologies may seem like the best choice, but that’s not always true in every situation. Sometimes traditional technologies may offer more reliability and stability than new tech. 

I am not against using new tech; however, when your business reputation and credibility are on the line, then it’s always wise and safe to go for a tech stack that has been tried and tested thoroughly and has positive reviews.  

› Is it Compatible with the Existing Stack? 

If you’ve already been operating in the B2B ecommerce industry, then you must’ve been using some technological tools for operational efficiency. 

With new tech solutions available, you must ensure that they are compatible with your existing tech stack. Trouble-free integration and synching are what you should be looking for to prevent any loss of data or face inconsistencies.  

› Play to Your Strengths

The best way is to play at your strengths. For example, if you have a team of developers that are experienced in ReactJS for frontend development, then the wise thing to do here would be to choose ReactJS over any other language for frontend development-related tasks.

And if your development team is comfortable with WooCommerce and WordPress, you should be looking at WooCommerce B2B solutions rather than other eCommerce platforms.

» Best Tech Stack for Your B2B eCommerce 

› Powerful B2B eCommerce Website 

The first technology that you require to run a B2B eCommerce business is obviously a B2B eCommerce platform. But your focus should be on creating a powerful platform that can handle an increasing volume of customers, transactions, and data load of the high volume of SKUs. 

You must realize that this isn’t everything that your platform should be capable of. Yes, you need a scalable platform, but you also need to consider your customers’ needs.   

Today’s B2B buyers don’t want to spend time sitting down and switching on their PCs or laptops to access your eCommerce website. Customers these days prefer to use their mobile devices. Therefore, you must aim to create a platform that is fully mobile optimized. 

Moreover, your website also needs to be secure with regard to the payment transfer needs of your customers. Making your website PCI compliant is extremely important if you wish to build trust with your customers. You’ll lose your credibility if your customers think that their credit/debit card data is at risk. 

Making sure that your platform has the features and a design that allows for a seamless customer experience is vital for your website. Your platform should offer bulk buyers ease of ordering and reordering by making the processes simpler.

Altogether, your B2B eCommerce platform should deliver a 360-customer experience. 

› ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) System

The term ERP refers to Enterprise Resource Planning. It is a software that links all the core functions of your business into one software, such as inventory management, supply chain, purchasing, accounting, financial reporting, customer relationship management, order processing, and production.  

Resource planning is a significant part of any business, whether it’s B2B or B2C. And in the case of a B2B eCommerce platform, your platform needs to be integrated with an ERP system that enables you to comprehensively manage and automate all your core business processes. 

What simply started as a scheduling system for manufacturing companies to determine and place orders for the EOQ (economic order quantity) is now a necessity in the B2B industry as well. Some of the most renowned ERP names that you can use are: 

› BI (Business Intelligence) Tool

A BI tool is software that provides an accurate picture of your business based on factual data. This software delivers an insight into your business in a user-friendly manner. The data is presented in the form of reports, charts, and/or graphs to allow users to understand and determine future business strategies. 

No, it’s not just the data you can get from your website analytics tool. The BI tool offers you a combination of the data offered by your website analytics, marketing analytics, customer relationship management (CRM) data, and much more, allowing you to make smart decisions efficiently.      

To put it simply, decisions taken on the information provided by a BI tool provide a high likelihood of success for your B2B business. Using a BI tool can help you identify problems in your business along with identifying any new market trends and opportunities that can allow you to increase your revenues and gain a competitive edge. Here are some of the most popular BI tools being used in the B2B eCommerce industry: 

› Integration of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) & BI (Business Tool) 

You should integrate your ERP system with your preferred BI tool in real-time to get updated about the latest changes made in the resources being used in your business. 

What most B2B businesses need to realize is that your BI tool will help you make the right decisions only if it’s updated with the latest data. 

You must comprehend that your ERP & BI tool also needs to be integrated with your CRM (customer relationship management). This will allow your BI tool to provide you with a much more comprehensive picture of your B2B business and where your business is lagging behind. 

Real-time integration of this software will allow you to stay updated and make calculated decisions based on concrete data. 

› AI-Powered ChatBots 

Your B2B buyers require flawless customer support, and integrating an AI-powered chatbot on your B2B platform enables you to deliver just that. Chatbots interact with your website visitors and help fill in the communication gaps between potential customers and your company. 

Having an AI-powered chatbot will also help you in answering your customer queries. Most of all, none of your customers will ever feel that their queries are going unattended as a chatbot stays active 24/7.

Moreover, it is a major way of reducing the costs relating to customer care. Incurring a one-time cost of adding an AI-powered chatbot on your platform is much lesser than hiring a whole team of customer care executives.

These chatbots are also a great way to filter out the leads that demand higher attention from the sales team. In addition, chatbots can also help you categorize and predict customer behaviour based on their previous customer interactions, helping you to stay one step ahead of your customers and offer them solutions that will help in increasing your revenues. 

› Wholesale Prices Plugin 

B2B customers require unique solutions as their problems are also unique. Adding a wholesale prices plugin to your B2B platform can help address one of the most important needs of your bulk buyers.

A B2B customer places bulk orders and pay a lower per-unit price for a product, but not without price negotiations. Your B2B platform needs to have features that can help you display wholesale prices, quantity-based product discounts, and custom prices and offer a way for customers to negotiate the product prices.

This is where a wholesale prices plugin will be able to help you out in filling the gaps mentioned above. The end goal of this plugin is to help you create an environment where your bulk buyers feel at ease while shopping on your B2B platform resulting in a seamless customer experience. 

› Payment Gateways 

Discounted prices aren’t the only thing that attracts B2B customers to your platforms.You also need to offer them ease in transferring their payments. 

By integrating multiple payment gateways with your B2B platform, you can allow your customers to meet their payment obligations in a secure manner. 

Using multiple payment methods and secure gateways integrated with your B2B platform help in encouraging your customers with their purchase decisions.  

› Customer Relationship Management Software (CRM)  

As the name suggests, your CRM system is software that allows your B2B company to build and maintain fruitful relationships with your existing and potential customers. Mostly, the term refers to sales personnel only. 

However, this is not the case. Yes, initially, it is usually the salespeople who are managing the customers’ information and securing the information in the CRM. 

But when you integrate your CRM with your ERP and BI tool, then you can focus on building and managing customer relationships by mapping out their entire customer journey. 

Customer information allows you to focus on each customer individually and offer them solutions that are right for their business.  

› Omnichannel Personalization  

Your B2B business needs to offer customers and potential customers a personalized customer experience throughout their buying journey. For this, having an omnichannel platform that offers a fully personalized experience to customers across all channels and touchpoints is necessary. 

Being in the B2B industry, you must understand that your customers are bulk buyers who require personalization and customization at every stage in their buying journey. And an omnichannel platform can help you deliver that to your customers at every stage of their buying journey. 

This feature can help you integrate different channels of your company, such as marketing and sales, along with your communication channels. This will allow you to attract more leads, serve your customers in a better way and, as a result, help you in retaining them as well. 

Since this feature integrates different channels, therefore, it enables you to use the information about your target audience at each stage in their buying journey and help you improve their overall experience throughout their customer journey. 

› Catalogs

This piece of tech helps your B2B buyers to place their orders without visiting your platforms repeatedly. Product Catalogs help customers to place their orders directly from their own e-procurement system. 

By integrating your eCommerce platform with your customer’s procurement systems, you can help in creating ease of ordering for your customers. This also helps in streamlining your customer’s ordering process and increases the overall efficiency in the order placing process. 

This leads to a seamless customer experience that results in customer loyalty, an increase in customer retention rate, and reduced documentation costs.

› Conclusion

Now, I think I’ve rambled on long enough so let’s wrap it up quickly.

The technologies mentioned above are ideal for running a B2B eCommerce business, and they also help in creating strategies that can lead to higher revenues and profits.

So, if you were running a B2B eCommerce business and were confused about what technologies you should adopt to help you build lucrative B2B strategies, then these technologies are for you!

Hope this blog helps! 

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