HOW TO BUILD A B2B PORTAL THAT WILL SUCCEED

According to a 2017 report by the US Census Bureau, the B2B or Business to Business eCommerce portal is gaining more popularity day by day. In the first quarter of 2017, this B2B industry has grown by 15%. Every year more manufacturers, distributors and B2B customers enter this industry. As a result, succeeding in the B2B eCommerce industry has become essential. So with the recent growth of this industry, the demand for building B2B eCommerce portals has also increased. 

So, for people who do not understand what the B2B portal is, it is an eCommerce Website Development, which is a perfect opportunity for consumers worldwide to buy stuff online for their business from the same place. It is an excellent opportunity for both the seller and the consumer to purchase everything in bulk from one place. The seller can promote their wholesale business online on the eCommerce portal. These portals are not mere online websites to promote the company; it has multiple functions that help cater both the customer and the merchant’s needs. 

Benefit from purchasing a B2B eCommerce portal

• One of the most significant advantages of the B2B portal is that the business will receive incredible online attention.

• The customer intelligence system provides business promotions unique to the company only.

• The system customized the business demands and process; suppose a specific user orders something from the website. The next time they do not have to look for the product themselves, it has schedule order options.

• The consumer portal also helps in understanding their business and suggests personalized improvements.

• The entire ordeal is pretty transparent on both parts.

The purpose behind building a B2B eCommerce portal

• It helps the business understand their consumers and their needs; they can focus on it to grow the business.

• B2B e-commerce portal is not only an online place to purchase products in bulk; it is also an excellent opportunity to build a partnership with other corporations.

• It lowers the risk of losing Business to Business clients in general.

• You also get a lot of suggestions and ideas about how to improve your B2B eCommerce portal.

The B2B e-commerce sector is growing rapidly compared to the B2C eCommerce sector and, as a result, needs way more attention. Here merchants can showcase their products to other corporations, purchasing all products in bulk. Not only will they get more money if their product is good, but the chances are also high that the consumer will reorder the product in bulk. So if you are to develop B2B portal, then here are a few things you should consider to make your portal a success.

Features to consider while building a B2B Ecommerce portal

1. Personalization: 

Personalization means that the B2B consumer starts with the custom design, both with the UI and the UX. The custom UI design is simpler than the UX design; basically, custom UI means the ‘look and feel of the portal. That should be close to any software that the partner owns, with similar signs, colours, shapes, etc. It leads to a higher engagement rate; as you provide your customers with an intuitive experience with UI personalization.

The custom UX design is more complex and more complicated, but at the same time, they are critical for the business’s growth. The UX of your eCommerce portal should resemble the business process of the partner business. For example, suppose the manager of the company orders some product and the accountant pays the invoice. And the logistic manager also agrees on the terms and the date. Your system should be able to follow and react to the commands positively. 

2. Multiple users and roles: 

From the above paragraph, you can understand that the UX design of the portal should be in a way where different users can perform various functions. And the actions and the permission will be different as well; for example, the accountant manager cannot place the order, or the logistic manager cannot pay for the invoice.

Everyone has their work and can take limited actions; the whole ordeal is structured so that the employees and managers of the partner business will not get confused among themselves or get troubled with unnecessary information and focus on their part of the work solely.

3. Bulk, schedule and repeat orders: 

One of the most significant benefits of B2B business is getting the order in bulk. If your product is good and you can form a good connection with other companies, they will purchase from you repeatedly. You are selling to a business, and businesses will use new raw materials to keep up with their business.

So when you build a B2B e-commerce portal, you have to keep in mind that your partnering business most probably wants to place repeat orders on a weekly or monthly basis. So you have to make sure they do not spend much time on your website making the same order every time. Automation is also an excellent method; you and the consumer can agree on recurring operations weekly or monthly. And your system can perform all the work by itself.

4. Integration: 

To provide a flawless user experience to the customer, you must integrate your eCommerce portal with your partnering business’s environment and apps. If you want to make your customers’ experience better, then here is a list of integration for your B2B eCommerce portal.

• Accounting is a serious and complicated business; a business purchases products from various other companies and keeps their invoices, which can get complex. So, try to integrate with the accounting manager; the accountant finds checking invoices all the time troubling. Simplify the whole ordeal, send the invoices to them into their list of all other invoices. 

• Bank integration can be great if your partner purchases weekly or monthly products from your company. They can put a card on, and then you can charge on the card every month; this way, everything will go smoothly.

• Partner inventory integration is when your partner charges for all the products and you send them out; then, the products will show on the books of your partner.

• To help your partnering business with back and delay shipment, you can provide them with online information about the products in stock; it is owned inventory integration.

• Often, you send the product out for delivery, but they do not deliver to the partner. If you provide them with logistic integration, they can track their shipment, and the fear of the product getting lost somewhere is minimized. 

1. Self-service: 

Several business processes are happening every day; for example, the role of the employees may be changing their roles, or someone new hired who needs extra permission to perform their duties or maybe the business is altered. There can be several other issues, so they would not like to contact you to change or update you every time there is a minor issue. That is why it is always better to provide your partner with the ability to update manually without contacting you. Providing a self-service page will be a suitable solution to this issue.

2. Targeted Promotions and offers: 

You should provide your B2B business partners with specific, highly specific and targeted promotions and offers. If you send them every promo or advertisement, it can bother them or come out as spam. If you want their attention on your suggestions and promotion, send them a promo that will be valuable. It comes with personalization.

3. Analytic B2B customer experience: 

Analyzing your customer base is very important for the long run; you do not need this feature every day. But the need, if you can understand how your consumer base behaves, you will understand their needs better and wants. This is excellent information to have to build your B2B portal to cater to their needs better. You can analyze your partner from their interaction with your products, and you can also use other tools like questionnaires, split testing, heatmaps, feedback forms and more. 

Other things will make your website more attractive to other businesses. But the main thing to remember is that you should not offer any integration which you are not sure about other than that. Also, think of whether the integration will improve your portal or not. Do not introduce something unnecessary to the partners. Also, remember to analyze the whole ordeal to understand the needs of other businesses better and find out how you can improve the B2B eCommerce portal. 

Conclusion

Also, there are other things that you have to be careful about while thinking about B2c Portal Development, such as the technological level of the portal, as you would not want something behind the times for your customers to see. And the web portal should show adequacy to multiple gadgets and devices.

It should also be accessible from various websites to gain popularity. An excellent web portal is a perfect marketplace. It should showcase your products so that they look great to the customer. Also, pricing products can be great so that other businesses will not have to ask for a quotation; you can also introduce a chatbot to help the users.