As manufacturers and distributors face a surging e-commerce market, they need to design web sites that are useful to their customers. E-commerce site design expert Stuart Patterson suggests several ways to quickly get up to speed.
Positive online shopping experiences improve customer loyalty and sales. This guiding principle is what prompts merchants to design and operate e-commerce sites designed to let customers quickly find what they need. With worldwide annual business-to-business sales projected at $6.7 trillion by 2020, according to research firm Frost & Sullivan, it’s more important than ever for B2B merchants to sell on e-commerce sites designed for first-class usability to increase sales and create a key point of differentiation in the marketplace.
Here are seven lessons that can easily be applied into the complex world of B2B to allow you to scale more quickly:
1. Error-tolerant on-site search increases conversion rate
The search function within your shop is your virtual salesman, matching products to customer requests. But any B2B merchants selling products with complex technical descriptions are prone to customer spelling errors. This can produce irrelevant results and fewer orders.
The answer is a search function that recognises phonetic similarities between search terms and actual product descriptions—one that fixes search-term typos automatically to produce meaningful search results.
2. Use a ‘suggest’ function for faster ordering
Most online shops offer a ‘suggest’ feature, which, like Google, displays a drop-down list of complete terms when customers start typing in the search box. This speeds up the product search and, therefore, the sale.
This can be developed further so that extra information, such as product category, brand or product suggestions, can give buyers an even better overview of what a website offers.
3. Make documents and content available online
B2B buyers use catalogues, brochures, data sheets and other documents to compare products or tiered pricing levels, and B2B sellers use these materials to offer customers helpful content to make purchasing decisions. That’s why sales documents should be available digitally, in the right place in your shop.
The easiest way to do this is to index your contents in the search. Either offer a PDF for download within the appropriate search results, or redirect certain queries directly to an individually designed information site.
4. Guided Selling offers more help for purchasing decisions
Even professional buyers will often have no idea which product version is right for them and how they are supposed to filter their search among a large number of product options. To save the customer time, an online shop can mirror the expertise of a real salesperson.
In the context of Guided Selling, an online shop will ask a site visitor product-related questions for certain search terms she uses, and present several optional answers. She can then click the most appropriate answer to produce a list of search tailored to her interest.
5. Tailored B2B functions for shop visitors who log in
By integrating functions that let customers save shopping lists or upload part lists in the login area, returning customers can process common orders with minimum effort. It is also important that the product prices adjust automatically based on the seller’s defined pricing rules, and whether a customer should see general pricing or special pricing based contract terms or volume discounts.
6. Automatic product data optimization
The efficiency of an online shop’s functions largely depends on the quality of its product data. B2B merchants who procure their products from multiple suppliers frequently have problems when it comes to maintaining consistently accurate product data.
Automated product information management tools help maintain the quality of product data by appropriating the right attributes to products across multiple catalogs. This means new items received from suppliers land in the right product category with the correct attributes.
7. Expand internationally—with local control over web sites
Being able to enter new e-commerce markets quickly is a major competitive advantage and requires technology that an online seller can scale internationally. But it’s also important to let local country managers modify their sites to the buying preferences of their customers. In order to orient shopping functions and merchandising campaigns optimally towards country-specific requirements, local e-commerce managers must be allowed to implement independent website configurations.
For B2B sellers, the core variables of search, navigation and product data are a must have for improving the shopping experience and driving online sales. Only once these fundamentals are in place will B2B e-commerce develop the basis for sustainable revenue growth.
Stuart Patterson is business development manager of Fact-Finder, a website search and navigation technology platform from Pforzheim, Germany-based Omikron Data Quality GmbH.
Originally posted 6 November 2015 B2B e-commerce world