How can you find the best eCom­merce plat­form for your B2B busi­ness and why BigCommerce?

For the past few years, the glob­al B2B eCom­merce mar­ket has been on a steady incline. B2B busi­ness­es have been grad­u­al­ly adapt­ed to this rise, and then came COVID, which accel­er­at­ed the trend. This, paired with the fact that cus­tomer expe­ri­ence has become increas­ing­ly crit­i­cal, forces B2B busi­ness­es to get up to speed to meet these demands. You prob­a­bly know this first­hand, but here are some figures:

• 80% of B2B clients make pur­chas­ing deci­sions based on cus­tomer experience.
• 87% of B2B clients pre­fer a sup­pli­er with the best eCom­merce por­tal and cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, even if it means pay­ing more.
• 35% of B2B busi­ness­es have list­ed invest­ing in eCom­merce plat­form tech­nol­o­gy as their top pri­or­i­ty this year
• 54% of dis­trib­u­tors list focus­ing on bet­ter user expe­ri­ence and adding more B2C fea­tures as their pri­or­i­ty goal.

Giv­en the con­di­tions, yes, the best time to cre­ate a sol­id eCom­merce plan is yes­ter­day, but today will do fine. The main chal­lenge is to find a plat­form that can sup­port your B2B or Hybrid com­pa­ny as you take (or per­fect) the plunge. Spoil­er alert: we believe it’s BigCommerce.

What to bear in mind when choos­ing a B2B eCom­merce platform

Who needs a B2B eCom­merce platform?

One of the first and most impor­tant fac­tors to con­sid­er before choos­ing an eCom­merce plat­form is what kind of B2B busi­ness you have, as this will deter­mine your spe­cif­ic needs. For exam­ple, B2B2C com­pa­nies (busi­ness to busi­ness to con­sumer) need a plat­form that can put busi­ness­es in direct con­tact with con­sumers, no mid­dle man, where­as a Whole­sale eCom­merce mod­el is bet­ter suit­ed for com­pa­nies that sell bulk and dis­count­ed prod­ucts to oth­er companies. 

Anoth­er key fac­tor is your team’s tech­ni­cal knowl­edge. Plat­forms have dif­fer­ent inter­faces and require dif­fer­ent lev­els of tech­ni­cal exper­tise. The best plat­form is the one your team can make the most of.

Tru­ly wel­come onboard(ing)

Whether you are migrat­ing from anoth­er eCom­merce plat­form because things did­n’t go as planned, or because things went so well you need a big­ger boat, or if you’re choos­ing an eCom­merce solu­tion for the first time, a plan for onboard­ing cus­tomers can make your tran­si­tion smooth, and help your cus­tomers nav­i­gate seam­less­ly. It’s a good idea to choose a plat­form that offers launch ser­vices and real time train­ing, both for your cus­tomers and your staff. It need not be a long and wind­ing road.

Big­Com­merce offers a stream­lined onboard­ing process specif­i­cal­ly designed for mid­mar­ket B2B busi­ness­es. This includes per­son­al­ized train­ing ses­sions, onboard­ing spe­cial­ists, and an exten­sive knowl­edge base to help your busi­ness get up and run­ning quick­ly and effi­cient­ly. While oth­er plat­forms offer some kind of onboard­ing sup­port, they can­not match the lev­el of per­son­al­ized guid­ance and assis­tance Big­Com­merce pro­vides. Magen­to boasts a com­pre­hen­sive knowl­edge base and com­mu­ni­ty forums, and Shopi­fy does offer onboard­ing sup­port, but none pro­vide the lev­el of per­son­al­ized atten­tion and tai­lored sup­port you can get with Big­Com­merce (you can check our Big­Com­merce vs Shopi­fy Plus com­par­i­son).

The friends of my friends are my friends: integrations

Choos­ing a plat­form that can inte­grate with your essen­tial busi­ness soft­ware is cru­cial. You prob­a­bly are using –or con­sid­er­ing using – PIMs, ERPs, CRMs, etc. You don’t want to invest time and mon­ey only to end up stuck with an eCom­merce plat­form that can’t con­nect to the sys­tems you rely on for smooth oper­a­tions. That’s why it’s impor­tant to find a plat­form that seam­less­ly inte­grates with all your soft­ware with­out hold­ing you back.

Big­Com­merce under­stands the val­ue of inte­gra­tion and offers a stream­lined solu­tion that can con­nect your plat­form with your essen­tial soft­ware sys­tems. The plat­form inte­grates seam­less­ly with pop­u­lar ERP sys­tems such as Net­Suite, SAP, and Microsoft Dynam­ics, which makes it easy for B2B busi­ness­es to man­age their online and offline oper­a­tions. That’s not all.

They go the extra mile with real-time inven­to­ry and order man­age­ment, auto­mat­ic sync­ing of prod­uct data, cus­tomer data, and pric­ing infor­ma­tion. While oth­er plat­forms offer some lev­el of inte­gra­tion with ERP sys­tems, they can be lim­it­ed to very few ERPs (like Shopi­fy), require addi­tion­al devel­op­ment work (like Magen­to) or cus­tom inte­gra­tions to achieve the same inte­gra­tions. Not the same lev­el of real-time sync­ing and data man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ties as BigCommerce. 

And then there’s APIs. Store­front APIs and serv­er-to-serv­er API func­tions pro­vide you remote access to all the data in the Big­Com­merce plat­form, allow­ing you to con­nect mobile apps, third-par­ty inte­gra­tions or a fron­tend CMS. Take your APIck.

Big­Com­merce’s advanced API fea­tures allows for easy inte­gra­tions, such as fil­ter­ing, sort­ing, and pag­i­na­tion are capa­ble of han­dling com­plex require­ments like a breeze and like a pro. Check our Big­Com­merce Inte­gra­tions sec­tion for more. 

Secu­ri­ty: (Almost) noth­ing else mat­ters in B2B

B2B com­pa­nies need a plat­form that’s got secu­ri­ty cov­ered from every angle. Cus­tomers need to feel safe enough to hand over sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion like cred­it card and per­son­al data, so mak­ing sure data stays safe and sound is a top pri­or­i­ty when search­ing for an eCom­merce plat­form.

That means cred­it card and cus­tomer data pro­tec­tion and pro­tec­tion against cyber-attacks, fraud, and unau­tho­rized access.

Big­Com­merce offers built-in secu­ri­ty fea­tures like:

• PCI com­pli­ance
• SSL cer­tifi­cates
• DDoS pro­tec­tion

And, while hav­ing top-notch secu­ri­ty fea­tures is a must-have, it also can’t hurt to have a lit­tle extra help from ded­i­cat­ed secu­ri­ty teams to mon­i­tor and pre­vent any secu­ri­ty threats. Big­Com­merce has that too.

Safe­guard­ing each of these items is key to win­ning cus­tomer trust and avoid­ing secu­ri­ty breach­es. Here’s anoth­er rea­son to pri­or­i­tize secu­ri­ty: ded­i­cat­ed secu­ri­ty pro­grams help increase your SEO rank­ing and ulti­mate­ly boost your online vis­i­bil­i­ty and cred­i­bil­i­ty. Choos­ing a B2B plat­form with sol­id secu­ri­ty pays off, in more ways than one.

Grant­ed, oth­er plat­forms also have secu­ri­ty fea­tures. For exam­ple, Shopi­fy and WooCom­merce offer SSL cer­tifi­cates and DDoS pro­tec­tion, but fall short when it comes to PCI com­pli­ance. Magen­to requires addi­tion­al secu­ri­ty exten­sions to achieve a sim­i­lar lev­el of secu­ri­ty as Big­Com­merce’s built-in fea­tures, while PrestaShop may require addi­tion­al devel­op­ment work for cer­tain secu­ri­ty mea­sures. When it comes to pro­tect­ing your cus­tomers and your busi­ness, cut­ting cor­ners is not a good idea. 

The cost of an eCom­merce plat­form for B2B

Cost is not only about how much mon­ey you pay, but also about what you don’t pay. It’s also about what you get in exchange, and what you save. 

With Big­Com­merce, you save time and resources. You won’t need full-time devel­op­ers sort­ing out the many details involved in cus­tomiz­ing on-site plat­forms. Big­Com­merce allows you to focus on what you do best, not get bogged down with the tech­ni­cal details of man­ag­ing an eCom­merce platform. 

And you do save mon­ey too. On-premis­es solu­tions bear the cost of secu­ri­ty and com­pli­ance, and those can get expen­sive. A SaaS plat­form like Big­Com­merce allows you to offload the extracur­ric­u­lars on third par­ty ven­dors, which sim­pli­fies the process and low­ers costs. 

Big­Com­merce offers a com­pet­i­tive pric­ing struc­ture that’s per­fect for B2B and hybrid com­pa­nies. It’s not only trans­par­ent and cost-effec­tive, but also tai­lored to their unique needs. No trans­ac­tion fees, unlim­it­ed staff accounts, and flex­i­ble pric­ing plans that can scale as your busi­ness grows. You can find oth­er plat­forms with low­er pric­ing plans, but that may be deceiv­ing. Watch out for sneaky trans­ac­tion fees (hi, there, Shopi­fy) and extra devel­op­ment and main­te­nance costs (we see you, PrestaShop). 

Cook­ie cut­ter won’t cut it: Customization

One size fits all does not apply to eCom­merce plat­forms, or to B2B com­pa­nies, or to any­one any­more. On one hand, cus­tomers want per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ences and eCom­merce solu­tions must be cus­tomiz­able and flex­i­ble enough to deal with that. On the oth­er hand, com­pa­nies that pre­pare for and seek growth need solu­tions that can grow along. Key word: scal­a­bil­i­ty. Busi­ness­es all over the world have caught on and offer tai­lored, func­tion­al solu­tions that won’t break the bank. B2B is no exception.

Cus­tomiza­tion is BigCommerce’s strong suit: Cus­tomiz­able pric­ing and cat­a­log sys­tems, cus­tomiz­able themes, cus­tomiz­able drag-and-drop inter­face, cus­tomiz­able com­po­nents (third par­ty integrations)…It’s almost like a set of LEGOs that you can com­bine for extra agili­ty, and it’s the best option for B2B and Hybrid companies.

For exam­ple, WooCom­merce pro­vides a high lev­el of cus­tomiza­tion through its open-source nature and exten­sive library of plu­g­ins and themes, but, like with PrestaShop, cus­tomiza­tions can require some seri­ous tech­ni­cal exper­tise. Shopi­fy, in turn, also offers a sim­ple drag-and-drop inter­face that does not require mer­chants to be tech­ni­cal experts, but its over­all cus­tomiza­tion options are not exten­sive, which might make it a good fit for small busi­ness with sim­pler needs, but hard­ly a good match for B2B and Hybrid companies.

Data makes the world go round: First-par­ty and cus­tomer data.

Data is pow­er. Knowl­edge about data is a super­pow­er. With eCom­merce on the rise and cus­tomers shop­ping omnichan­nel, col­lect­ing and under­stand­ing data is a grow­ing need ‑and a grow­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty- for brands. Data-dri­ven deci­sion-mak­ing is cru­cial for B2B eCom­merce plat­forms to stay com­pet­i­tive in today’s market.

Thanks to plat­forms like Google Ana­lyt­ics, which allows to track cus­tomer inter­ac­tions across online chan­nels, under­stand­ing your cus­tomers’ behav­ior has nev­er been eas­i­er. From their loca­tion to their inter­ests and pur­chas­ing habits, you can learn all about what makes them tick and click, and turn that knowl­edge into more sales. The ide­al eCom­merce plat­form is one that sup­ports your data-dri­ven strat­e­gy. Like BigCommerce. 

Big­Com­merce allows users to choose the data solu­tions they need, rang­ing from ware­hous­ing to ana­lyt­ics. Its open SaaS archi­tec­ture enables an easy inte­gra­tion with third-par­ty ana­lyt­ic tools and mar­ket­ing plat­forms. It comes with a vari­ety of built-in ana­lyt­ics tools that offer valu­able insights into essen­tial met­rics such as cus­tomer behav­ior and con­ver­sion rates.

Essen­tial fea­tures of a B2B eCom­merce platform.

Abil­i­ty to sell B2B and B2C on the same platform.

Sell­ing to both B2B and B2C cus­tomers can be a tricky busi­ness, but it does­n’t have to be. In fact, the abil­i­ty to do both on the same ecom­merce plat­form can save you time, mon­ey, and headaches. How­ev­er, not all plat­forms are cre­at­ed equal. Most plat­forms are either exclu­sive­ly fit for B2C or require exten­sive extra work to allow simul­ta­ne­ous B2B and B2C oper­a­tions. B2B/B2C coex­is­tence is a big deal for Big­Com­merce. It allows mer­chants to man­age B2B cus­tomer accounts and run a robust B2C chan­nel from a sin­gle store, pro­vid­ing a spe­cif­ic, con­sis­tent expe­ri­ence for both on a sin­gle instance.

Easy to add new chan­nels and tech­nol­o­gy partners.

One essen­tial fea­ture to look for is the abil­i­ty to add new chan­nels and tech­nol­o­gy part­ners seam­less­ly. With the rise of omnichan­nel expe­ri­ences, cus­tomers expect to be able to shop on a vari­ety of plat­forms and chan­nels, from phys­i­cal store­fronts to social media. So, choos­ing a plat­form that pri­or­i­tizes omnichan­nel capa­bil­i­ties, like Big­Com­merce, is key to suc­cess in today’s ecom­merce landscape.

Abil­i­ty to sell inter­na­tion­al­ly with mul­ti-lan­guage support.

The world’s everyone’s oys­ter now. As cus­tomers and brands become increas­ing­ly con­nect­ed, inter­na­tion­al­iza­tion is a key fac­tor to con­sid­er when choos­ing an eCom­merce plat­form. Local­iza­tion and mul­ti-lan­guage sup­port will allow you to tap into new mar­kets and expand your busi­ness worldwide. 

Big­Com­merce offers local­ized con­tent and con­ver­sion tools. How does that work? With Sten­cil or any CMS you pre­fer, you can build a local­ized expe­ri­ence and push con­tent to the rel­e­vant geo­gra­phies to empow­er your sales teams with growth and con­ver­sion tools suit­able for their spe­cif­ic regions. With Big­Com­merce, you can man­age over 100 cur­ren­cies and offer your clients their pre­ferred pay­ment options, as well as cus­tomize cat­a­logs and pric­ing for dif­fer­ent tar­get regions.

Access and restric­tion options.

There’s an extra lev­el of com­plex­i­ty in B2B eCom­merce com­pared to B2C. Sell­ing to oth­er busi­ness­es entails more nuances and rules involved, such as dif­fer­ent pric­ing for bulk orders or dif­fer­ent pay­ment terms. That’s why it’s cru­cial to have an ecom­merce plat­form that allows you to cus­tomize the buy­er expe­ri­ence depend­ing on the user. Big­Com­merce offers sev­er­al options to allow and restrict access to some areas of your site. For exam­ple, you can hide bulk pric­ing from your B2C cus­tomers, hide pric­ing alto­geth­er for cer­tain prod­ucts, or even hide your B2B site entire­ly from non-reg­is­tered mem­bers. These options give you the flex­i­bil­i­ty to cre­ate a tai­lored expe­ri­ence for each of your customers.

Pric­ing, pay­ment, and order­ing cus­tomiza­tion and options. 

For B2B com­pa­nies, it’s tru­ly Every­thing Every­where All at Once. Mul­ti­ple sys­tems need to work like a well-oiled machine to get all the LEGOs to click and have a uni­fied sys­tem to man­age orders and trans­ac­tions. This is even more so for hybrid com­pa­nies with B2C and whole­sale chan­nels that can­not afford con­fu­sion and inter-chan­nel con­flicts. You need a plat­form that can deal with sev­er­al pay­ment and dif­fer­ent order­ing and deliv­ery options. With mul­ti-store­front, cus­tomer man­age­ment tools, ful­fill­ment cen­ters and pun­chout cat­a­logs, among oth­er beau­ties, Big­Com­merce helps your busi­ness for­get about chan­nel con­flicts and stream­line man­age­ment process­es, allow­ing you to focus sole­ly on grow­ing your business.

Focused on user experience.

Ulti­mate­ly, it’s all about the user expe­ri­ence. The ide­al B2B eCom­merce plat­form will have cus­tomers res­onate with your brand and offer intu­itive and enjoy­able user inter­face (UI) and user expe­ri­ence (UX) result­ing in sat­is­fy­ing cus­tomer expe­ri­ences. If they like’em, they will come, and return. As more B2B busi­ness­es pri­or­i­tize a seam­less user expe­ri­ence and seek to opti­mize UX/UI, it’s cru­cial to choose an ecom­merce plat­form with the right per­son­al­iza­tion options, such as cus­tomiz­able and respon­sive plat­forms offer­ing user-friend­ly, intu­itive tem­plates, and infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties to add the tools you need. You’ve come this far, so you prob­a­bly know what’s next: Big­Com­merce has that.

Sep­a­rat­ing the Big­Com­merce from the chaff: A (very) abridged list of the mul­ti­ple fea­tures that sim­pli­fy the shop­ping process for you and your customers.

• You can cus­tomize your pric­ing strat­e­gy with cus­tom pric­ing to SKU lev­el, bulk dis­counts and pro­mo­tion­al deals on BigCommerce.
• Your users can view and reorder pur­chased prod­ucts to buy again in a jiffy.
• With pay­ment method vis­i­bilit con­trol, you can add and edit approved pay­ment options for your cus­tomers. You can also decide whether to show or hide them.
• Big­Com­merce offers buy­er roles and per­mis­sions for cus­tomers to cre­ate a full cor­po­rate pro­file with sev­er­al buy­er tiers.
• With the invoice por­tal, your cus­tomers can man­age and pay invoic­es eas­i­ly with sev­er­al pay­ment options. 
• Cus­tomer request­ed quotes allow cus­tomers to add prod­ucts to their shop­ping cart and request quotes for their orders. Automatically. 

Why pick BigCommerce

It may sound vain, but your Big­Com­merce site will look good. Its visu­al edi­tor and themes will allow you to cre­ate designs so sleek that users will feel like they are glid­ing across the screen. But it’s not just about looks. What’s under the hood is just as beautiful.

Big­Com­merce is a SaaS plat­form, and not just any SaaS plat­form. It’s Open Saas, which com­bines the best of both worlds. Actu­al­ly, make that the best of three worlds.

It’s a SaaS plat­form, which means you won’t have to wor­ry about host­ing, secu­ri­ty, or any of the oth­er tech­ni­cal details that can make eCom­merce a headache, while sav­ing time and mon­ey with low­er costs and faster time-to-mar­ket. They take care of the wiring, and the plumb­ing, and the basic furnishing.

It’s Open SaaS, so it also means you have the free­dom to dec­o­rate and move stuff around to give the place the look and func­tion­al­i­ty you wish. You won’t be trapped by lim­it­ed func­tion­al­i­ty or held hostage by a pro­pri­etary sys­tem. Big­Com­merce gives you the pow­er to cus­tomize your ecom­merce plat­form to meet your unique busi­ness needs with flex­i­bil­i­ty. If it were a cake, you could have it, and eat it too. 

And then Big­Com­merce goes and ups the game with head­less com­merce, a game-chang­ing tech­nol­o­gy that merges the front-end and back-end of your ecom­merce store. Like Solo and Chewie, but for your online business. 

TL;DR

Big­Com­merce offers a vari­ety of B2B fea­tures and add-ons you won’t find any­where else. It makes things super easy for hybrid busi­ness­es with B2B and B2C cus­tomers, allow­ing them to offer dif­fer­ent price lists and trans­ac­tion­al options with one uni­fied solution.

You’re free to scale your busi­ness to new heights with­out being lim­it­ed by clunky tech­nol­o­gy or out­dat­ed soft­ware. Your online shop­ping expe­ri­ences are future-proof, so you can adapt to any tech­no­log­i­cal dis­rup­tion that may come your way. More­over, you can cre­ate high­ly per­son­al­ized front-end expe­ri­ences on mul­ti­ple chan­nels, giv­ing your cus­tomers the shop­ping expe­ri­ence they deserve. Last, but not least, you get the flex­i­bil­i­ty to expand into new ter­ri­to­ries, lan­guages, and cur­ren­cies. Your busi­ness growth is only lim­it­ed by your abil­i­ty to scale. The sky’s the lim­it and the bot­tom line is yours.

With Big­Com­merce, it’s like a choose-your-own-adven­ture book, only with more mon­ey and zero risk of find­ing drag­ons and scary stuff. 

Look around, research fur­ther, do the math, and check out these FAQs about B2B eCom­merce plat­forms. But rest assured, no oth­er ecom­merce plat­form out there can match the mul­ti­tude and diver­si­ty of fea­tures, mod­ules, and tools avail­able with BigCommerce.

If you’re look­ing for a soft­ware solu­tion that offers a mod­ern, fric­tion­less ecom­merce expe­ri­ence, and we know you are, look no fur­ther. Big­Com­merce is a big win.

Oh, look at the time. It’s switch to Big­Com­merce o’clock.