The B2B eCommerce market size was valued at $6.64 trillion in 2020 worldwide. And it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 18.7% from 2021 through 2028. Looking at the global situation, the pandemic brought about a paradigm shift in the purchase behavior of the consumers and created enormous growth avenues for all faces of the eCommerce industry, including B2B eCommerce.
Planning is crucial to a sustainable eCommerce business that scales with time and demand. Most of today’s business owners are prepared to face exponential growth. But are they prepared to meet the challenges head-on and become a leader in their niche?
Although preparing a B2B online store for this kind of exponential growth might take much time. But it is not as difficult as some may think. It is all about intelligent choices from the initial stages of your business. One of which is choosing the right scalable eCommerce platform.
What does it mean to scale a B2B online business?
Scaling a business has everything to do with creating and implementing a business model to act as a foundation for sustainable growth. In an ideal world, your business system must have the capacity to handle increases in business, demand, and revenue without overwhelming your operations. Your business must have the operational and infrastructural ability to accommodate scaling and subsequent growth.
Scaling is a long and complex process. It includes planning, funding, staffing, technological investments, and short- and long-term partnerships with consistent efforts to ensure stability.
Why do you need to scale up your B2B eCommerce business?
There is no specific formula to determine the exact time appropriate for scaling your B2B eCommerce business.
In the famous words of a world-renowned entrepreneur, “You never know with these things when you’re trying something new what can happen — this is all experimental.” – Richard Branson.
However, certain indicators can help you identify the right time to start preparing to scale your B2B eCommerce business. These are:
- Is your server overwhelmed with the current order and transaction load?
- Does your eCommerce store experience downtime often due to traffic surges?
- Do you notice an exponential increase in the number of leads generated?
- Have you updated or migrated your eCommerce platform?
If you find your business turning down a potential opportunity because of a lack of infrastructure or operational capacity, it might be the right time to look forward to scaling your B2B eCommerce business.
With that said, we should move on to the B2B eCommerce business scaling strategies that will help you prepare for the upcoming bright future.
Tips to Scale your B2B eCommerce Business in 2021?
So, how can you engage with customers and simultaneously accommodate a growing demand with enhanced operations? Here are some tips for scaling your B2B online business to stay ahead of the curve in the current market scenario.
1. Choose a scalable B2B eCommerce platform
In a B2B business, especially with the growing competition, no customer wants to come to B2B eStore experiencing downtime. And with a complex purchase process with multiple personnel handling having a stake in the decision-making process, even the slightest delay can cause substantial business losses. But can servers promise zero downtime? No, still, a scalable eCommerce platform can curb losses by preventing downtimes to a vast extent.
B2B online businesses are hence looking for scaling on cloud services. Some of the eCommerce platforms in the market are equipped with scalable cloud infrastructure and are a good solution. These platforms also offer surge protection SLAs to an extent.
2. Focus on Building a High Performing Team
Things are different with few orders a day, but if you are handling or at least expecting to handle anything beyond that, you must start investing in a team that knows the nitty-gritty of the B2B eCommerce business. Hire people who know what to do from the get-go and are fully prepared to handle the upcoming rush and the challenges associated.
Also, hire people who can give structure to your sales operations and contribute to the betterment of the overall B2B transactions and eStore performance. Operations are equally vital as IT. The team acts as a foundation for any business. And with a niche like B2B eCommerce, you must invest in the overall infrastructure, including the online store’s platform capabilities and human resources.
3. Embed Seamless and International Payments Functionalities
Setting up payment methods is one of the most critical requirements for a B2B eCommerce business looking to scale globally. Cross-border payments and payment methods supporting international currencies are enough to attract customers from all across the world. B2B business owners can transform this challenge of handling cross-border orders to a competitive advantage for a growing global business.
Typically, there are four ways to complete any B2B payment, Debit/Credit cards, Electronic Fund Transfer, ACH Transfer, and paper checks. According to a study, nearly 50% of B2B payments were still done by paper checks as of 2020. But with the post-pandemic digital world into play, digital solutions are becoming popular by the second. Various apps and extensions in the market allow you to send and receive payments facilitating payouts and collections in multiple currencies. This is another way in building the trust of the customers leading to a sure shot strategy for customer acquisition and retention.
4. Optimize Service and Customer Experience
B2B businesses do not have the option to remain stagnant. They need to innovate to introduce value-added services to convince customers to embrace online buying. Today’s advanced analytics can track customer journeys and help businesses observe the conversion funnel. This will help you gain critical insights to understand the reasons for increased sales or what leads to an abandoned cart.
All this will eventually lead you to determine the success and failure areas. Business owners can make necessary improvements and innovations that enhance the overall customer journey. Some examples are keeping a clean and ad-free interface, a streamlined checkout process, transparent and reliable shipping options, and much more.
5. Gain Insights of Your B2B eCommerce Store and Leverage Data
Any B2B eCommerce business will become more desirable as it becomes easy to navigate for the buyers and the decision-makers. This is where data plays its role. Knowing your customers well will always pay in the end. You can provide better value that leads to positive outcomes on your B2B Store. With a data-driven understanding of the customer’s profile, journeys, and order patterns, B2B businesses can forecast the customers’ needs and serve accordingly.
With the advancing technology, businesses now have access to cross-functional data related to customer journeys, sales, etc. Digging deep into this treasure of data will help you provide a better online experience, gain repeat customers, and increase customer lifetime value (CLV). To achieve scale, B2B eCommerce business owners can monetize these insights and help the customers make better purchase decisions by improving the B2B eCommerce store’s search and match-making functionality. This data will also develop the intelligence to offer customized price quotations, volume-based discounts, and shipping options based on customer’s locations, needs, and buying habits.
A Detailed Guide to Scale Your B2B eCommerce Business
We believe that the right partnerships and aligned resources drive customers’ success strategies and help scale the business to greater heights. If you are interested in learning more about how you can build or scale your B2B eCommerce business, we have just the resource that will help. Here is a free eBook: B2B eCommerce – A Digital Scalability Guide containing B2B industry trends, global landscape, challenges faced, and digital commerce best practices.
Closing Note
B2B eCommerce business owners need to learn to solve real customer problems using technology and a business model that appeals to a wide customer base. Here, investing in a solid infrastructure technology partner becomes a necessity. Krish is an end-to-end digital eCommerce Agency & solution provider to fuel your digital transformation with functionality and scalability. We offer comprehensive digital commerce strategy and consultation and implement eCommerce industry best practices to ensure that B2B eCommerce business owners can leverage from a conversion-optimized B2B digital commerce store. Let’s connect to transform your business with our B2B eCommerce Solutions !
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Minal Joshi is a content marketer at Krish with a flair for eCommerce and Digital Commerce aspects. She is a MarTech fanatic with a knack of writing with which, she helps brands to curate, create, & commence digital brand positioning. Sharing insights via articles, case studies, eBooks, Infographics, and other forms of content creation is what she lives for. Being an ardent traveler, when not writing, you'll find her sipping coffee into the mountains or petting a stray.
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