Eight Effective Strategies For Driving B2B Ecommerce Sales in 2020
With global e-commerce sales expected to hit a whopping $4.2 trillion by 2020, there’s more potential for online businesses to succeed. But with great opportunity comes massive competition, making it challenging for e-commerce businesses to strengthen their B2B Ecommerce relationships and keep their edge. For B2B e-commerce websites, the rate of conversions is of the utmost importance. One way to increase growth in the B2B space is to capitalize on the trending e-commerce trends. In this article, we’ll highlight the latest B2B e-commerce trends 2020. Also, we’ll discuss some of the proven e-commerce marketing strategies that online businesses should use to improve e-commerce conversions in 2020 and beyond. Investing in the right e-commerce strategies can go a long way. Before we shed light on the actual strategies, here are some of the latest B2B e-commerce trends to watch out for in 2020. B2B E-Commerce Trends To Watch Out For In 2020 Social eCommerce For most of us, social media is just about likes and sharing. But many B2B e-commerce businesses also use these platforms as profitable online selling mediums in 2020. According to research, more than 40% of online sellers use their social media accounts to increase sales and boost conversions. As prominent social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, introduce built-in e-commerce features, online stores will have no difficulty selling directly from their social media pages. Transparency Is Key
When it comes to online selling, the factor of trust tops the list. Since customers can’t have a tactical experience while shopping online, e-commerce store owners may have to do a little extra to build trust. E-commerce businesses need to build trust through transparent payment systems and pricing structure. Research suggests that more than 44% of online buyers prefer buying from websites that have a transparent pricing structure. Apart from that, buyers also expect superlative customer care service and great self-service features. Voice eCommerce It is expected that more than 75% of US households will have smart speakers by the end of 2025. This gives B2B e-commerce business owners an opportunity to drive interest through advanced voice recognition technologies. It has also been observed that more than 14% of customers want to see voice recognition technology included in their buying experience. With proper voice commerce technology in place, B2B e-commerce business owners can better benefit from repetitive ordering, which will enable customers to place repeat orders quickly. Email Marketing Email marketing is another emerging trend that B2B business owners can use to better engage with their buyers. The power of email marketing is beyond your imagination. The present-day email marketing strategies are not just about fancy GIFs, but you can use this channel to incorporate other advanced features, such as opening menus, completing checkouts, etc. As email marketing becomes better and more result-driven in 2020, e-commerce businesses have more potential to get better ROI. Mobile Marketing
Mobile commerce has gained substantial momentum in recent years. According to Statista, the total number of cellphone users globally stood at more than 6.95 billion, which is expected to grow to 7.1 billion by the end of 2021. In 2021, B2B e-commerce business owners will leverage SMS marketing to send personalized messages and promotional text blasts to customers. In addition, integrating mobile payments and optimizing your B2B website for mobile responsiveness can help website owners drive sales. AR/VR-Driven Product Experiences No matter what your business niche is, having HD images, interactive videos, and catchy product descriptions are a must. But you can already find these things on more or less every e-commerce store these days. Here, it is important to understand that present-day customers expect more whether it’s about multiple payment solutions or product details you have displayed on your website. So what you can do as an online business owner is to take a step further and leverage AR and VR that allow buyers to envision the product in their own space. Needless to say, when you offer a more engaging and personalized customer experience, your business will have better chances of securing more wins. Personalized Shopping Experience Research reveals that more than 72% of online buyers will engage only with personalized texts. When your B2B business provides a personalized shopping experience to your buyers, they would be able to better connect with your brand. Technological innovations in the space of Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality will make it easier for online business owners to automate their website features. Also, you can offer loyalty programs, effective self-service solutions, and product catalogs to improve e-commerce conversions. Fast & Free Shipping Once customers order products on your website, they want to get them delivered as quickly as possible. Due to the aggressive competition in an online space, it’s your responsibility to think out of the box solutions that are smart enough to cater to your buyer’s needs without disturbing your business budget. In 2021, more and more customers will be expecting fast and free deliveries. If you don’t have a free shipping deal currently listed on your website, we suggest you accommodate it somehow into your ecommerce marketing strategy, as this is what exactly present-day customers want. Go Green With over 68% of customers considering ‘Eco-Friendly’ and ‘Green’ products, it is more important than ever for B2B business owners to offer solutions that are environmentally friendly and sustainable.
Customer-Friendly Support With web and social networking platforms becoming more powerful and dominant, B2B businesses are now required to pay more attention to customer service than ever before. Remember, your online business can only survive and grow if you’re truly connecting with your prospects. For this, your business needs to have plenty of buyer-friendly onsite resources, such as a live chat option, FAQ, etc. If investing in a human support team is not an option, you can consider installing chatbots for your website. Online businesses that have chatbots installed to handle customer queries are more likely to offer better customer engagement than businesses that have a support team to provide help. Eight Effective Strategies For Driving B2B Ecommerce Sales In 2020 For the B2B eCommerce business owners, the rate of conversion is one of the most crucial metrics that help them measure their real-time business performance. Luckily, there are many ways you can improve the conversion rate of your B2B business. This section highlights some tried-and-tested strategies that will help you improve your e-commerce conversions in no time. 1. Conduct Website Audit Website analytics provides real-time data about how visitors are responding to your B2B website. Make sure you invest in tools like Google Analytics to keep yourself updated with the recent analytics. In addition, you should also get your website audit done after every few months to see how well your website is performing in terms of SEO, conversions, traffic, etc. This information will help you create a comprehensive B2B conversion strategy that can bring some real-time results. Carefully track the pages where visitors spend more time. This way, you would be able to identify pages that are not performing well. Simply improve the content on those pages or optimize them to drive attention. 2. Improve Your Website Design You might have tons of inventory in your store, but all of your efforts will go down the drain if your customers fail to find their desired products. Website designs that are visually too complex usually result in fewer conversions. That is why it’s important for B2B business owners to choose a website design that is user-friendly. Apart from that, you must also optimize your website for mobile so that buyers who want to place orders through their smartphones will have no difficulty in placing their orders. 3. Invest In The Best SEO Strategies
SEO is key to successful B2B e-commerce marketing strategies. You can not expect good conversions if your site pages are not ranked on SERPs. As a B2B business owner, you must take advantage of both on-page and off-page SEO strategies to improve your website visibility in front of search engines. 4. Strengthen Your B2B Relationships Strengthening your B2B relationships is one of the most crucial yet often neglected B2B e-commerce marketing aspects that can significantly improve e-commerce conversions when done right. “The best way to strengthen any B2B eCommerce relationship is not through the price or features of your product, but rather the benefits that it provides” (Source: Click to Tweet). 5. Retarget Your Customers The process of conversion isn’t as simple as it may sound. You cannot merely assume that visitors will come to your online store and make a purchase. As a B2B business owner, your role is to identify visitors who visited your website and people who’re regular visitors. You can use this info to retarget those customers who have visited your store more than once and people who added a few things into their cart but didn’t complete the checkout process. There are different retargeting methods that you can use to minimize the cart abandonment ratio for your B2B eCommerce store. For instance, you can remind customers by sending follow up emails or personalized texts to encourage them to complete their transaction. 6. Invest In Omnichannel Approach Inadequate order fulfillment, poor customer service, and complex website design could result in order cancellation. Remember, order cancellation and negative reviews significantly impact your website’s conversion rate. Omnichannel commerce solution is an effective way to avoid the hurdles of order cancellation and negative reviews. With this approach, you can handle your merchandise across different platforms, send real-time updates, and maintain effective communication with your buyers. 7. Customize Your Landing Pages
B2B websites that have custom landing pages are more likely to convert than stores having generic pages. Unlike B2C stores, conveying information, and real product info through landing pages is more challenging for B2B e-commerce stores. There are many factors you should keep in mind before you design landing pages for your website. For instance: You must first define the problem and educate the customer about how your business can solve that problem. Here, your focus must be on ‘You’ instead of ‘I’ or ‘We’. Clearly define your offer and add relevant CTAs to persuade your website visitors to take action. You can either take help from a professional copywriter or can also use online landing page builders to create custom landing pages for your B2B e-commerce store. 8. Offer Uncomplicated Checkout Process One of the best ways you can improve e-commerce conversions for your B2B eCommerce store is by providing a buyer-friendly checkout process. Limit the number of forms the buyer may have to fill in at the time of checkout as they make the entire checkout process a lot more complex and lengthy. Instead, you can allow them to create a guest account and complete their purchase without any difficulty. Since B2B buyers are always on the lookout for effective cash flows and reduced costs, you must also provide them with multiple payment solutions, credit card payment solutions, and flexible short-term financing options so that they can choose the pricing plan that best fits their needs. Bonus Tips
Offer a smooth customer experience by improving your website’s load speed Do not add plenty of navigation links as they can confuse the buyer and also adversely affects the conversion rate
Add as many HD-quality images and videos as possible
Add multiple CTAs on your website’s Home Page and other landing pages
Create optimized and engaging product descriptions
Display reviews at your storefront to build trust
Offer ‘Fast & Free Shipping’ offer to drive interest Conclusion Learning ways to boost sales for a B2B eCommerce business isn’t a tough task. But to implement these strategies isn’t as easy as it may sound. Not all B2B eCommerce businesses are created alike. We hope this post has cleared some of your doubts. Try the above strategies and observe what improvement they’re bringing to the conversion rate of your store. Have you tried any of the above-listed strategies yet? Feel free to drop your feedback below. We would love to hear back.