Williams Commerce has been a leading provider of B2B trade ecommerce solutions for the last 7 years.
Whilst the B2B ecommerce user journey / experience differs considerably from B2C, there are points of similarity and differentiation between the two. Historically we provided custom built trade ecommerce sites for our customers built on our .net platform, but as Magento grew in capability and reliability we moved our efforts into delivering trade ecommerce solutions of Magento Community and Enterprise editions.
The flexibility of Magento offers the perfect platform for any small to medium ecommerce site. We have built Magento sites for customers with as few as 3 SKUs unto 500,000 SKUs and with highly complex pricing models.
Take Advantage of Magento’s Retail Functionality to Disrupt Your Trade Marketplace
Magento has incredibly powerful functionality around voucher codes, and with additional modules you can add merchandising functionality, BOGOFS, loyalty schemes, social media integration. Many of these provisions would not be commonly used when managing trade pricing, but in many cases if implemented correctly offer something that many of your trade competitors are not. Take for example the Sweet Tooth Loyalty Module, Williams Commerce has helped a number of their trade customers implement this module to (no surprise!) increase customer loyalty. To take the conversation away from purely giving the best price, to encourage the customer to chose you over a competitor even if you sell the same product a loyalty module can give that bit extra to entice them back.
So what are the necessary ingredients to build a successful Magento B2B ecommerce site?
When starting a new web project its critical to keep the customer at the heart of the requirements. Remember your not designing a website for you, your designing it for your customer. And in the case of a trade customer, they have some specific requirements… typically these may include; browse your product range quickly and easily, see what products you have in stock, place a repeat order in limited time (in between running their shop maybe), see what offers are available, download product information and images.
In each case you therefore need to consider the site functionality. Williams Commerce has developed various modules to improve the user experience and now have over 100 trade Magento ecommerce sites running for our customers. Here are a few:
- Quick Order and spreadsheet order upload
- Fast order at category level showing the customers own pricing
- Full ERP integration to sync product, order, customer and stock data between backend systems such as Sage, Dynamics to Magento
- Multi Media Library – allow the customer to hi res product images, video and download product information such as barcodes, MSDNs etc.
- Extended product data
- Hidden products which require login to view or view pricing
The opportunities for a well implemented Magento trade ecommerce site for a wholesaler or importer are significant. We believe a well implemented trade ecommerce site can add 10% to the top line of a B2B business. The key to success is start with good data (product and customer), choose a capable ecommerce provider (preferably a Magento partner), keep your customer at the heart of what you are trying to achieve… always look at the site through their eyes.
If you would like some impartial advice on B2B ecommerce or talk more specifically about a project give us a call on 0116 326 1116, or visit the Williams Commerce contact page.
