3 Most Overlooked Factors in Your B2B E-Commerce Success

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Just to get the most pertinent of introductions out of the way: B2B (business-to-business or e-biz) refers to the occasion of a business offering its products and services to other businesses, while B2C (business-to-consumer) refer to instances of a business offering its products and services directly to the consumer. In other words, B2B ventures caters to businesses as their customers, while B2C ventures cater to consumers as their customers. And, while these terms (i.e., B2B and B2C) refer to both offline and online businesses, the terms had only come into use during the dotcom boom.
Now, most ecommerce websites generally follow a B2C model. But there are also enough online ventures out there whose main target customers are other businesses. And, while B2C and B2B obviously will have some similarities, the approach that is needed to run either is, predictably, pretty different.
However, considering the rising levels of customer-engagement that is possible today, there are factors that are overlooked when it comes to B2B, simply because these factors seem inherently more suitable for B2C. But that’s a grand oversight. In fact, merging the following three factors into the running of your B2B ecommerce business could very well spell the difference between your venture’s success or failure.

Factor 1: Personalization

The last thing any business wants to seem is unprofessional or amateurish. And for good reason. Giving either of the two impressions to customers, especially when you’re a B2B ecommerce business, is a sure-fire way to lose potential customers. However, there is a strong misconception that appearing casual, friendly, or personal in one’s interactions with other businesses is equivalent to appearing unprofessional – which is definitely not the case.

Now, chances are that if you were running a B2C business, you would be adopting a light-hearted and casual tone to connect with your individual customers as the norm. Because it’s pretty obvious that people prefer to do business with those they feel connected to. However, as, in running a B2B business, you are trying to reach out to other businesses, you will most likely adopt a formal, detached tone with plenty of jargon and marketing-based overtures, thinking that this is what your business customers will appreciate. After all, your customers are businesses, not individuals. So it is obvious that you can’t employ personalization and should rather treat them as a mechanical unit, right?

Nope. Very much wrong.

For you see, although in a B2B your customers are not individuals, it does not mean that it is absent of “people” either. Businesses, in fact, are made up of people at its very core. And as a B2B, you should not forget that. Because, even in a B2B, your business customers will be more likely to want to do business with you if they feel like you’re connecting to them. In fact, leave off the annoying business jargon and blasé marketing terms in your communications; they don’t work anymore. Rather, try for light and casual, with friendly overtones that make it clear to your customer that their business is important to you.

In short, your customers will be much more receptive (and more likely to continue doing business with you) if you take a more personalized approach.

Factor 2: Shipping

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In storytelling, one common piece of advice is that what the audience will remember the most about a story is it’s ending. And the same advice can be applied to B2B ecommerce in a sense as well. Only here, the “ending” refers to the final stage of a business placing an order with your B2B: the shipping and delivery of the ordered product(s) or service(s). However, while most B2Bs spend a lot of time optimizing all their other processes, the shipping and delivery aspect is what is most often overlooked – which can often trigger a business pulling away as your customer. In fact, statistics show that a lack of reliable and affordable shipping options is what makes B2Bs lose the most number of customers. For, up to 61% of businesses have indicated that they have abandoned a cart because of unexpected and ill-affordable shipping costs. And up to 50% indicated their orders not qualifying the minimum requirement for free shipping being the reason they abandon their carts (and as B2Bs usually run as wholesalers, the minimum requirement set for free shipping is an important aspect to consider).

Thus, re-organizing your shipping and delivery options to be affordable and reliable for your customers will greatly reduce customer abandonment of your carts.

Factor 3: Segmentation

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The segmentation factor is directly tied to the personalization factor mentioned earlier. In simple terms, segmentation here means categorizing your buyers (i.e., customers) based on various factors like price, timing, etc., while also categorizing your buyers, according to demographics, size, business needs, order volumes, and the likes. Basically, segmentation will allow you to personalize your B2B approach for various buyer categories, thereby intriguing them towards higher levels of engagement in your business.

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Simple Tricks for Getting More Conversions for your Online Business

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Talking about conversion rates, the primary goal of all business is to convert a lead (obtained from various online or other promotional campaigns) into a buyer (who finally purchases the product). Now, this conversion statistic is in turn based on many other dependent conversions. A few of these are mentioned below:

  1. Conversion of views to form submissions – This is one of the most common sources of online leads
  2. Conversion of form submissions to subscribers (be it to newsletter or any other offers etc.)
  3. Conversion of subscribers to repeat website visitors
  4. Conversion of repeat visitors to first time buyers
  5. Conversion of first time buyers to repeat buyers

Therefore, optimizing each of the steps in the customer life cycle would in turn cause an increase in percentage or probability of converted deals from online leads which are captured in the system.

Now, the question arises – how to optimize the content so as to ensure that the maximum customer progresses in the customer life cycle stages of ecommerce websites?

Majority of sales (especially B2C) do not involve a rational decision

This may sound erratic but it is not! There have been instances in the recent past wherein online stores with inferior products have recorded higher sales than online stores with better content and better pricing. This is because of the persuasion skills of these ecommerce sites. Most customers have been found to make purchases out of an emotional connect rather than judging on the rational utility of the product. Therefore, ecommerce’s who are able to present and position their products in a better way often get away with higher sales than otherwise.

All the glitters, at times, is gold

“All the glitters is not gold” may not be always true for online sales. This is because statistics (i.e., overall ecommerce statistics for 2016) show that 93% of the online consumers base their sale patterns and decisions on the visual appearance of the web portal or the ecommerce portal. And, approximately 52% of them decline to visit a particular web portal more than once in case they are not amused by the aesthetics of the website. The overall content involves the inclusion of videos, illustrating the utility of the product, chat widgets in the website, the ease of use and transition from one page to another and more importantly, the mobile responsiveness and the performance of the page – i.e. the time taken to load the web portal or the app.

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Statistics and customer reviews have stated that more than 96% of visitors find videos to be more useful than static content, and the overall conversion may increase by more than 12% with the replacement of images with videos on the landing pages.

Apart from that, the loading speed is of extreme importance especially in economies wherein the internet bandwidth is less as compared to the number of users using it. Statistics say that about 73% of users accessing the landing pages from their mobile are not satisfied with the speed with which the website loads, and more than 65% of the online users are not willing to wait for more than 3 seconds for a website to get loaded. Therefore, it is important that the weight of the website is also light.

Live chat widgets do play a crucial part in customer engagement on the website. This, however, is more critical for B2B sales, which show a great improvement in conversion rates on having the live chat option on the website.

(Statistics are based on Brainfox’s infographic: 65 Proven Statistics About E-Commerce Consumer Psychology.)

A/B testing could be one of the options to ensure website optimization

Now, given the customer behavior and the trends, the question arises as to how designers should offer a landing page catering to the terrain which is being targeted by the business because the customer value perception may differ from one geographical region to another. A/B testing could be one of the solutions to this dilemma. It captures the customer behavior to each of the webpage variants that has been launched by the designer. Now, each of the variants can have different positioning of components – one with video vs. one with the image, one with the chat option vs. one without the chat option and so on. Therefore, analyzing customer behavior on these variants may help designers to get a better and a more customized insight on the customer preferences in that particular geography.

 

Payment Security – a major reason behind shopping cart abandonment

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Trust seal is a non-negotiable factor which needs to be considered by online players before launching it to customers. Most online shoppers have declined transactions due to risks in the payment process. In addition to that, the pricing of the product should be realistic and competitive. The cart abandonment rate has been the maximum in the payment gateway stage of the transaction, where the customer has declined payment due to such reasons.

Post By NeoGrowth Credit – Business Loans specially created for Retailers & Online Sellers

For more Information – email us on digital@neogrowth.in

Or Give Missed Call @ 08080861166