9 B2B Ecommerce Platforms to Grow Your Business Online
B2B (Business to Business) companies have different needs than B2C (Business to Customers) ones. When it comes to B2B ecommerce platforms, it's necessary to choose solutions that consider their specificities.
Using a B2B ecommerce platform is an opportunity to enjoy the online market growth, and offer the best products and services for other companies, regardless of where they are. You can close deals online, and expand your brand reach.
9 Best B2B Ecommerce Platforms
1. BigCommerce
With BigCommerce for B2B, you have the opportunity to create a site for large catalogs, with customer and pricing segmentation. You can also integrate it with major CRM (Customer Relationship Management), OMS (Order Management System), and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems.
You can even customize shipping rates with BigCommerce's native integration ShipperHQ to help you reduce costs. Enjoy pre-built tools such as immediate quote generation, user permissions, and re-ordering to enhance customer experience.
Your ecommerce will be protected from unauthorized access and malicious attacks with DDoS security, and PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance. BigCommerce Enterprise has a 99.99% uptime server reassuring your website is going to run smoothly.
Key features
- Customer and pricing segmentation
- Integration with major CRM, OMS, and ERP systems
- Flexible payment methods
- DDoS security
- PCI compliance
- Purchase orders and bulk ordering
- Multi-storefront and multi-catalog
2. WooCommerce
WooCommerce, which is an open-source ecommerce platform built on WordPress, provides solutions for B2B ecommerce as well. You can add an online store to any WordPress site with just a few clicks, then, get secure payments, set shipping methods, and customize what you need.
One of WooCommerce’s benefits is that it offers hundreds of extensions, free and paid. You can install features for different purposes, enhance user and customer experience, manage and track inventory, develop marketing campaigns, and measure results, for example.
With the WooCommerce Min/Max quantities extension, you can specify the minimum and maximum product quantities allowed to make a purchase. WooCommerce Product Bundles enables you to offer personalized product bundles and bulk discount packages.
Key features
- Open-source ecommerce platform built on WordPress
- Hundreds of extensions
- WooCommerce mobile app
- Scalable
- Support teams across the world
- Safe and secure online payment
3. QuickBooks
QuickBooks B2B Ecommerce platform allows you to have a customized website, using your own URL, aligned with your brand's design, and include important features such as custom price lists for each buyer.
Your customers will be able to check shipping costs, pay online with security, and reorder in a much simpler way than it would be through email or phone.
It's possible to adjust the settings to provide a personalized experience for every customer. Each one of them is going to see only the products you want them to, and with the prices and discounts you define for each. With an up-to-date catalog, it's going to be much easier to sell in bulk.
With the "request access for new buyers" feature, you can send an invite to your clients via email, where they will be able to create an account, in just a few steps, to buy on your store. This way, it's easier to control access and approve only the ones you desire.
Key features
- Custom price lists
- Secure payment
- Sell in bulk
- Personalized experience
- Request access for new buyers tool
- Custom domain
4. Magento
Developed by Adobe, Magento is a B2B ecommerce platform where you can create custom catalogs and pricing to provide a personalized experience to your clients. You will be able to offer self-service customers portals to easily track and manage their orders.
Whether you are a distributor, wholesaler, or manufacturer, it's important to invest in intelligent solutions to enjoy the opportunities that having an online sales channel provides. Magento will help with an AI-powered platform that was specifically designed for B2B needs.
You can allow your buyers to create an account for their companies and inside it insert multiple tiers of buyers with specific roles and permissions, track quotes and orders, set purchase approval rules, and manage their credit online. While you can send them specific content and promotions.
Key features
- AI-powered
- Easy-to-use customer portal
- Personalized catalogs and pricing
- Targeted content and promotions
- Upload list of SKUs
- Quick order forms
5. Oracle NetSuite
The B2B ecommerce platform from Oracle NetSuite helps you to have a complete online store for different business models. You can make customer-specific catalogs and prices, provide several payment options, and allow your buyers to create and manage their accounts.
With the drag and drop tool, it's easy to edit your ecommerce site, designing every page to deliver buyer-centric experiences. Make it simple for users to find products with native search and guided navigation built directly into your website.
Oracle also counts on marketing tools, such as email marketing, where you can create strategies to send special offers and re-engage abandoned carts. It's possible to give your customers other alternatives as well, allowing them to buy online and pick up in the store and use click-and-collect models.
Key features
- Customers specific catalogs and pricing
- Account and contact management
- Recurring orders
- Approval workflows
- Customer payments
6. Pepperi
With Pepperi, your customers can have a personalized experience buying from you by having their own catalog, pricing, discount, and order history. In addition, you have the opportunity to simplify the management process by centralizing all sales channels data in a single platform and controlling everything from it.
You are going to count on a B2B ecommerce platform that is easy-to-use, flexible, with apps for IOS and Android, which means you can always keep an eye on how things are going. The e-catalogs make the customer experience even better, with interactive presentations and intuitive navigation.
Pepperi also gives you the option to choose different languages and currencies, so you can sell all around the world. Create your workflows to consolidate, validate, and approve orders, and set the dashboard, reports, and notifications according to your team’s needs.
Key features
- Easy and intuitive
- E-catalogs
- Buyer specific
- Web and mobile
- Central configuration
- Global ready
7. OroCommerce
OroCommerce provides several B2B ecommerce solutions, for example, you can create a flexible multi-website to set currencies and tax regulations according to each country or region. It enables you as well to organize and personalize product catalogs for specific companies, business units, or individual buyers.
The buyers will have the option to create multiple shopping lists to quickly purchase the products when they need them. While you can organize price lists according to buyers, and include price points, tiers, and international currencies.
Keep the access control on your ecommerce by enabling unique roles for employees, sellers, and buyers. This will help you to protect sensitive information and increase security. You are going to find tools to track business KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), to understand how to improve service.
Key features
- Corporate account management
- Access controls
- Multiple price lists
- Multiple shopping lists
- Personalized B2B catalog management
- Custom reports
8. Yo!Rent
Yo!Rent is an online ecommerce rental software to launch a rental marketplace platform. Regular eCommerce solutions often lack the features required to conduct successful rental operations, but Yo!Rent dedicatedly caters to rental business requirements.
For example, to simplify complex pricing, Yo!Rent comes with a booking calendar and has a Request-for-Quote module to handle bulk orders as well. To provide complete scalability for B2B operations, Yo!Rent supports unlimited listings, transactions, user profiles and accommodates business growth.
To ensure continuity in business operations, the team behind Yo!Rent also provides one year of free technical support to all its customers. Along with B2B business operations, Yo!Rent has been pre-integrated with all advances required to conduct business in B2C, C2C and C2B verticals.
Yo!Rent is multilingual and comes with 20+ payment gateway options, entrepreneurs can target diverse groups of customers including immigrants and tourists.
Key Features
- Rent plus sell
- Agreement management and eSign
- Rental security management
- Later return/cancellation charges
- Rental add-ons
- Product inspection
9. Yo!Kart B2B
Yo!Kart is a feature-rich eCommerce multivendor platform designed to create online marketplaces such as Amazon, Etsy, etc. While the software is ideal for niche marketplace requirements, it also has a standalone B2B version - Yo!Kart B2B to cater to manufacturers, distributors, and other B2B online businesses.
The B2B marketplace software is highly scalable and can be customized to create compelling experiences for your users. It has a powerful request for quote (RFQ) module that allows your users (buyers and sellers) to interact and negotiate pricing.
With RFQ, users can accept, reject, or place a counteroffer on the submitted quotation. Similarly, you can enable sellers to add bulk pricing discounts, set up minimum order quantity, facilitate transactions in preferred payment methods (including cash on delivery), and much more.
With Yo!Kart B2B, you get 12-months of free technical support, a one-time fee with a lifetime license, and zero recurring charges or processing fees. It has all the tools you need to start or even scale your online B2B marketplace.
Key Features
- Separate Dashboards for the admin and seller
- Individual vendor storefront
- Flexible payment options
- Show/hide prices for users
- One-click re-order
- Seller subscription module
- Flexible, safe, and secure
- In-built Content management system
- Powerful catalog management system
- RFQ module
- Supplier search
- Bulk ordering
Aspects to Pay Attention to Choose a B2B Ecommerce Platform
Usability
Pay attention if the B2B ecommerce platform you choose provides an intuitive dashboard, with easy-to-use tools. Its usability is essential not only for developing your online store, but also to manage it.
Your team must be able to easily navigate through the functions. If not, instead of saving time and optimizing processes, you may end up with sales management problems, affecting your brand's image. Check reviews from other companies to know if the platform has a simple interface.
Budget
How much can you spend on a B2B ecommerce platform? Defining that is fundamental to identifying which software plans are in your range. After doing that, research for the ones that offer the features your business needs to provide the best services online.
Having a list of essential features will help you with that, also making an ecommerce plan, which will serve as a guideline on the whole process of structuring the online store workflow from inserting products to shipping, and creating marketing strategies.
Security
Customers need to be sure their data is secure when they are completing a purchase online. To be able to provide that you need to have a B2B ecommerce platform that follows the main security protocols, including PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance.
Some platforms are in charge of PCI while others leave it at your responsibility. Be aware of these details, so you can follow the requirements to offer safe and secure payment online.
Customization
A good B2B ecommerce platform needs to allow you to develop a customizable website, which will be designed according to your company’s needs and particularities. You must be able to add your brand's visual identity to the online store.
Besides, B2B ecommerce often demands providing self-service options to clients, including creating accounts, having a personalized portal and catalogs. You are going to need practical tools to edit and customize the catalogs according to each buyer.
Payment options
B2B ecommerce has some specific demands when compared to B2C, and one of them is the necessity to offer flexible payment options, including offline ones.
Study your potential buyers’ profiles to understand better their necessities and identify which payment methods you must provide to avoid losing deal opportunities.
Features to Look for in B2B Ecommerce Platforms
Access Controls
In B2B ecommerce, it's common to have customers with different job titles and responsibilities in their companies. Because of this, it's necessary to restrict access to information, providing only what they need to make the purchase.
B2B ecommerce platforms must enable you to create buyers' accounts where it's possible to add more than one user. Then, the admin can regulate each users' permissions, accelerating the buying process with your company, also giving more flexibility and control to the customers.
Customer Segmentation
Customer segmentation is an essential feature to help you manage your ecommerce and develop specific sales and marketing strategies, according to each customer characteristic.
In B2B ecommerce there are situations where it's needed to set pricing and minimum order requirements according to the segment.
Besides, by having them segmented, it's going to be easier to follow up on the purchases, analyze and compare buyer behavior, and use all the information to create more effective processes and marketing campaigns.
You can divide customers by:
- Geographical location
- Order volume
- Catalog selection
- Reorder frequency
- Quantity of products ordered
Bulk Orders
Commonly, B2B buyers acquire a high quantity of the same products in just one order, to facilitate this process, giving the possibility to make bulk orders makes a whole difference in user experience. You can list your products as cases, packs, or pallets too.
It's also interesting to offer an additional discount according to the number of items bought. Check if the B2B ecommerce platform allows you to set a minimum quantity, so when the buyer reaches it, the discount is given automatically.
Customer Specific Catalog and Pricing
The customer segment and other specificities affect the price in the B2B sales, therefore the platform must enable you to customize the catalog and pricing. You should have the option to provide a personalized catalog to each customer, enhancing the shopping experience.
There are also B2B clients with very unique orders that demand different pricing, by adjusting that online, you save time, and avoid the need to close the sales through a call or email, for example.
Install a Live Chat to Talk With Your Customers
A live chat sowtware allows your customer support and sales team to speak on real-time with whoever enters your website. When you install it, the live chat is displayed like a small box on the corner of each page.
The website visitor clicks on it to type their question, and instead of receiving only programmed answers, you can enjoy the opportunity to get to know them better, engage, and offer a personalized support. This increase the chances of closing sales, and helps to improve your brand image.
With JivoChat, you can have a personalized live chat, and manage all your communication channels in a single platform. It's easy-to-use, and an opportunity to enhance customer experience.
B2B Ecommerce Platforms Need to Be User-focused
Efficient B2B ecommerce platforms have to offer solutions that are based on providing a personalized user experience. The demands from each client may be very specific, to encourage them to use an ecommerce site, you need to give them tools that facilitate making orders easily and quickly.
Sign up and try JivoChat for yourself!