20+ Essential B2B eCommerce Features to Have in a Successful Online Portal

An essential function of any successful set up is full integration with your ERP, PIM, EDI, and other systems for automated information exchange for products, customers, and orders. With such integration, you will greatly reduce the load on your staff, avoid duplicate data entry and human mistakes, as well as provide customers and partners with real-time inventory information and order status.

To streamline the onboarding process - automate and optimize buyer's registration and approval.

The wholesale module we offer and easy to manage wholesale pricing across multiple buyer's groups with many pricing options; optimized wholesale ordering process with one-page product catalog; supports minimum product quantity and step quantity to sell items by the boxes and etc.

The perfect search engine in the store helps customers to find and buy the right products quickly. Your customers will love your store because it makes getting to the products they want to buy easier than ever. Live filters take care of showing updated results on the shop page while your customers search by keyword, price range, use categories, tags or any product attributes to narrow down the results.

More than 94% of buyers do research online before placing an order so it's critical to present detailed product information for pre-purchase research and after-purchase support. Every successful client we interviewed mentioned the ability to post detailed information for products was a major part of their success.

Photos, videos, specifications, schematics, compatibility, certification sheets, downloadable 3D models and drawings – every little piece of information you add to a product page will help to win more customers and score better with search engines.

If you have hundreds or thousands of products in your online catalog, a powerful product finder (for example Make, Model, Year finder for an auto-part store) will bring and keep buyers working with you because it will make their life easier. It takes time to set up and keeps it up-to-date with new products but this is well worth it because, in many stores, this is the main feature keeping buyers to come back and do business with you.

For many businesses a good section to have on the product page is the "Alternative products" list. For example, on a brand-name product page, you can show OEM product alternatives that do the same thing for the fraction of the price of the brand-name unit (and may even have a bigger profit margin for you 😉

RFQs are essential parts of B2B functionality. Your online system will take quote requests 24/7/365 so your sales team can do the things that matter: reaching out to customers and growing the business instead of wasting time on data entry tasks. But take it to the next level and include the "Click here to pay" button on every approved quotation sent to a customer. So, instead of calling your sales, a customer simply clicks on the link and pay for the order in the store with a credit card, on a credit line, or any other payment method you offer. This little button will boost your conversion from quotes to orders.

You want a system where your staff can easily manage customers, orders, categories, products, promotions, and everything else in the store without having to contact an agency or web developer for every change.

For a larger store with hundreds or thousands of products, consider implementing Product Information Management (PIM) system to simplify the product management.

Most eCommerce systems offer some kind of PO or check payment method but how do you track if this particular customer is way over his/her approved credit? Do you check every order manually against that customer’s account in your billing system?

Our online credit line module will allow a customer to apply for a credit line with you, track available credit, and accept the credit repayment automatically.

This simple feature is missing in many popular eCommerce platforms and I would consider it as an essential functionality for a B2B store where the head office can be placing orders for multiple locations or a contractor wants to ship orders to multiple job sites. This gives your customers the option to store multiple shipping addresses and retrieve them at checkout.

Your customers will appreciate the ability to be able to save the shopping cart or a product list to be able to order right from that list.

Many buyers want to share the whole shopping cart or a product list with somebody else or keep the link to that list for future reference.

Some buyers find it very convenient to be able to associate the products in your store with their own reference numbers which will be shown in the shopping cart and on the invoices. 

Many large B2B suppliers offer multiple ways to make it easier to order a large number of products at once. One way is to allow your customers to use a simple CSV text file with 2 columns: SKU and Qty to upload products into the shopping cart.

We see some stores make it very hard for a customer to contact them if they have any questions. We went the other way and added a simple "Questions?" button on every product page which opens a form with pre-populated customer's information and the product name to make it as easy as possible to submit a quotion

This feature alone can double your conversion rates in the store. Even if you can man the live chat only during business hours, it will show your customers they can count on you to be there for them. Adding a knowledge base with FAQ and a support board to manage communication is a huge plus as well and makes it easier for your team to provide outstanding customer service which is a foundation of any successful business.

Fast and secure hosting with good speed index and Google score is essential for good conversion ratios and a higher position in the search engine results. Overwise, all your investments into the store development and marketing will be a waste. Make sure your IT guys run speed and security tests at least every month. You can do it here: http://ecommerce.fitness