E-commerce sales are expected to be $6 Trillion by 2024 globally. Before making a purchase, almost 80% of customers conduct comprehensive research online.
About 70% of the online platforms are expected to enable B2B transactions by 2023. With B2B e-commerce evolving continuously, it’s essential for you as a B2B entrepreneur to be updated with the recent trends going in the market.
This article will cover the recent trends that B2B professionals should adopt to provide their customers with a seamless and best experience. Let’s begin!
What is B2B E-Commerce?
Business-to-business e-commerce is sales and purchases made between businesses through an internet portal. To improve customer experience and make the purchasing journey less chaotic, businesses are turning their trade online. Selling products via internet channels asks for less human effort and time consumption. B2B companies are adopting various methods, such as appealing websites, AI assistance, seamless checkout process, outsourcing marketing plans, etc., to acquire and retain other business customers.
However, it’s never enough customers for a business. Customer satisfaction is the ultimate goal to attract new customers and retain existing ones. Top B2B e-commerce companies that left a mark with their online presence are Alibaba, Shopify, BigCommerce, Amazon Business, eBay, Made-In-China, Open Cart, Oracle Suite Commerce, etc.
We have listed down the current and important methods through which you can create an impact among your customers more effectively and efficiently.
Top B2B E-Commerce Trends in 2022
If you are planning to take your B2B business to the next level of digitalization, you need to be well-informed about the ongoing business trends occurring in the e-commerce market. Here are the top B2B e-commerce trends that you can implement as your business strategy for better growth
1. Social Commerce
Social Commerce uses platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat for promoting, selling, and purchasing goods and services. It is considered one of the most convenient ways today for both buyers and sellers. The buyers can make a purchase by clicking or dropping a direct message to the seller without much hassle on checkout pages and long-loading web pages.
The sellers can list their products on these platforms with descriptions and provide their contact details for accessible communication. Prospects use social media platforms to discover brands, explore a product, purchase a product, interact with the seller, and provide feedback and reviews.
It is expected that global social media commerce value will reach approximately $2.9 Trillion by 2026.
2. Omnichannel Customer Experience
Omnichannel customer experience means you should be able to provide aid to customers on all platforms. Still, the experience should be so smooth and continuous that the buyers don’t have to go through the interaction process again whenever they contact you. Customers should feel that their recent communication is a continuation of the previous one. Being available for customer assistance on all the platforms should be considered as essential as delivering products to them as it saves their time and effort.
Omnichannel customer experience has shown a hike of 287% in the purchase rate for businesses who interacted with customers on multiple channels than those single channels.
3. Digitization of Supply Chain Management
Digitization of supply chain management is automating your manual management of the flow of goods and services with the help of software and technology. Digitizing your business system saves time, effort, and cost. Both large and small-scale businesses can do hours of manual work in minutes, saving extra human effort.
An automated system makes it much easier to analyze business data for better decision-making with minimum or no errors. Top software that will help you digitize your supply chain management are SAP SCM, Oracle SCM, Blue Yonder (JDA), Infor SCM. This software can manage product development, sourcing, production, sales, inventory management, logistics, etc.
4. Personalization of Customer Experience
Personalizing customer experience means curating and aligning your sales and marketing strategies according to customer needs. Customers expect companies to understand their tastes and preferences. Specially tailored messages, offers, discounts, loyalty points, etc., come under personalizing the customer experience.
Adopting this method to keep the customers engaged opens doors for a healthy customer-business relationship which is a must for B2B companies as the sales cycle is long. Personalizing services for customers helps in increasing your customer retention rate as well. Companies that provide impersonal experiences disappoint almost 71% of customers. Brands that offer tailored discounts and offers are trusted by approximately 91% of consumers.
5. Customer Journey Analytics
Customer journey analytics is the method to understand and examine the importance of customer satisfaction through data and numbers. This analysis considers customer needs, churn rate, repurchase rate, emotional highs and lows of a consumer, etc.
You can easily measure different customer journey metrics with the help of customer analytics tools like Finteza. Finteza is a web analytics measurement tool that offers various traffic evaluations, conversion and funnel examinations, and customer retention reports, suggesting measures to improve your business strategies and focus on strengths. Here is an example of a customer retention report from Finteza that lets you evaluate your capability to retain customers.
Example of Finteza retention report.
6. Sustainability Inclination
Sustainability is reducing the use of products and resources that can harm the environment by increasing pollution and unbalancing the ecological habitat. It promotes eco-friendly products like cloth bags, LED bulbs, steel bottles, etc. Recycling and reusing are also contributing to a greener and more sustainable environment. Business firms are implementing sustainable practices to reduce their carbon footprints and contribute to a greener society.
The whole world is sensing the alarming situation of the environment, including manufacturers, retailers, and wholesalers to who you are catering. These business professionals demand changes in the existing product from sellers to reduce their toxic waste. You can adopt sustainable measures in your company at different levels, like supply chain management, customer delivery, energy consumption, waste reduction, water footprint, etc.
Here are the top companies that have mainly contributed to saving the environment by adopting sustainable measures:
- Accenture has reduced each employee’s carbon emission by almost 52%;
- Apple has started using aluminum instead of other metals as it emits less pollution;
- Estee Lauder has a policy of sending zero waste to landfills by recycling and reusing it in one way or the other;
- Google, also known as an advocate for the environment, uses 50% less energy than other companies, and 91% of its total waste is used in other forms and restricted from going to landfills;
- Ikea manufactures its products using eco-friendly and sustainable materials, and 91% of the waste is reused, recycled, and converted into energy.
Conclusion
It’s crucial to stay on top of the ongoing trends for B2B professionals. Adapting and implementing the recent trends will not only help in business growth but will help in increasing your customer satisfaction rate.
We have discussed significant trends for 2022 that B2B companies are bringing into their business practices for the betterment and growth of their firms. You can execute these trends along with your current business exercises and expect fruitful results for your company.
