Business to business (B2B) sales will continue to be a major area of growth in 2020. However, while research shows that 30% of buyers want to purchase at least 90% of products online, only 19% are doing this at the moment. The reason is friction in the purchasing journey.
B2B businesses that fail to deliver relevant content and easy processes are losing sales opportunities. Cloudfy is a powerful software as a service (SaaS) ecommerce solution that has been designed from the outset to meet the needs to B2B buyers. Here are just some of the ways Cloudfy can help you close more B2B sales.
B2B functionality
While the B2B ecommerce sector is growing quickly, there’s still a relatively small range of platform providers. Not every platform provides all the B2B options you might expect. You might have to choose high-level solutions that provide more functionality than you need or opt for expensive customization just to obtain key services like order fulfillment, inventory synchronization or financial integration.
Because Cloudfy is designed for B2B ecommerce it provides all the functionality you need and expect, straight out of the box. A site can be launched in weeks rather than months or years, allowing you to take advantage of ecommerce growth in your sector.
Integration
While almost eight out of 10 B2B companies have been selling online for two years or more, they often use a variety of additional channels including word of mouth referrals, a field sales force and ‘bricks and mortar’ premises. Social media is also influential, with B2B companies learning from best practices in the business to consumer (B2C) market.
Companies that deliver a consistently high standard of customer experience across all touch points with their customers will reap the benefits.
Cloudfy provides integration with leading business systems, so you can create a seamless experience for your customers from the moment they arrive at your site. Importantly your customers and employees can all see the same information in real time, so sales can be facilitated more easily, and customers can switch between sales channels.
Building loyalty
Reputation and price are considered keys to sales conversion by many manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors. However, easy purchasing, loyalty, and your inventory mix also rank highly. Essential ingredients to make B2B purchasing as easy as possible include:
- effective and efficient quoting
- transparent and tailored pricing
- easy purchasing processes and approvals
- finance arrangements
- credit limits
- quick order options
Cloudfy’s comprehensive suite of features ensures that your buyer’s journey is easy and intuitive from the moment they arrive on your site.
Easy navigation
Seven out of 10 buyers say that easy navigation is one of their top considerations when they arrive at a site. Cloudfy is designed to deliver a streamlined user journey through powerful on-site search facilities and well-designed user interfaces, purpose-built for busy trade buyers.
Product information
More than a third of buyers say that high quality product information is essential for a B2B ecommerce site. By delivering detailed product descriptions, high quality images and explainer videos you will inform potential buyers during their research and help to drive organic traffic to your site.
Thanks to Cloudfy’s scalability, unlimited products can be included, and the easy-to-use product management system makes it easy to update your online content.
Interactive online tools like mSeller allow B2B companies to share and distribute their catalogs to buyers digitally so they can be accessed anywhere and at any time. Updates don’t have to wait until the next reprint and pricing information is always up to date.
Enabling online product customization by offering a variety of components or options can also improve the relationship with your buyers, adding value and increasing sales.
Personalization
Many B2B companies are also finding that Amazon-like experiences are becoming a benchmark for B2B buyers. With Cloudfy, it’s possible to meet these expectations quickly and cost effectively by including personalized home pages and bespoke menus. You can use machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to interrogate buyers’ previous purchases and to recommend related products based on common searches.
Customer experience
The key to attracting and retaining online buyers is to stay one step ahead of the crowd. Enabling top-quality self-service experiences is high on the list of requirements for B2B buyers.
Your choice of ecommerce platform is now a business-critical decision as well as an important budget item. As a software as a service (SaaS) solution Cloudfy is available on a monthly subscription basis, without the need to make a capital investment in hardware or infrastructure. With easy user interfaces, it can be managed by your team without extra expert knowledge. It’s also scalable, so it can grow with your business and you don’t have to pay for capacity that you don’t currently need.
Flexibility
As a B2B ecommerce company in a rapidly growing market, you need flexibility to innovate and respond to trends quickly and effectively. Months or even years of development time could seriously damage your business performance.
Cloudfy has a powerful application programming (API) to allow customizations to be developed, tested and deployed quickly to keep you ahead of the competition.
Making it mobile
Eight out of 10 B2B buyers use mobile devices for their work. It’s not only important to be online, your site must be mobile-friendly. Businesses that hesitate to embrace B2B ecommerce or to develop their offer because they lack experience in the mobile environment could very quickly fall a long way behind their competitors.
In contrast, those who keep up with the latest trends or even lead the way through innovation will secure a competitive advantage. This can include offering mobile ordering apps that allow buyers to easily access their order history and pricing and to place new orders wherever they are.
Fast and easy purchasing
Speed, transparency, and efficiency for B2B payments are top priorities. Cloudfy has been designed the with B2B purchasing process in mind, so it’s easy to accommodate multi-level authorization of purchases. Logins for buyers and anyone else who needs to be involved in the purchase process can be set up easily. Orders will only be confirmed when specific approvals have been provided from your buyer’s organization.
Once the order has been placed payment processing must be fast too. B2B transactions are quickly moving from faxes, purchase orders and two or three-day payment cycles to fast payment systems for domestic and international transactions. Instant payment services are appearing and developing in major economies around the world, and this will become the standard to meet in the next few years.
New customer acquisition
While B2B ecommerce was once seen as an alternative to field sales representatives or as a digital version of a company’s product catalog, it is now recognized as a powerful tool to acquire new customers.
Three quarters of B2B buyers will carry out their research online so it’s important that your business can be discovered through online searches. If your business can’t be found, you will be losing business to competitors who rank well on search engine results pages (SERPs).
To open a new revenue stream, some B2B companies have also started to offer hybrid ecommerce systems to sell directly to consumers as well as allowing B2B buyers to log on for bulk order prices and additional benefits.
Other businesses have focused on building their reputation as an expert in their field to attract premium clients to their site. This can be achieved by delivering valuable content in a variety of formats including long-form blogs, videos, and podcasts.
Book a free demonstration to find out more about Cloudfy features that will help you achieve more sales than ever before in 2020.
