How to Build B2B Wholesale Marketplace: Complete Strategy for Your Business in 2020
In this day and age, B2B e-commerce has become a profitable venture full of opportunities. Since its programme kept making headway, your chance of scaling new heights in the industry by creating an online marketplace for your business is quite strong.
In this informative write-up, we sequentially display professional analysis on how to create and manage your personalized B2B wholesale marketplace. Furthermore, you’re bound to learn about its rudiments, types, salient functions, and monetization models.
What is the B2B Wholesale Marketplace?
B2B e-commerce, known as business-to-business electronic commerce, is the sale of goods or services between businesses through an online sales portal. The main idea and effort are to assign each prospective buyer and sellers together in their respective fields. Conventionally, it is used to improve the competence and effectiveness of a company’s sales efforts.
Nevertheless, B2B e-commerce still needed some adjustment in numerous ways, most especially in the area of process management and securing all sought information in a singular unit rather than the current multiple units.
Based on this outlook, Giuseppe Lanni, the director of business development made a statement later released at B2B e-commerce provider Sana-Commerce. He proclaimed there a lot of B2Bs portals out there; however, the majority of them are just very old and antiquated.
Therefore, based on the aforementioned; B2B companies need to reevaluate their programming and discover new modes of establishing a strong connection with customers, and widen the number of promotional channels that are currently minimal and outdated. Nevertheless, B2B e-commerce platforms remain the king of the castle hosting most effective channels for buyers and suppliers in their respective industry. And, undoubtedly that these potential buyers and suppliers are growing enormous revenue through the process.
For the sake of proper justification, let’s appraise the main types of B2B marketplace platforms in the air.
Types of B2B Wholesale Programme
The Customer-oriented Programme
A customer-oriented platform is controlled and managed by the companies that look for various products or services. This platform enables buyers to contrast diverse prices, offered by several companies, and then choose the package that matches their taste and preferences.
The Supplier-oriented Programme
These platforms are controlled and managed by suppliers, who intended to widen their marketing channels and cover more grounds.
Independent
A platform controlled by a third party, in which the coordinator in question; exhibit the role of intermediary between the buyers and suppliers.
Vertical
A vertical platform is a kind; mostly at the local level, that major on a particular industry.
Horizontal
Horizontal B2B platforms are designed to connect businesses from different industries and geographical areas.
Steps in Creating Your Custom B2B Marketplace Platform
The fact remains that if you fail to plan, then, you are planning to fail. As simple as it may sound, yet, most B2B startups failed woefully because their estimation lacks a defined value proposition. In all successful B2B e-commerce platforms, there exists a long-term relationship between the intermediary and each customer. However, this stronghold can only be established when a platform is incessantly providing impressive functionality that brings value to their respective customers’ business.
Do you want to strike it rich? The following are the salient features you can include in your wholesale marketplace.
Basic Features You Need for B2B Wholesale Platform
A Detailed Product Description
How do you begin? Remember that a comprehensive description eradicates doubt; therefore, take your time describing your product specifications, availability information, shipping options, and upload HD video and images. For the sake of clarification, look at this great example of the product description on the B2B e-commerce website designed for tractor brands. Actually, the description is concise, yet; it includes the key features, models, versions, virtual 360 views and video.
Product Description in B2B
Make sure your product page includes as many details as possible to remove any obstacles in a decision-making process.
Advanced Filtering
Make your marketplace platform as easy as possible. You can start by inscribing convenient filter navigation to your platform, to help your users’ in narrowing down their search results. This functionality in the filtering of products can be coded by type, size, colour, keywords, and cross-comparison. Furthermore, you can also include search suggestions, auto-related, and related search based on a user’s behaviour.
A typical example of convenient filtering is the Blake-e-commerce website designed for selling and buying envelopes in bulk. And suppose you’re a buyer, with just a glance at the search option; you’ll find as many options as possible that’s equivalent to what you needed. That sounds easy, right? Exactly! Advance filtering will expose your platform to many admirers and potential customers.
Filters in the B2B Marketplace
B2B Marketplace Filtering
Normally, online platforms in the B2B industry contain a lot of different product catalogues, so make sure they’re easy to locate.
The Product Catalogues
Concrete advertisement encourages more sales than mere words. Therefore, do ensure you enable the possibility whereby each supplier will be able to upload catalogues and showcase their products. Undoubtedly that this function would enable respective buyers to order them right from the catalogue. Furthermore, you can enable multiple catalogue views, based on each customer arrangement and contents embedded in their preferences. For example, you can include a section of where users select the budget, industry, and browse through results related to their specific needs.
Most often, buyers in the B2B industry are fussy and hard to please, which is why they spent a lot of time exploring product description before reaching a finite conclusion. However, you can hasten things up and cut short the excessive time spent, by incorporating catalogues to enable users an interactive and visual way to learn about your products.
For instance, a remarkable wholesale website in the furniture industry called “Nover” offers extra brochures that entail online catalogues with a detailed product description for anyone making an enquiry about their services.
Procedures in Catalogues Design (B2B)
To ensure its credibility, carefully attach interactive features to the catalogues such as popups, animations, and video. Moreover, you can intensify the whole process by enabling inviting prospects to your product catalogue and make available a distinct and personalized product showcase for each customer.
Automated Invoice Processing
Another remarkable means of reinforcing your platform is the Automated Invoice Processing (AIP). Once you incorporate this function into your B2B marketplace, your suppliers will have the chance to quickly process product invoices and collect important data on the products.
Listings Traffic Reports
Upgrading each function on a platform is a necessary condition, but not sufficient enough to make your platform the boss. Despite several developments, a B2B wholesale supplier can crash or fail if left unchecked. Nevertheless, the Real-Time Report Feature is the perfect analytics tool that can resolve any unplanned plunge during the process. This feature in your online B2B marketplace enables suppliers to see traffic to their listings, numbers of viewers, number of unique visitors, and most popular listings.
Personalized Recommendations
The more products you accumulate on your B2B platform, the lesser your users find what suits them best. Nevertheless, Recommendation Algorithms could dissolve what might have been considered insurmountable. Therefore, the personalized product recommendation will ensure you are delivering the best experiences for each respective customer segment.
Personalized Prices
In numerous instances, there are significant differences in pricing among B2B and B2C industries. Therefore, if your platform is multi-versatile in nature, personalized your prices in several divisions by including price calculators or showing sample prices for a set of orders. In a report released by Gartner Inc, they emphasized that B2B sellers that incorporate personalization in their system will boost their revenue up to 15%. Based on that estimation, you will surely earn considerably by incorporating personalized prices in your B2B wholesale supplier platform.
Concept of Personalization in B2B
One of the demerits, flaws, and mistakes most of the B2B websites committed are the omission of personalized prices on their platform. And, since every action comes with a price; the consequences of this would jeopardize your credibility and tarnish your transparency; which in turn, will chase most of your users to your competitors.
Real-time Order Reports
Entrust your B2B supplier access to advance and detail orders analytics, and as the real-time order reports each activity, your users will be able to execute sales summaries live by adopting templates or creating custom reports. For instance, a significant platform in the fashion industry known as Joor enables high-tech order reports and ensures each brand can analyse their performance and follow-up sales metrics.
Order Reports in B2B Marketplace
Furthermore, ensure you enable the process that authorizes customers to track information about any active, pending or cancelled orders and view order details to scrutinize and predict sales.
Integrations with Inventory Management Systems
The value an Inventory Management Software can add to your B2B wholesale supplier platform cannot be overemphasized. Integration with the software can simply do the trick; in return, you will be authorized to create Omni-channel experience, personalized customers purchases, trail important details, and manage every process remotely.
Profitable and Sustainable Business Model for a B2B Marketplace Platform
To make your strategies more appealing, you’ll need a concrete business model designed for each group of your users. The following are ways you can incorporate them on your B2B marketplace.
Concept of Personalization in B2B
Ensure your platform is not drawing a line in the sand, instead, make available means of efficient communication between the suppliers and the buyers.
Segment Your Audience
A comparison between B2C industry and B2B organisations on service’s personalization and individual recognition level reveals how B2B platforms fell behind its counterpart, and took a plunge downward. Nevertheless, you can have a different story with segmentation in your strategy.
Segmentation in B2B E-commerce
If you go the extra miles, you’ll definitely reap the benefits. Therefore, if you’ve decided to gain your customers’ loyalty, do ensure to engage each group using several approaches. And, to ensure maximum effectiveness of the process; carefully segment your audience and create a strong value proposition for each group. Below entails how you can it done:
By Company Size
First, B2B companies should customize their tactics or modes of operations to suit different businesses (SMEs, MSEs, and LMEs). In addition to that, help your users locate goods and services that give them the optimum utility, and fit their budget.
By Buying Behaviour
Secondly, systematically analyse your customer activities to design an appropriate customized offer for the user. These set of activities include time spent on the site, last purchased items, list of items viewed, and the average spending of the customer in question.
By Pricing
Third, a personalized price designed for each customer based on their spending will increase your revenue and expose your platform to more opportunities.
Furthermore, you can classify your customer’s request/order based on the buyer’s country stock levels, location and shipping tariffs. And, once your buyers/users find the product pricing comfortable; it allows trust and transparency to flow during the buying process. In the end, you will be able to create customized products recommendation, catalogues, and offers since you’ve gotten enough data beforehand.
Design a Distinct Revenue Channel
Traditionally, most business models make available two ways of generating revenues; namely — revenue from one-shot deals and revenue derived from repeated deals. But, how do you choose the perfect revenue that best suits your business? The answer to that can be deduced, if you are able to provide adequate answers to the following questions:
What service is considered worthwhile to your clients?
How do they pay now?
How would they like to pay?
What’s your profit from each successive sale?
Can you do something to increase the overall profit?
Let’s review the most widely used revenue generation activities for B2B industry:
Transaction Fee
The transaction fee revenue model is widely known among app developers because its configuration is usable on any platform in any industry. The process occurs as a charge of a commission on every transaction carried out on your platform. However, never impose an exorbitant fee on transactions from the start, instead, reinforce the true value of your platform and make sure both the suppliers and bulk buyers benefited from the operation.
Subscription Fee
This model accumulates revenues based on the period in which clients use your services. And, the more they remain on the platform and enjoy your services, the higher the fee and vice versa. In addition to that, different types of subscription models can be included based on the number of products each user can make available on your platform or the ones attainable.
Revenue from Advertising
You can also make more revenue by taking a fee from advertising firms that register on your platform. However, note that this strategy can only be adopted when your marketplace has fully grown and housed many users.
Revenue from Value-Added Services
Let’s review the main value-added elements you can incorporate on your B2B marketplace:
Services that procure utility for buyers and suppliers.
Availability of premium features
Availability of features such as more delivery and shipment (Land, Sea, Air, Shipping)
Credit option
Warehousing services
In a Nutshell
From our point of view, we believe after going through this article; you’ve gained an in-depth understanding of building a B2B wholesale marketplace. In summary, focus your attention on your users, engage incessantly in serious and effective research on how to improve your platform. Do you have an opinion? We’ll be glad to hear from you.
