Nowadays, as a human being (let alone a B2B seller), can you imagine your life without a smartphone?
Well, we can’t. And neither can you.
It seems unbelievable but it’s not even a decade yet and smartphones have already dominated every aspect of our life. According to Statista(Source), the global mobile phone usage is around 4 billion people which accounts for nearly 48% of web pages viewed worldwide.
Interesting, isn’t it?
As our comfort with mobile phones increases, so does our dependency. Let us tell you another fact, this mobile adoption has already crossed multiple demographics. With this speed, it isn’t hard to imagine the implications it has for the way we search for products and services in our professional lives. Not just as shoppers but as wholesale marketers as well.
This connectivity has already established new opportunities for wholesalers to connect with their business buyers. A study conducted by Google proves that mobile is currently driving revenue of over 40% in leading Business to Business companies(Source). No wonder mobile technology is moving at such a fast pace in the marketplace. Now comes the most important question,
Where does your business website stand amidst all of this? Has it been properly mobile-optimized as per today’s standards?
Let’s find out by going through the following list of must-have features, ones that will power up your B2B outreach strategy with a solid mobile marketing plan.
Table of Contents
1. Go with the flow- it's where the future lies
Before reading further, pull out your smartphone and visit your website. If you find it hard to read (had to continuously zoom in and out of it) or to navigate, it’s time to take action.
A great way to approach a mobile website is to leverage a responsive web design. This will enable you to build a single website that works well on all devices. The secret lies in its fluid grids and flexible images that automatically resize the design and content elements of your wholesale website to fit the screen irrespective of its size.
Another way to approach this is by implementing a mobile-optimized theme which is both attractive and responsive. These themes generally come with ready-to-use designs and functionalities that are used to create modern websites of today.
If you are looking for examples, check out the responsive themes offered by StoreHippo. You will notice that these themes have great potential for high traffic and monetization opportunities for your wholesale business.
All you need to do is add your B2B company logo, product details, and preferred colours to the already rich theme and you are good to go. Believe us, launching your website with StoreHippo’s mobile-friendly themes have never been easier.
2. Go easy on the images
Websites are generally bloated with heavy images which often looks like something broken, difficult navigation, or too long of a wait. This makes browsing a very disappointing experience for your customers on mobile devices.
The end result?
Your customers won’t be returning any time soon.
Don’t worry, everything has a solution. Here it is to drop all heavy images from your wholesale site and stick to light, low-quality photos and vector graphics. But wait, won’t it portray an inferior version of the website?
Not if you are familiar with the art of optimizing your images for mobile users. Let’s see how to do it like a pro.
- Choose clear-cut images that are not complex at smaller sizes.
- Make sure the proportion of your image is appropriate, i.e. your image can easily be cropped in certain places without affecting it.
- Try to upload images that are sized properly. It means if your B2B site features large images, find the largest pixel dimension and do not exceed that.
- Lastly, ensure that your images are optimized, i.e. compressed as much as possible but still looking sharp on high-resolution mobile displays.
Once you have trimmed the fat and optimized the remainder, you will notice your web page load much faster on the mobile devices.
3. Use videos to make things easy
Video marketing is another powerful strategy that leverages the power of video to attract, engage and convert an audience into wholesale customers. Yes, video marketing is the rage these days.
Have you ever wondered why?
It might be because of the fact that it has been proven effective in increasing traffic, engagement and conversions. Or is there something more to it? Let’s see, video content helps you to
- Rank higher in search engines
- Help accelerate your company’s revenue growth
- Increase traffic to your business website
- Get more opens and clicks on your email sends
- Influence buyers with videos to help them make decisions
- Improve conversions
- Boost shares on social media
Videos can do a lot for your B2B business, only if you know how to use it right. So, take some time to perfect your video marketing strategy and use it to make the biggest impact on your company.
4. Be cognizant of your site’s load time
Does it really matter if your website takes 5 seconds or 10 seconds to load? Of course, it does. Any website that loads within the first 2-3 seconds is considered best for conversion rates. After that, each additional second of load time will drop the conversion rates by an average of 7%.
More so if your website is Business to Business one, and even more so if you are viewing it on a mobile device. Studies conducted by Google revealed that 53% of mobile users leave the site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load(Source).
It’s only mere seconds that can either make or break your lead. So, staying on the positive side, let’s see how you can improve your wholesale site’s load time to retain the visitors to your site.
- Implement SPA (Single Page Application), it is fast and requires no page reloads, hence no extra wait time.
- You can also consider MEAN, a mobile-first JavaScript software stack that helps your site pages load fast in mobile phones.
- Another thing you can use is a CDN or Content Delivery Network. It allows you to cache your site on a global network of servers. So, whenever a file is requested from your site, it is routed to the closest server.
- Enable offline browser caching. We know cached resources are local, and therefore load faster. But with offline browsing, your users can navigate the site even when offline.
- Integrate PWA or Progressive Web Apps. it allows web apps to sync in the background and enables them to load even when there is no network.
Even if you aren’t looking for search engine optimization for your B2B website, still mobile page speed optimization should be on your priority list. It can really have a lasting effect on the overall user experience, which brings us to our next must-have feature.
5. Personalize the user experience
If you are not thinking about improving the user experience for your business buyers, you should. Why?
Because the time you are wasting on contemplating this, your competitors are busy perfecting their mobile strategy and are already taking away your customers and your profits.
A user is more likely to make a purchase, visit again, and recommend you to others only if you offer a user-centric experience that is richer than your competitors. As a wholesaler, it’s time to start thinking like a customer.
- What features would you like when you shop?
- What makes it easier for you to find what you need?
- Do these features allow you to place orders effortlessly?
The answers to these questions will help you better serve your customers in every possible way. Meanwhile, below are some features to help you personalize the UX and attract more customers.
- Collect user information by asking them to create profiles on your site. This should include their name, age, interests, behaviour, etc.
- Use the collected information to understand their needs, and later on, you can refer to your B2B buyers by name, show them content based on their interest etc.
- This information will not only help to close the first sale but future sales too. You can personalize the recommendations to upsell and cross-sell products. This can also include links to other relevant content such as blogs, videos, etc.
- Use push notifications. We know these can be annoying but they also serve as a good way to engage with them, even when they are not using your website.
Just remember, when it comes to personalization, empathy plays an important role. Understand your users’ needs and preferences as they can go a long way in creating an enriching user experience.
6. Simplify the ordering process
What good is your entire wholesale mobile commerce strategy if it couldn’t simplify the ordering process for your customers? Think about this question while working on this strategy.
Your aim should be to empower your customers to perform self-service actions such as order products, arrange shipping, and check out their orders without any complications. Such business integrations are useful in enabling automatic shipping choices as well as confirming details of inventory available (according to colour, size etc.)
Moreover, your mobile solution should offer extensive product catalogues, making robust search capabilities an essential feature. You can also provide your B2B customers access to their previous purchase history, it might help them place new orders quickly.
Next thing you can do is simplify the payment process. You can do this by offering your customers as many payment options as possible. It helps them reduce abandoned carts and increase the number of returning customers.
In addition, you can allow your customers to pay through multiple e-payment gateways such as PayU, cc Avenue, Paytm etc. The more choices they have, the better your chances of nailing the sale.
7. And lastly, don’t forget about the apps
Do you know what the majority of wholesale buyers look for?
A simple, straightforward, transparent purchase process.
And how can you deliver this?
By delivering more value, faster and more effectively than your competitors through mobile-first Business to Business experiences. Let’s check out a few reasons why your modern business store needs a mobile app as a must-have feature.
- Because your customers are expecting one, given that these mobile apps not just offer endless features at low prices but also that they optimize the entire experience, from research to delivery.
- Because they help improve efficiency. How? By offering features such as barcode scanners, saved purchase info, post payments, push notifications with in-stock products etc.
- Because they lift repeat purchases and loyalty since with a mobile app, B2B customers are constantly reminded of your brand and app (you know an average person checks their phone 200 times a day).
- Because they help improve cart abandonment. For example, a native app can help you optimize checkouts which can easily save 20% of the time customers spend filling out long, complex forms. This, in turn, leads to an improved conversion rate.
And in case, you are not too fond of traditional apps, you can always opt for PWAs or Progressive Web Apps (as already mentioned) for your wholesale business. There are many significant benefits associated with it such as they use low data usage, require no updates, their costs are usually lower, they are great for SEO purposes, etc.
You can either go for native or PWA apps. Their approach might be different but the central idea behind creating these is always the same- ease of use and quality mobile experience.
It’s Time to Act
What is the first thing you lay your hands on upon waking up?
Ok, it might not be your smartphone but for the majority of users, it is. We do the same every morning even without giving it a second thought. And this is just the morning, imagine what happens throughout the day.
The fact is, what once was novel and separate has now become a way of life. And this is reflected every day in the way we live, work and play. Businesses, whether B2B or B2C, have more ways than ever to reach their customers, all thanks to the ubiquity of mobile devices and the portability of work. One can conduct mobile research from anywhere at any time.
All the more reasons why you need an ecommerce platform that facilitates a strong mobile strategy for your business, one that incorporates positive mobile experiences for your customers.
StoreHippo is an innovative, modern-day Business to Business platform that is built grounds up on the mobile-first approach. It helps you increase mobile sales with no additional effort as it offers a conversion-optimized mobile shopping cart to its users.
Plus, you will find hundreds of themes here that can fit any screen size, is fully compatible with Google Analytics besides having some great SEO capabilities. What’s more, StoreHippo offers a fully responsive one-page checkout to help you with faster conversions.
Shall we go on? Or would you prefer to conduct your own research?
Learn more about our services. Book a free demo or a 14 days free trial period today!
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