How to grow your B2B business with multi-store ecommerce

B2B ecommerce buying is not a linear graph.  

The B2B buyers today look at a diversified shopping experience that treats them just like a B2C customer. 

Yes, 80% of B2B buyers expect the same buying experience as they get while shopping from a  B2C business.

Well, attracting, converting, and retaining buyers on your B2B ecommerce marketplace can be challenging.

But what if we say you have a little trick that can help you go for targeted conversions and better customer engagement?

You got it, we are talking about offering personalized experiences through the  multi store ecommerce business model.

Building B2B marketplace success route through multi-store setup

Before we go into details let's first understand some latest B2B trends and stats that give better insights into buyer expectations. 

Here we go

• 80% of  B2B sales will be done online by 2025
• 18.70% is the expected B2B ecommerce market annual growth between 2021 and 2026
• 70% of B2B buyers prefer remote, digital self-serve business
• 73% of B2B buyers now want a personalized B2C-like experience
• 10+ touch points explored by average B2B buyers to connect with sellers 

Source: Statista, Business Wire

Here is what we learn from the above trends

The B2B landscape is reshaping thanks to changing customer buying habits and expectations. Fast-changing technology has caused huge shifts in market dynamics, forcing B2B companies to align their offerings for the new age buyers. Here are a few learning for B2B ecommerce brands to remain relevant in the market:

• Mcommerce has become a key channel in driving engagement and converting customers.
• Hyper-personalization is the new trend, B2B buyers are looking for personalized shopping experiences across all channels, like the UI/UX of the online stores, customized offers, and product catalouges. 
• B2B buyers expect their brands to be present on multiple channels and offer them an omnichannel shopping experience.
• The new age B2B buyers look for self-service demanding their brands to align their digital channels in a way that incorporates a self-serve model. 
• The B2B payment styles have changed, the buyers pay in parts, say 50% of payment in advance, and 50% of payment within 30 or 60 days from the order delivery date. Also, digital payments have overtaken cheques.

The inclination of B2B buyers towards a B2C-like experience is ever-growing. To offer the best-in-class buying experience to your customers, creating sub stores for different audience sets can be a smart choice. It will help you capitalize on the growing needs and demands of your buyers and offer a customer experience that is a win-win for both your B2B company and your buyers.

How to grow your B2B business with multi-store ecommerce

The one thing that matters the most for a smooth customer experience is the convenience of buying. When your customers find it easy to buy on your ecommerce website, you have won them for life. 

Let us look at a few tips to grow your B2B ecommerce business with multiple stores:

Reach a segmented audience with multiple B2B stores

B2B buyers have specific requirements today, and as an enterprise B2B company looking at growth, you have to cater to different audience segments in ways they want. To do so, the best shot is to create multiple B2B storefronts that are personalized to the target audience and the specific requirements of your business-to-business buyers. Like, you can create multiple sub-stores based on the purchase volume of buyers. For the same products, you can create different stores and use the price override functionality based on volume and segment customers like small businesses, medium businesses, and enterprise businesses.

StoreHippo multi store ecommerce solutions with comprehensive features help businesses manage a spectrum of customers easily. With a single database, brands can allocate different or similar products, deals, discounts, offers, shipping solutions, payment gateways etc. to various B2B sub-stores. You can seamlessly build multiple marketplace apps and create multiple frontends to quickly convert your buyers using the same backend logic and APIs.  

Easy to scale and grow by adding new stores

Every B2B company looks at scaling and growing its customer base in the future. And with a multi store set up, scaling your business becomes easy. Wondering how? As you implement various marketing strategies based on the behavioral patterns and the purchase choices made by B2B buyers in the past, you track their behavior and offer them personalized product catalogs, deals, and discounts. You can create multiple B2B stores for different geographies, and present relevant products and pricing to the target customers to boost conversions.  

StoreHippo’s analytical tools help you configure Google Analytics on your B2B ecommerce store enabling you to track customer behavior. You can also send personalized notifications or offer personalized discounts or special deals on your online store with StoreHippo. You can seamlessly launch multiple stores in foreign languages with StoreHippo go global features. It offers 100+ languages including RTL languages for your global customers. You can integrate multiple payment options in global currencies to facilitate ease of payments from cross-borders. 

 Offer undistracted attention to the B2B customers 

B2B buyers expect their brands to offer them undivided attention combined with personalized buying experiences. A multi store ecommerce business model helps you bifurcate different products or brands to different audience segments. When you create individual B2B online stores for different products, your customers do not run to the competitors, instead, shop from your brand as you offer multiple products under one umbrella. With customized shopping, experience comes bigger ticket sizes and an increase in your sales volume. Say, for example, your auto spare parts B2B brand offers its manufactured wholesale products on one sub-store and related ancillary products ( oils, lubes, gears, nuts, tools etc.) on another sub-store along with services from its partner network on a third sub-store, your B2b buyers will no longer hop on different websites to get the end-to-end services.

StoreHippo ecommerce solutions help you build and manage multiple stores from a single platform. You can perform day-to-day activities like product management, sales, order management etc. from a central admin portal. In just a few steps, you can create multiple unique storefronts and assign different or similar product catalogues to all the B2B ecommerce sub-stores. 

Experiment with targeted/localized marketing 

Targeted marketing with multiple stores has proven to be very powerful. Segmenting your buyers based on specific criteria like location, age groups, etc. helps you implement personalized marketing easily. The B2B buyers have their own unique needs, preferences, buying habits etc. which can be catered to easily with multiple stores.  

StoreHippo ecommerce solutions enable you to create multiple locations-based stores in no time. You can experiment with different product-catalouges or promote your best-selling products with the price-override feature or simply create individual B2B ecommerce stores as per the needs and demands of your buyers. 

Streamlined inventory and order management

As B2B buying often entails bulk purchases, it becomes challenging to accurately track and streamline the inventories. As you build multiple sub-stores and direct a certain customer group to a particular sub-store, You can offer a seamless inventory and order management process to your sellers and customers.

StoreHippo comes with bulk order processing to help save time and make your B2B inventory and order management process efficient and error-free. StoreHippo multi store ecommerce solutions offer a centralized inventory and customer data management system for you. 

Leverage price override on different stores to maximise profit

With multiple stores you can leverage pricing override to create a better profit margin on your diverse product catalogs. You can do a thorough market study, calculate your costs and margins, study how price elasticity impacts your business and profit margins, and then implement differential pricing on each store to maximize ROI. Creating multiple stores makes it easy to implement price override functionality based on stores and list the products and demand at a given storefront.   

StoreHippo B2B ecommerce solutions with multi store come with a price-override functionality where you can seamlessly list the same products at different prices depending on the location or the deal offered at each store. You can plan better profit margins by offering custom prices to different customers based on their order volume, order frequency, geolocation, etc. You can also facilitate multi-currency checkouts for better international conversions on your B2B website.

Strategic buyer data and analytics 

Every business that has access to a wide range of customer data and analytics can plan strategic business growth based on data-driven insights. Wondering how? Well, as you get your hands on rich customer data about the customer’s shopping behavior, purchase history etc, you can implement your marketing strategies attuned to the needs and preferences of your buyers. A B2B company that offers its customers exactly what they look for, is loved by all.

As you build multiple location-specific or product-specific B2B sub stores, you capture the customer location and other relevant data. With the help of the data insights you receive, you can showcase just the right product to the right B2B customer. StoreHippo also offers an inbuilt form builder that helps you create custom forms to capture various customer data from multiple sub-stores easily.

Conclusion

Working to set up a B2B multi store ecommerce business might seem like a lot of work, but it helps you boost your business like never before. With multiple storefronts you can manage multiple brands and enter multiple regional and global markets to have a strong brand presence. A series of stores help you stay relevant with the latest ecommerce trends and connect with the B2B buyers. 

With the help of a well-rounded, feature-rich, cutting-edge B2B ecommerce platform like StoreHippo, you can not only build your sub-stores seamlessly but also grow your business manifold. The MACH architecture from StoreHippo gives your business the desired scalability and flexibility to build future-ready sub-stores for your B2B company. With StoreHippo's 300+ in-built B2B features like omnichannel solutions, one-stop shipping solutions, marketing tools, apps builder for all sub-stores, etc, you can seamlessly secure your position in the B2B ecommerce market.

Eager to jump on the B2B multi store ecommerce bandwagon? Explore the wide range of business-to-business enterprise-grade features by starting your 14-day free trial now.