B2B eCommerce has evolved in many meaningful ways, pushing brick-and-mortar shops into an online environment. Since, 2020 with the pandemic, millions of stores entered the market simultaneously, making the competition fiercer. 

The report by insider intelligence predicts that B2B eCommerce might reach over 2.2 trillion dollars, and businesses need to keep up with the changing trends. 

Let's check out some leading trends to improve conversion rates and enhance customer experience.

B2B eCommerce Trends

Personalization

Personalization marketing is a hot topic; with so many options available everywhere, customers prefer to interact with brands that offer personalized shopping experiences. 

For B2B personalization to work, it must be implemented to increase the efficiency of every role and value component of B2B commerce. 

The components in B2B commerce include shopping cart and search, catalogs, pricing mechanism, promotions, merchandise, and of course, order. 

It should drive three primary objectives;

• User navigation is easy and self-guiding for retailers;


• Reducing retailers’ time and effort;


• Easy exit system – Cart & Payment should be smooth to make an uncomplicated exit

Multiple Payment Methods

B2B purchases are fundamentally different from B2C; Orders in B2B are repeatable, sizeable, and have a lower profit than B2C. Customers expect companies to offer multiple payment methods, both offline and online. 

Several payment models are gaining traction in the B2B market - all are working towards efficiency for buyers and sellers. 

Installments: A payment solution allows customers to choose a financial plan and make payments in installments rather than one go. One of the examples - is " Buy Now, Pay Later."

Workflow Payments: Workflow payment is a growing model for B2B commerce to get paid on time. Workflow payment works by triggering the automatic payment system from pre-authorized credit or debit cards after the product or service delivery. 

Account Payable: It may be hard to let paper checks go and add unnecessary work on AP teams. With AP automation, businesses can create invoices quickly and accelerate the payment timeline. The digital alternatives can improve transactions for your customer and increase the chances of getting paid quickly. 

Account Receivable: Many SMBs still face problems in automating digitized payment options. With AR automation, businesses can manage payment collection instantly and increase visibility across all accounts and invoices. 

Chatbots

One of the methods to retain and hold your clients is getting yourself familiar with Chatbots. You might not know how they impact your customer's shopping experience. 

Chatbots are incredibly powerful in powering your communication with your clients. Chabot's help reduces the time a client spends searching for products or services and answering clients' queries. 

On the other hand, AI Chabot can drill billions of documents and conversations through social media, which is impossible for humans.

Here's how Chatbots can help B2B eCommerce-

1. Enhance customer personalizations;


2. Improve customer services;


3. Quick response retain leads and clients;


4. It gathers more information and insights of your leads;


5. Automation saves time resources and scales up your business. 

AR and VR

AR and VR are the top growing trends in B2B marketing. AR helps customers deeply to understand the product through a visually interactive experience. It shows the customer what a product will look like in the real world or show 3D imagery of the product. 

On the other hand, VR is also a futuristic digital solution for eCommerce businesses. It can also instruct users to configure products without representing the actual products. 

Both AR and VR are top trends for marketing strategies and can change the face of the B2B eCommerce world. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI might seem to cure all your marketing and sales issues. But, in reality, AI turns out to be more helpful than anyone initially thought. 

Algorithms are continuously learning and can self-correct, giving the ability to transform work and create a competitive advantage. The primary function of any AI is its ability to collect data and extract insights using ML and analytics. 

It collects information and analyses it to engage more effectively with the customer and prospects. By learning buying patterns, AI forecasts and analyses customers' purchasing decisions.

Here are some benefits of AI for B2B eCommerce-

• Increases lead generation capabilities;


• Gain more insights;


• Enhances targeting and segmentation;


• It can personalize the customer journey.

Voice Marketing

Initially, developers created voice devices to take notes and grocery store lists. With the development in technology, voice searches can play music, solve queries, get directions, turn on lights, and whatnot. 

With the increase in mobile device usage, voices searches have replaced traditional search methods. If you haven't optimized for voice searches, you're missing a lot of Google traffic and leads. 

Voice searches use AI voice recognition that merges the fields of computing and linguistics to allow people to search without typing anything. 

How Voice search helps B2B commerce-

• Voice search makes it significantly faster and easier to search;


• More convenient in a digital world;


• It can personalize customers' experiences using recommendations based on their analytics. 

Omnichannel B2B ecommerce

Omnichannel IS an entirely NEW approach focused ON users AND creating a CONSISTENT customer experience across channels, platforms, devices, AND more. 

The omnichannel approach enables distributors TO earn customer loyalty AND increase brand awareness. WITH optimized eCommerce platform helps customers TO shop FROM ANY platform. 

It gives buyers a more comprehensive selection of product information AND many ways TO access the purchase of products. 

How Omnichannel benefits B2B commerce-

• LONG-term customer relationships across ALL channels;


• Integrated communication AND analytics;


• increase brand awareness;


• boost sales AND conversions ON different platforms AND devices;


• CREATE personalized offers FOR EACH customer. 

Self-Service Buying Portals

Self-service portals HELP enhance customer experience AND the internal efficiency of your business. They save a lot of TIME ON order processing, delivery, AND sales. 

Integrating an ERP system AND a payment service provider makes the purchase more efficient AND the purchase experience easier. 

Self-service IS focused more ON nurturing customers sophisticated journey instead of calculating prices, managing orders, AND checking product statuses. 

The Future Trends

Overall, the trends we have discussed IN this article represent a shift towards B2B e-commerce. 

WHILE the B2B eCommerce industry IS proliferating, there are still a lot of problems TO be solved. Even Amazon has struggled TO keep its sellers FROM defecting TO eBay OR other platforms that offer lower fees AND more lucrative sales opportunities. 

IN our opinion, the simplest way FOR retailers TO avoid these issues IS BY focusing ON building a remarkable brand image AND community around their brand.

The KEY takeaway IS that you need TO START thinking about your company's e-commerce strategy now if you haven't already. How do these trends affect your business?