The eCommerce industry is growing at an exponential rate with B2B Digital Commerce gaining the top spot for successful enterprise businesses. With the growing demand, eCommerce vendors are now developing B2B features and functionalities to cater to the global market as well. According to a Gartner report, “By 2024, 15% of B2B organizations will use digital commerce platforms to support both their customers and sales reps in all sales activities.”

In this report, we will focus on how B2B eCommerce enables digital transformation for businesses, why should B2B merchants adopt a digital-first approach and the opportunities B2B digital commerce has. We will also talk about the top B2B eCommerce vendors who offer the most robust B2B eCommerce platforms and support B2B use cases by understanding the functional requirements of any business. This report will deal with the functional requirements such B2B platforms pose and evaluate the various features a B2B eCommerce platform should have.

B2B Digital Commerce Transformation – The Need

With the growing adoption of B2B over the years, digitalization now seems the next go-to for organizations. According to Forrester, B2B eCommerce will reach $1.8 trillion and account for 17% of all B2B sales in the US by 2023, out of which almost half of the B2B researchers would be millennials – a generation that is well-versed with all the digital outlets. With the passing time, B2B customers are getting more tech savvy and independent while choosing their desired products – they prefer online chatbots and helpdesks to traditional interaction and are more technically informed in their process. Hence, to cater or even make it up to their memo, B2B organizations need to involve themselves in digitalizing their processes, operations and experiences.

Digitalization forms the essence for building strong relationships between B2B organizations and their customers since these businesses are now able to deliver a much more seamless shopping experience and faster solutions to meet their prospects’ needs. A digitalized B2B eCommerce business, on one hand offers a seamless order fulfillment experience for its customers, and on the other hand, facilitates inter-organizational coordination that results in cost savings and enhances the sourcing opportunities for their buyers. According to a report by McKinsey and Company, 75% of the B2B companies rely on online transactions, with the numbers rising consistently. Hence, it is only prudent for growing and willing organizations to adopt a digital-first, automated supply-chain ecosystem that enhances their business operations and drives revenue, with the help of platform-driven methodologies and robust B2B digital commerce solutions.

Why Should B2B Merchants Go Digital?

The demand for B2B eCommerce is growing rapidly. Presently, 83% of B2B buyers prefer ordering through digital commerce solutions. However, where 30% of buyers wish to purchase most of the products online, only 19% are doing so – in this major B2B organizations are losing a huge chunk of revenue that might have been on their plate. These buyers are technically equipped and their B2B visitors’ activities are not limited only to the purchasing cycle, but rather spread out into exploring multiple areas of interest that might include service-related interactions, sales calls/enquiries, chats, etc. To retain these exploring customers, B2B organizations need to be digitally sound and employ the correct solutions.

Currently, 62% of the B2B buyers choose to access the product details and information online, before even contacting for purchase! With over 90% of the B2B purchases starting from a search, it is evident that the coming generation of buyers have already transitioned to the B2B digital arena and have expectations that need to be met – intuitive and relevant search and navigation, faster checkout processes, quicker delivery, enhanced tracking, historical orders, etc.

Also, eCommerce is no longer a new channel for B2B organizations to explore. According to McKinsey & Company reports, around 65% of all B2B companies across various industries are already fully transacting online in 2022. In the coming years, more and more B2B organizations are likely to shift over to the eCommerce sales channel from the in-person sales methods to offer better experiences to their customers and gain a competitive edge in the market.


Hence, it is crucial for B2B companies and thought leaders to take into consideration the new demands and expectations of the customers and deliver better B2B eCommerce solutions and experiences.

Benefits and Opportunities for B2B Digital Commerce

With the rapid and progressive digitalization of B2B eCommerce, numerous new opportunities and advantages come in handy. These help the organization steer better in the B2B digital commerce tide – providing better avenues for improved sales, enhanced customer experience and a streamlined business process overall. Digitalization for B2B eCommerce offers a huge window to organizations to tap into the correct market and add unimaginable sales leads to their business flows.

New Sales Channel

With the adoption of digitalization for B2B eCommerce, organizations obtain a new sales channel via which they can expand and grow their business. The majority of the current and future B2B buyers are all dependent on digital devices to fulfill their buying decisions – viewing products on social media, streaming product catalogs on their TVs and mobile devices, shopping online, etc. Consequently, with the introduction of digitalization for B2B eCommerce, merchants can now sell their products to a larger market and a newer demography of buyers.

Discoverability and Reach through B2B Digital Commerce

Talking about a larger market, digitalization for B2B eCommerce offers a new spectrum of potential customers that organizations can add to their sales channel. With the power of digitalization, B2B companies can target their efforts in making their products more available to the customers via various online avenues. Also, with the ever-increasing usage of online shopping methods and marketing, reaching new customers will become an easy task, and merchants can focus more on delivering better shopping experience.

Improved Marketing

One of the major advantages of B2B eCommerce digitalization is the ability to collect, study and learn from customer data. B2B eCommerce sites allow the merchants to collect data from every visit and transaction, which they can later use to redefine their sales strategies. Better and coherent data can help merchants improve their customer experiences, understand buyer persona and demography clearly, improve the supply chain management and enable B2B organizations to provide relevant marketing and content collaterals for their customers.

With the help of B2B eCommerce analytics, merchants can also identify their most valuable marketing and sales channels and make key decisions pertaining to their operations and budget. Using metrics like CPA (Cost per Acquisition), CPC (Cost per Click), etc., organizations can now compare all their marketing channels and prioritize their spending based on the importance each channel holds.

Improved customer experience (CX)

With a properly set up B2B storefront, merchants can offer unparalleled shopping and buying experiences to their buyers and help speed up the purchasing process. B2B eCommerce platforms allow the merchants to enhance their customer experience and improve their conversion by providing personalized and relevant content and product options.

Streamlined Business Processes – (Order, Inventory, Shipping, Sales, etc.)

One big benefit of employing B2B eCommerce platforms is the complete clarity of all the business processes under the same roof. Merchants can analyze and work with critical data such as order management, inventory levels and strategy, shipping details, sales order and invoices, etc. and derive newer methodologies to improve the metrics. With the proper implementation of a B2B commerce solution, a business owner can focus more on selling and less on managing their processes.

Scope for efficient automation

Smart B2B digital commerce platforms provide ready integration and automation within the solutions. This helps in integrating the eCommerce platform with other line-of-business applications such as an ERP or a CRM or a POS, etc. Also, with the high scope for automation, merchants can develop simple yet robust rules in order to automate regular, repetitive tasks concerning the business processes. The integration and automation of B2B eCommerce platforms not only helps a user manage his entire business stack from a singular point, but also helps in weaving the entire business together and improving the sales funnel for the organization.

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The Urgency to Adopt B2C Practices in B2B eCommerce

Leading B2B sales organizations will rapidly implement digital selling models, moving away from the long-standing model of sales reps as the primary commercial channel. The Gartner Future of Sales in 2025 report reveals that 50% of chief sales officers will shift their focus from being leaders of sellers to being leaders of selling.

The digital transformation for the B2C sector started much earlier than for the B2B industry. The limitation brought upon by the COVID pandemic to physically conduct business further accelerated the evolution of the online commerce industry to meet the changing needs and expectations of the market. Tech-savvy B2C business decision-makers have already leveraged this shift through emerging tools, trends, and technology to bring their business on par with some of the leaders in the industry.

How these B2C trends affect B2B businesses is that at the end of the day, both B2C and B2B brands have to tap into the emotional element behind their customers to achieve success. With the relative maturity of the online B2C sector, they already have the necessary groundwork and insights into strategies that work for successfully converting prospects into sales as compared to B2B brands. The industry-tested B2C strategies for conducting online commerce are therefore an indispensable playbook for the emerging B2B eCommerce to achieve success.

Furthermore, customers have become accustomed to the conveniences offered by B2C eCommerce companies like faster search results, easier site navigation, shipment tracking, order fulfillment, and helpful customer support service. Thus, B2B customers also seek the same experience when making their purchases online and failure to deliver it can result in loss of business. With how fundamental the online B2C purchasing experience has become intertwined with every customer demography, it is vital for B2B retailers’ to adapt as quickly as possible to these new customer expectations and implement the best B2C eCommerce practices on their sites to survive. B2B sales channels need to match the seamless, easy and informative standard of B2C digital platforms. Such transformative change takes time, but it is beginning to happen.

The Core Features of a B2B Digital Commerce Platform

The ongoing B2B industry is on the rise and merchants and buyers are looking at the market differently. Earlier, B2B used to be an extension of B2C where merchants hesitantly and simultaneously worked on two models. But now, everything has changed – the tide of B2B eCommerce has been shifting from an extension-based model to a complete SaaS-based product of its own. SMEs to enterprises, all organizations are understanding the importance of maintaining separate B2B and B2C models just like Amazon, Walmart and eBay. This shift makes things interesting and is a win-win for both the buyers and the providers, since both now need a platform that facilitates all their digital commerce motives.

With SaaS-based B2B platforms in the market, merchants now have the freedom to choose the features they want for their customer acquisition and retention and finalize their strategies.

Listed below are some of the must-have B2B eCommerce features sought after by the merchants.

Account Onboarding

Account onboarding is the most essential element that ensures that B2B business users are properly segregated. This feature helps in the creation and integration of independent registration processes, thus enabling businesses to register with separate websites. Also, some merchants look out for a dedicated login for resellers quite keenly.

Pricing and Pricelists

Maintaining individual and dedicated pricing approach is a must-have in B2B eCommerce – merchants need to assign special prices and discounts to their different categories of vendors and buyers. When choosing a B2B eCommerce platform, merchants should make sure that they can create pricing based on various parameters such as tier-pricing (volume-based), customer-specific pricing, customer group –specific pricing, special pricing and discount, location-based pricing, etc.

Digital Catalog and Product Information Management (PIM)

Having an online product catalog is a smart choice when going digital with B2B eCommerce. For a merchant, it is important that his customers are able to view and compare various products from within the provided catalog – this offers a sense of credibility to the customer and can help the merchant in making all his products more discoverable. Again, with a proper PIM, no product would be left unguarded and would not be a cause for losing customers.

Account Management – Roles & Responsibilities

One of the most intriguing features that B2B eCommerce merchants look for is the option to assign roles and responsibilities to various accounts within the organizations’ system. With the digitalization of B2B eCommerce, merchants can now assign specific roles to respective resources within the organization and define their responsibilities in a much more coherent way. Also, merchants can restrict access to employees and partners to whichever areas they deem fit.

Quick Ordering

Generally, B2B customers are quite familiar with what product they want via an eCommerce website. Keeping a feature that allows buyers to fill in a form with the product details and add it directly to the cart is a huge time-saver. Quick ordering helps in the quick conversion of want into purchase and makes it so easy for the buyer. Also, with access to historical orders, these merchants can now provide an Amazon-like experience and allow the buyers to quick order their desired products from the previous orders (with updated quantity as well).

Shared Shopping Carts

Nowadays, buying decisions in a B2B organization are mostly collaborative and are made by multiple officials within the organization. In such a scenario, organizations may want different employees to be responsible for product finalization and checkout. With the feature of shared shopping carts, one user can select and place desired items in cart, whereas another user can review and approve the order. This helps in correct verification of each order and the information is seamlessly transferred between the concerned team members. In addition to sharing a single cart, B2B merchants also look out for the ability to create multiple shopping carts with varied access so that multiple lines of operations are in place.

Quote Management

One important feature that merchants need from a B2B eCommerce platform is the ability to automate and manage the sales quote process. The manual sales quotes process creates huge friction in the buying procedure and often makes the company lose on their customers. Automated and streamlined quote process reduces the overall friction from the workflow and can help in speeding up the quoting and buying process. For example, one-click access to RFQ (request for quote) forms from a B2B platform does improve the quoting process and converts leads into deals better.

B2B Payments

When a merchant is choosing a B2B eCommerce platform, considering the payment methods is a crucial part. In recent times, B2B payment methods have become a mix of traditional and modern payment techniques used by various buyers and vendors. A B2B platform that is well equipped with all the types of payments is likely to go a long way and helps in delivering a better checkout experience.

Support for Multiple Websites, Locations and Currencies

Many businesses manage multinational brands that operate in different countries, with different currencies and websites. Therefore, to support these organizations, B2B merchants often seek a platform that offers features to address this – with the support for multiple websites and locations, B2B eCommerce platforms helps in improving the scalability of an organization and has become a critical requirement for businesses. Also, it is important to check whether the platform supports various currencies – if it does, a lot of effort can be saved during the pricing and tax procedures and the user can achieve a seamless experience.

Credit Limit Enablement

No B2B business can transact without offering credit – B2B businesses are mostly strategy-driven and purchase or sales at times depend on the personal relations and reputation a buyer and a seller have with each other. In such circumstances, a merchant often looks at credit limits as an important feature of the B2B commerce platform. A credit limit can be specified amount of loyalty points or monetary tokens that a buyer can use to buy products quickly and repay later. This helps in converting as many leads as possible quickly and yet ensuring payment in the future.

B2B Self-service Options

Nowadays, B2B customers are increasingly preferring to use self-service options rather than contacting the sales reps and waiting in queue. To facilitate this, B2B merchants must choose platforms that are responsive and intuitive to use, and which can support self-serving functionalities such as quote requests, orders submission, creating orders, modifying details, shipment tracking, etc. Merchants aiming at building strong customer relationships must involve themselves with the self-service capabilities of a B2B platform, as it can help the business offer personalized content to each customer and nurture each account.

B2B Portal Customization

The B2B buying process often involves multiple parties to select and verify the order and this can vary from organization to organization. Also, B2B product lists are generally quite large, and this makes catalog navigation tedious. Customizable B2B eCommerce platforms tend to solve this problem – admin and owners can assign specific roles and permissions to users, thus, when a user logs in, they only view data important and relevant to their business flows. Also, with accurate promotions in place, merchants can take customization to the next level and offer customer group-specific pricing or discounts on the website.

ERP Integration

B2B eCommerce platforms are strong and robust digital commerce tools. But a B2B website cannot do everything for a business. Also, businesses use various solutions to run their daily operations, one very important among them being an ERP. When choosing a B2B commerce solution, it is crucial for merchants to check if the platform offers integration with popular ERPs in the market or offers APIs to facilitate seamless integration. With the correct implementation of an integration platform for ERP integration, a B2B merchant can have quick and easy access to all their business data under a unified roof and manage eCommerce and ERP functionalities without any interruptions.

If you are using multiple business applications like ERP, CRM, POS, Shipping Solution, etc. and want to integrate a your B2B eCommerce platform with them, a smart business process automation like APPSeCONNECT can help you achieve this. Such platforms allow B2B merchants and store owners to seamlessly integrate their applications and bring uniformity of data across operations.

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Evaluating the right B2B eCommerce Platform for your Business

For any B2B business trying to move online, it is extremely crucial to evaluate the eCommerce platforms and choose the best one suited to the needs. Below, we have listed some of the most popular and best-selling eCommerce platforms for you to choose from.

Shopify Plus

Shopify Plus is a flexible eCommerce platform that helps merchants serve both the B2B as well as the B2C/D2C customers from one single place. It is the preferred ecommerce platform for high-volume and enterprise merchants.

Shopify Plus Growth and Market Share

Presently, over 26,000 stores are running live on Shopify Plus. The platform witnessed a 7.2% increase in their online stores quarter-over-quarter and a 21% increase in their online store year-over-year in Q3 2022. Shopify Plus has 1.19% market share according to the Statista Report “E-commerce platforms market share worldwide 2022”.

The Shopify Wholesale Channel allows merchants to offer customized and personalized shopping experience to the buyers, along with the ability to automate internal workflows and access customer-specific products. Shopify Plus supports ready integrations with ERP and CRM solutions and has partnered with over 100 payment providers around the globe. Companies like Laird Superfood, Beard & Blade and Death Wish Coffee use Shopify Plus to sell and grow their business online.

The key features of Shopify Plus are:

  • Personalized buying experience – Merchants can offer personalized buying experiences to their buyers by running separate storefronts for B2B and D2C without adding any complexity to the business. Also, the merchants can manage order and inventory for both modules from a singular platform.
  • Custom-pricing options – With Shopify Plus, users can show selective and personalized pricing based on the customer persona, the products that are chosen and the quantity that has been finalized. Also, the ability to set up pricelists and discounts for each customer profile and individual B2B customers is a bonus

 

Shopify Plus pricing –

  • Pricing ranges from $2,000 to $40,000 per month, depending on your revenue.
  • Once merchants start making $800,000 monthly, pricing changes from a subscription fee to revenue-based fee of 0.25% of monthly revenue.
  • Pricing is capped at $40,000 per month for monthly sales of $16 million

Adobe Commerce (Magento)

Adobe Commerce, formerly known as Magento Commerce, is a robust and modern eCommerce platform that serves both the B2B and the B2C categories of customers. Offering a central location for all its operations, Adobe Commerce includes features like product catalog, inventory management, custom pricelists, sales channels, etc. Organizations like HP, Liebherr, FoodServiceDirect.com, etc. Use Adobe Commerce to sell online to their customers.

Adobe Commerce Growth and Market Share

Magento held a 2.32% market share in global e-commerce platforms as of April 2021 as per a Statista Report. It is currently within the top ten eCommerce platforms with an eCommerce market share of 1.08% and it is currently powering over 76,000 eCommerce websites. There are more than 267,000 Magento 1 and 2 stores live on the internet, out of which, almost 100,000 of them run on Magento 2.

The key features of Adobe Commerce include:

  • Inventory and Order Management – With Adobe Commerce, users have access to real-time inventory, even when users are selling online for in-store pickup or home delivery, operating multiple brands, and using different warehouses.
  • Headless Commerce – With Adobe Commerce, users and merchants can use the power of APIs to create app-like shopping experiences such as multi-page web apps, mobile apps, VR/AR and IoT! The platform ensures fast, flexible and agile ecommerce experience across every channel and device.
  • Analytics and Reporting – Adobe Commerce offers visual reports and dashboards that show all the important metrics of the business for better decision-making. Users can export data in varied formats, set up desired permission levels and initiate automations for reports on pre-defined schedules.

 

Adobe Commerce pricing –

  • Adobe Commerce (on prem) starts at $2,000 per month / $22,000 annually
  • Adobe Commerce Cloud starts around $3,000 / $40,000 annually
  • Additional cost for domain, hosting, themes, plugins and extensions.

OroCommerce


OroCommerce is an open-source, best-of-breed B2B eCommerce platform for SMEs and enterprise organizations with their primary focus being manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers and retailers. With OroCommerce, users can achieve up to 80% of all the necessary B2B functionalities and the remaining 20% can be configured with the help of the dynamic APIs in the open-source environment.

OroCommerce Growth and Market Share

Oro grew its customers by 80% more in 2021 and is the #1 B2B Commerce in Gartner’s 2021 Critical Capabilities Report. In that year, Oro facilitated over 2.5 transactions which is 50% from the previous year.

The key features of OroCommerce eCommerce are:

  • Multiple Pricelists – OroCommerce offers its users to maintain and manage different pricelists for different categories of buyers. Users can also set up pricing rules for different locations, currencies and product quantities.
  • Promotions management – With OroCommerce, users can offer various time-limited coupons, pre-scheduled discounts on customer groups, and maintain a catalog for ongoing deals on the website. Merchants can easily customize promotions and introduce features like free shipping, buy ”X” get “Y” deals, etc. On the website.
  • Content management system – OroCommerce offers a dedicated CMS system which allows the organization to maintain and manage different content formats and web pages from a single hub.

 

OroCommerce pricing – Pricing available on request

WooCommerce


WooCommerce is an open-source eCommerce platform that is built on the WordPress website. It works as a WordPress plug-in and introduces features like shipping, payments and order management to any WP website.

WooCommerce is a highly customizable eCommerce platform, and users can add multiple extensions to achieve the functionalities the business requires such as subscriptions, 360-degree image viewing, support for multiple currencies and warehouses, etc. Also, with WooExpert, a dedicated and verified WooCommerce partner, users can get additional help with the site setup, implementation and the development of the online B2B store.

WooCommerce Growth and Market Share

According to BuiltWith, a total of 6,719,294 websites use WooCommerce out of which 46,742 were among the world’s top 1 million websites as of January 2023. That counts to almost 0.3% of all global websites, or 4.67% of the top 1 million websites.

The current market share of WooCommerce (2023) is 23% of the top 1 million websites using e-commerce technologies (BuiltWith).

The key features of WooCommerce eCommerce are:

  • Custom product quantities – Users have the ability to set minimum/maximum purchase quantities, assign incremental quantities for packaging, set minimum purchase amounts for customer groups, etc.
  • Customer groups – With WooCommerce, users can organize all the existing customers into desired groups and choose to show or hide product details such as prices, discounts, inventory levels, shipping and payment methods, etc. to each group.
  • Separate B2B registration – WooCommerce eCommerce allows users and merchants to create different pages for login and registration for different groups of customers. This also allows the users to accept or deny selling to a specific customer from the online store.

 

WooCommerce pricing – WooCommerce is free. Additional plugins may have their own costs

BigCommerce


BigCommerce eCommerce is a hybrid eCommerce platform for organizations to help sell to wholesaler and retailer customers worldwide. BigCommerce B2B edition is a combination of the entire BigCommerce Enterprise plan and the newly acquired BundleB2B, which introduces quite a few features to the platform – it comes with 6 storefront themes and supports additional integrations with the help of the partner ecosystem. Organizations like United Aqua Group and Farmer Boy have been using BigCommerce to sell online globally.

BigCommerce Growth and Market Share

BigCommerce is used by nearly 60,000 stores globally with almost 0.4% of all websites running on BigCommerce. As far as hosted eCommerce solutions are concerned, BigCommerce powers nearly 3% of the top 1 million websites, according to BuiltWith.

The key features included in BigCommerce eCommerce are:

  • Shared shopping lists – BigCommerce makes it easy for users to create, manage and share multiple shopping lists within the organization, for convenient future references and for purchasing saved products.
  • Invoice portal – With BigCommerce, users can easily pay off their due invoices by using any of the following methods – credit cards, ACH, purchase orders, etc.
  • Sales rep quoting – In BigCommerce eCommerce, sales reps can easily create custom quotes and offer updated pricing to customers on top of the earlier pre-defined product pricing.

Source: Pipecandy

BigCommerce pricing – Prices start at around $29.95 per month for the standard plan, and $79.95 per month for the Plus plan. If you want to upgrade to the Pro Plan, that will cost $299.95 per month. For Enterprise Edition, pricing is shared upon request.

PrestaShop


PrestaShop is a free open-source eCommerce platform that serves over 300,000 B2B businesses around the globe. To include robust B2B functionalities, users can add modules from the PrestaShop official marketplace and use the B2B-specific modules to add features like B2B registration, VAT verifications, custom discounts, payment rules, etc. Organizations like Danone, Sheds Direct, Cooltra and Freshly Cosmetics use PrestaShop to conduct their online business and cater to the global market.

PrestaShop Growth and Market Share

Launched in 2007, PrestaShop is used by 296,995 websites (according to BuiltWith) with a global market share of 2.23% in the eCommerce industry. PrestaShop is used by 1.1% of all the websites whose content management system we know. This is 0.7% of all websites.

The key features of PrestaShop are:

  • Loyalty programs – BigCommerce encourages B2B buyers to purchase more by offering rewards and loyalty points on each order which they can later redeem or transfer to their banks easily.
  • Custom payment – With BigCommerce, users can choose to show or hide payment methods based on various parameters such as product type, category, brand, cart range, suppliers, customer groups and so on.
  • Product Quotations – Users can also choose to show or hide the Quote button for specific customer groups or products – in such a scenario, when a product is out of stock, B2B buyers can just click on the Quote button and notify the merchants of their demands.

 

PrestaShop pricing – Completely free. Themes and modules have additional costs.

Opencart


Opencart is another open-source eCommerce platform that makes it easy for users to start a B2B business with all the essential features. It is a free eCommerce platform, however, if users want to add advanced features and themes to their website, they can download free or paid add-ons from the Opencart marketplace – with over 13,000 modules and extensions including features like contact forms, quick checkout, marketing collaterals, SEO, wholesale management, etc. Globally, Opencart is being used by over 400,000 websites including the British Red Cross and Urban Pets.

OpenCart Growth and Market Share

In 2023 Q1, there are 138,575 live websites running on Opencart (US) and 419,314 live sites (Globally). Opencart stores increased a 5.8% quarter-over-quarter in 2022 Q4 and a 21% year-over-year in 2022 Q4.


The key features of Opencart eCommerce are:

  • Localization – With Opencart, merchants can sell anywhere in the world in the desired currency, with automatic rate updates and tax regulations. Users will be able to set up multiple languages and currencies as and when they see fit.
  • B2B-specific modules – With the Opencart marketplace, users can easily add B2B extensions to their store and make use of the features such as customer grouping, quote requests, product lists, custom dashboard, etc.
  • Multi-store – With Opencart, a merchant can use a single admin account to manage multiple webstores. The user can also set up store-specific parameters such as dedicated product pricelists, themes, names, product ranges, etc.

 

Opencart pricing – Opencart is completely free. Extensions and themes may include fees.

NetSuite Commerce


NetSuite Commerce is an eCommerce platform suited for B2B organizations who want to deliver engaging and unique shopping experiences to their buyers. The platform integrates with the core NetSuite business systems and offers a unified view of the customers, inventory levels, orders, etc. NetSuite has been serving hundreds of B2B companies around the world including Barcoding and Bailey Hydraulics.
NetSuite Commerce and Market Share

There are currently 2,932 live websites using NetSuite eCommerce, according to BuiltWith. It is the 9th most popular platform in the Multi-Channel Usage Distribution on the Entire Internet.

Source: BuiltWith
The key features of NetSuite Commerce include:

  • Richer customer profiles – NetSuite offers a centralized customer database that includes all the necessary details from all the different customer channels.
  • Reporting and analytics – With NetSuite, users can track and analyze what the shoppers have been doing on the website and investigate crucial data such as traffic, lead generation, order value, order requests, etc., thus, in turn, helping merchants to improve the marketing and sales activities and add more leads to the sales funnel.
  • Purchasing tools – Users can ease up the buying process by leveraging the power of purchasing tools and tactics – allow customers to make bulk orders, request quotes on orders, make sales orders from quotes, reorder from purchasing history, etc. It is also important to offer dedicated catalog and product pages for specific groups of B2B buyers.

 

NetSuite Commerce pricing – Shared upon contact.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud


Salesforce Commerce Cloud is an outstanding B2B eCommerce solution and aims at maximizing online business with the help of tailored B2B functionalities – it helps the wholesaler engage more with its buyers and make every interaction relevant to the customer. Previously Demandware, Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a multi-tenant, cloud platform that caters mostly to larger enterprises. Offering robust security and privacy policies, Salesforce Commerce Cloud concentrates keenly on protecting the customer data.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Market Share

According to BuiltWith, there are over 6,200 live websites using Salesforce Commerce Cloud with the US comprising 49% of the users. The platform is mostly used by companies with 1M-10M dollars in revenue and 50-200 employees, according to a report by enlyft.

The key features of Salesforce Commerce Cloud are:

  • Customizable design – Salesforce Commerce Cloud is completely customizable, and the “Page Designer” allows the merchants to design, schedule and publish pages on the website as per their needs. Also, storeowners can always reach out to the Commerce Cloud Partner Marketplace and ask for support or value-added services for their websites.
  • Controlled processing – Salesforce Commerce Cloud ensures that the customer data is completely protected and is processed only though the chain of processing involving Salesforce and its sub-processors.
  • Multiple currencies and languages – Salesforce Commerce Cloud supports multiple currencies and languages for its global websites. The platform offers a Translation Workbench, a tool that can help users translate any Salesforce text into different languages.

 

Salesforce Commerce Cloud pricing – Shared on request.

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Notable Mentions

Shopware

Shopware eCommerce is an omnichannel B2B commerce platform that is used predominantly in the European region. With recent investments in the B2B arena, Shopware has been developing several extensions and add-ons to improve their range. Used mainly by smaller businesses for B2B operations, Shopware comes in two editions – open-source and commercial.

VTEX

VTEX Commerce is a multi-tenant SaaS platform that is deployed on the AWS server and supports both B2B and B2C modules. It also offers the marketplace operations and order management capabilities at no extra charges. Being a good fit for mid to large enterprises, VTEX has a good hold on the retail industry and has extensive capabilities for a unified retail commerce. With features like self-service and automated onboarding, VTEX allows the sale of third-party products and caters to offer better product fulfillment and delivery options to its users.

CommerceTools

CommerceTools is also a multi-tenant SaaS platform but is offered via both the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and the Amazon Web Services (AWS). CommerceTools has a strong presence in the manufacturing and enterprise retail segments, where it is developed extensive microservices to enable core B2B commerce functionalities within the platform. CommerceTools is the best fit for larger, global businesses and caters to complex requirements, offers technical skills such as API management and integration, and provides robust product management and governance across the platform.

Build a thriving B2B business – Propel yourself towards Digital Commerce Success

Overall, the shift to digital B2B commerce is driven by the increasing demand for convenience, speed, scalability, reach and cost-effectiveness. Digital will continue to be a major channel in B2B Commerce and choosing the right platform to launch your store will significantly impact your growth figures.

With B2B eCommerce Integration, the possibilities are endless as you can extend the capabilities of your store to optimize your operations, improve the customer experience, and make better-informed decisions.

About APPSeCONNECT

APPSeCONNECT is a smart integration platform that connects your eCommerce store with other applications and automates your business to accelerate growth.

With its unique ProcessFlow builder, APPSeCONNECT helps users create their desired integrations and steer the flow of data transfer to streamline business flows on the go. Also, with support for B2B and full-stack API management, it proves to be one of the best integration solutions for B2B organizations to help them weave their entire business together and significantly improve efficiency and productivity across all channels.