Anyone who runs an ecommerce business will tell you it’s rewarding – yet hard – work. We’ve mapped out some common, pervasive challenges that most B2B business merchants will experience at some point and reviewed some of the apps available to solve them.
B2B ecommerce challenges
First, let’s take a look at some of the common pain points associated with B2B ecommerce:
- Establishing, growing, and maintaining strong customer relationships
- Selecting the right technology stack
- Compliance, data loss, and cybersecurity issues and threats
- Marketing and lead conversion
- Satisfying the demands of complex B2B buying processes
- Supplier management
- Procurement, pricing, and shipping
- Knowing which B2B ecommerce metrics to track and how to measure them
Solve your B2B ecommerce challenges with these apps
The good news is that the tech marketplace has exploded in recent years with innovative apps designed with these pain points in mind. We’ve put together a list of the top 9 tools you can explore to put your ecommerce store on the front foot:
1. BundleB2B
BundleB2B is designed to improve the B2B self-service experience for store owners and their customers. The app puts merchants in a solid position to grow their ecommerce business faster and at a lower cost than their competitors.
Specifically, its features make your buyers more efficient and streamline management processes for your customer service and sales teams. BundleB2B enables merchants to easily manage front-end and back-end processes with useful features such as quote management, payment and invoice management, ordering tools, and customer account management. BundleB2B is a preferred BigCommerce partner and can be tailored to fit the B2B needs of any growing ecommerce business. Pricing starts at $1,600 upfront with a $225 recurring monthly charge.
“Great B2B software. Really ticks the boxes in offering the additional B2B functionality we needed.”
2. B2B Ninja
B2B Ninja (formerly Quote Ninja) is a quoting app designed with BigCommerce merchants in mind. Interestingly, Quote Ninja was initially created by a BigCommerce B2B merchant!
B2B Ninja allows customers to build their own quotes from your storefront. The app is particularly popular among sales reps as they can view, manage, and create quotes from a centralized dashboard. You can do all of this from a single, convenient location, and your customers can seamlessly check out from the quotes you send.
Pricing plans start at $75 per month.
3. Klevu Search
Klevu Product Discovery uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to help you convert customer onsite searches into sales. The tool ranks products based on clicks, searches, and conversions to learn a shoppers’ intent. It uses this data to present each shopper with personalized product listings that are relevant and popular.
Klevu customers have seen up to 6x increases in conversion rates when integrating the search solution into their tech stack. This app has been approved as Multi-Storefront Compatible by the BigCommerce team. There are no upfront fees, and the recurring monthly payment starts at $499 per month.
4. TradeCentric (Formerly PunchOut2Go)
TradeCentric delivers a no-fuss, fully supported catalog integration that makes for a smooth procurement experience. This is how it works:
Your procurement customers select your BigCommerce store from inside their own procurement platform. They’re automatically authenticated with the store and redirected to your catalog. Once they’ve finished selecting products and have punched out, the TradeCentric app creates a requisition order on the procurement platform. When the purchase is approved, TradeCentric transfers the purchase order to BigCommerce for fulfillment.
TradeCentric also supports orders to invoice and advanced shipping notification harmonization between different platforms. Overall, it’s a great solution if you’re looking to connect with more buyers or suppliers, expand your trading network, boost sales, and improve your supply chain management processes. However, it’s a little pricier than most of the other apps we’re featuring in this post, with a custom solution starting at $10,000.
“PunchOut2Go with BigCommerce is amazing! Love that we can leverage our BigCommerce store to connect with our B2B procurement customers at Ariba and Coupa.”
5. Sufio
Sufio is a professional invoicing solution that automates the process of creating and sending invoices for BigCommerce store orders. Users have a range of pre-built yet customizable invoice templates from which to choose – all of which meet worldwide B2B sales compliance standards.
“Sufio focuses on compliance with local tax authorities across the EU, making it easy for ecommerce businesses to sell B2B confidently. Our app can automatically create and send compliant invoices in over 30 countries, saving you from a lot of headaches.”
– Norbert Ordog, CEO and Founder
This app has a 4 out of 5 rating from BigCommerce users. New users benefit from an initial 14-day free trial and no upfront fees, after which they pay a recurring monthly fee of $19.00. Sufio works with Shopify and BigCommerce.
6. QuickBuy
QuickBuy makes it easy for you and your customers to process bulk orders on your BigCommerce store. It’s a huge time saver for both you and your customers, and it can help increase your sales.
With this app, customers can bulk shop without having to browse for and add individual products to their cart. You can import simple CSV files, and customers can easily add, remove, or adjust the quantities of each product.
You can opt into a free 15-day trial of QuickBuy, with no upfront fees. The recurring monthly fee is $29.00 per month. The app is available for BigCommerce.
7. Form Builder
Form Builder gives you an automated, low-touch mechanism to collect leads and convert your website visitors to customers. The app allows you to design custom contact, quote, and wholesale forms. You don’t need to have any coding experience, and installation happens automatically.
Every time somebody contacts you, you receive an email notification. You can set up branded and conditional autoresponder emails for your customers that send after they submit your form. You can also view a summary of responses and daily/weekly/monthly analytics in your responses dashboard.
Customers cite fast and free customer support in their positive reviews of this product. Form Builder can be used on any ecommerce platform, and its base plan is free.
8. Ebizio Checkout
The Ebizio Checkout app improves your sales effectiveness and boosts conversions by introducing compelling features to the standard checkout process. (Read more about each of these modules here.)
The app lets you apply custom styles and content to make the engagement between you and your customers more engaging. Your sales staff will certainly welcome Ebizio Checkout as it can significantly lighten their workload by streamlining processes.
This app is designed specifically for BigCommerce merchants, and customer pricing plans start at $29.99 per month.
9. Rewind
Rewind is recognized as the #1 backup and recovery app for B2B ecommerce businesses, trusted by 100,000 organizations around the globe.
So, why do you need a backup and recovery solution? The more apps you introduce into your ecommerce environment, the greater the chances of error. Remember, all those third-party apps can read, write, and alter your store’s files and data (including products, product details, product images, themes, customers, and orders). There’s also the possibility of you or one of your team accidentally deleting data while performing routine updates or testing new functionality.
Responsible merchants understand that a reliable third-party backup and restore solution like Rewind Backup essentially act as “risk insurance” for their ecommerce store. In addition, with a system such as Rewind Staging in place, you can experiment with your store and its various apps and integrations safely. If an app behaves unexpectedly or introduces a bug, Rewind can bring your store back exactly as it was.
With a comprehensive backup and restore solution, there’s one less hat for you to wear and one less thing for you to worry about. Rewind can be used with BigCommerce and Shopify.
“Awesome and easy. Easy to install and use. Love that my website backs up automatically without me needing to start anything or even be logged in! Support has been great.”
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