Many B2B companies are seeing the success of their peers doing online sales and wanting to mimic their success.  But doing online sales is more complicated than just creating an eCommerce site, including your product catalog, and expecting that customers are going to beat a path to your door.  It is critical to understand the customer journey and to use that information to create a self-service portal that allows them to find what they are looking for quickly and accurately. As well, it is important to provide them with flexible purchasing options that will enable them to pay by credit card or other methods of doing transactions once they have established credit terms.  Making it easy for customers to find and buy the right products will allow your business to build customer loyalty by providing a great user experience, which will lead to greater sales and revenue.

First Step:  Define the customer journey

It is key to realize that your B2B customers are looking for exactly the same experience they enjoy in B2C.  Based on a survey by Cap Gemini, 85% of business buyers view the buying experience to be as important as the products they are looking to purchase. Customers expect a seamless buying experience where they can quickly navigate to the right products. So it is critical as an organization to understand not only your product mix but how your product catalog is being presented. So it is important to answer these questions:

Being able to anticipate different ways customers will do searches on your site and giving them an easy way to identify the right product is critical to providing an excellent customer experience.

Understanding the customer journey starts with your product catalog and how they navigate on your website.  But it will be important to then do an analysis of your store to understand the buying patterns of your customers. Using data analytics you can determine: 

• Which products are your bestsellers and what products aren't moving?
• What is your number of visitors in comparison to your conversion rate?
• Do you have a high rate of cart abandonment?
• What is your new versus return customer percentage?
• What is your Customer Lifetime Value?
• What is your Customer Acquisition Cost?

These Key Performance Indicators or KPIs provide you with actionable insights to better serve your customers. By identifying the patterns, you can more accurately devise strategies to drive more online sales. Create marketing campaigns to present your products to new audiences or to bring back repeat customers. Devise strategies to drive more online sales, as well as understand where your store can be improved to better serve your customers.