B2B Ecommerce: How Is It Different From B2C

Everyone has heard and knows about Alibaba and Amazon. One is a Chinese ecommerce giant and the other is an American multinational entity. Both are known for their digital sales, but there is one thing that makes them very different.

Alibaba is a primarily Business to Business (B2B) shopping platform whereas Amazon is a Business to Consumer (B2C) platform. They both sell, but to different audiences, with completely different business models in place. What separates the two? Let’s take a deep dive into what makes B2B ecommerce different from B2C or retail ecommerce.

THE REAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN B2B AND B2C

In a B2B business model, a business, that is a manufacturer or wholesaler, sells their products to another business, usually a retailer. While in a B2C business model, the same retailer then sells these goods to the end-consumers. And there are several differences here, right from the expectations of the customers, the margins on products, down to the quantity ordered and even the method of shipping these products.

YES, THIS MEANS THEIR ECOMMERCE WEBSITES NEED TO BE DIFFERENT TOO

As both business models serve different sets of target groups, their ecommerce websites are developed differently too. As the top ecommerce website development company in Ahmedabad having provided ecommerce website solutions to some of the biggest brands across the country, we’ve listed down the top 7 differentiators between B2B and B2C websites:

CURATED HOMEPAGE

The homepage of a B2B website has a simple, clutter-free design with a focus on the products being sold, accompanied by highly informative product details, alongwith SKUs (Stock Keeping Unit) and reference images. These modules often have a quick order system for buyers who already know the product name or its SKU code.

In comparison, the homepage of a B2C website has a lot going on. The design is usually intriguing and engaging, with multiple entry points for exploring the product range. The content is quirkier to create desire for the customer to explore the products some more. Often discounts and special offers are highlighted to push the website visitors to buy.

TAILORED CONTENT AND IMAGES

The content on B2B websites focuses on providing a lot of information about the product to the visitor, since the target groups here are typically business owners, purchase managers, stockists, etc. who evaluate and compare on the basis of detailed buying guides, demo videos, and in-depth articles. The idea is to give the buyer all the information they could want before placing a bulk order.

On B2C websites, the content is tailored to grab eyeballs of visitors with short, enticing and catchy headlines accompanied by multiple high resolution images of the product. Often the images for product images are highly styled and sometimes they will make use of models too, for increasing engagement and relatability. In addition, the content champions the discounts offered, favourable customer reviews and its striking features to convince the buyer to make a purchase decision pronto.

Continue reading

How to Turn Blog Traffic into Sales on Your Ecommerce Website

The first-ever blog on the internet is believed to have appeared in 1994, and as of 2020, the Growth Badger reported that there were over 600 million blogs globally. Over 60% of internet users engage with some of the other kinds of blogs daily and an average person spends up to 37 seconds reading a blog.

Yes, every figure mentioned here is true and shows how important it is to publish blogs regularly to draw traffic to a website. And when the website in question is an ecommerce platform, there are surefire ways to convert this blog traffic into sales. And 86% of companies produce blog content compared to other formats.

Flora Fountain, an ecommerce website development and design company in Ahmedabad, India has compiled a list of to-dos and tips on how to convert the website traffic from the blogs into leads and paying customers.

PLAN THE SALES FUNNEL

A sales funnel the path a visitor on the website takes, from reading the blog to eventually purchasing the product. If there is not sales funnel planned out for every blog being published on the website, then it is nothing but just some reading material for the website visitor.

Ideally, this is how a Sales Funnel Looks like:

Visitors – Blog Post – Call to Action – Landing Page – Thank You page or pop-up

Now, these visitors can be people who directly clicked and reached the blog, or got drawn to it through other means like social media. From these blog posts, the visitors are prompted to engage with the website through strategically placed Call to Action (CTA) links and buttons. These CTAs can be either a data collection module or a link that leads to a product page. Once the customer makes the purchase or provides his/her data, they are greeted with a Thank You page or a pop-up. This link of sales funnel helps the blogs to be utilised to its full potential.

CREATE VALUABLE CONTENT THAT THE CUSTOMERS WANT

One of the best ways to convert visitors into a regular readers and eventually, paying customers of the business, is by providing them with content that addresses their pain-points, solves their problems and gives something worth the 5 minutes spent reading the blog.

Ahmedabad-based ethnic fashion brand Ray Ethnic writes blogs which provide their readers with tips and styling tricks for various seasons and occasions, and smartly plugs their products within their content.

This way, the chances of their regular blog readers clicking on the call to action links smartly embedded in the images and on the names of their outfits are increased. These links lead to their product pages with an option to buy online. Check out their blogs here.

ENSURE THAT THE BLOG IS READABLE AND ACCESSIBLE ON ALL TYPES OF DEVICES

According to a Statista report, in the year 2020, close to 4.28 billion people were accessing the internet using their mobile phones. And it will take hardly 2 seconds for any of this user to abandon a website or a link if it doesn’t open properly on their handheld devices.

Hence, it is necessary to have a responsive ecommerce website in the first place, one which opens seamlessly and runs smoothly on all kinds of mobile devices and browsers too. Secondly, the blogs shouldn’t be too long, otherwise the reader will abandon the blog halfway and leave the sales funnel.

Ideally, a blog should be of minimum 800 words. Because it contains enough word-space plus at least 5 products in it, it takes hardly 3 minutes to read a blog of this size, and that it can be optimized for SEO with the right keywords too.

Continue reading