13 May B2C AND B2B E-COMMERCE: 3 KEY ELEMENTS TO BOOST SALES

E-Commerce is a huge business that continues to grow both in B2C and B2B.

After the pandemic, 58% of consumers expect to do more online shopping than before, and 80% of business buyers expect to conduct more business online. [1]

In light of this big growth potential, what can E-Commerce players do to boost their sales?

B2C vs. B2B customers: main differences

B2B customer needs strongly differ from those in B2C. Consequently, the business systems require a different approach and different strategies.

B2C, which stands for business-to-consumer, is a process for selling directly to end consumers, who generally browse and order online in their free time. Purchases are mostly driven by emotion and personal gratification. As only one single customer is involved in the purchasing decision, the selling process is easy and fast.

B2B, which stands for business-to-business, is a process for selling products or services to other businesses. Buyers are professionals with specific necessities and clear expectations in terms of quality, features and prices. The buying journey, which is made to meet a particular need, starts with an online search for 62% of B2B customers. And once they start searching, nearly 90% of shoppers consider detailed content as being extremely important to the buying process. The final purchasing decision is more complex as it may involve different people within the same company. [2]

B2C vs. B2B customers: common needs

Digital makes everyone more demanding: today, B2C and B2B customers not only expect the best quality in terms of product offer, but also look for a frictionless, simple and secure buying experience. Therefore, the following three aspects need to be enhanced by any business operating online:

• A seamless user experience
• Secure, easy and real-time payments
• Clear, comprehensive and timely information

 

B2C and B2B e-commerce: three key aspects to optimise

User experience

A B2C e-commerce website requires a different strategy compared to a B2B one.

For e-shops targeting final consumers, for example, the website design plays an important role also in terms of brands’ competitiveness. In B2B, it is the immediate availability of the key product information that counts, rather than the design.

In any case, in both sectors, a frictionless and fast check-out is a must: in B2C, 57% of online consumers will abandon the site if it doesn’t upload within three seconds and 80% of them will never return. [3]

One of the most critical phases of the shopping experience and one of the main challenges for all e-commerce businesses still in 2021, is the check-out: the average documented cart abandonment rate in online purchases is 69.8%, with a peak of 97% for mobile spending and 73% for desktop, for a total of 15 billion euros in lost sales every year. [4]

Optimizing the user experience means, in addition to making the e-commerce site responsive, i.e. able to rescale itself to preserve content display and look across all devices, to provide customers with a smooth navigation and a frictionless check-out: product information, prices, shipping and payment methods details need to be as exhaustive as possible. In particular, payment is a critical phase, which will be further explored below.

Payments

In e-commerce, nothing is more important than the sellers’ reliability and the trust they are able to generate. In the payment phase, these elements become paramount: providing secure payment tools and eliminating any friction is crucial.

Some examples of friction? Forcing customers to create an account or register with the store, unclear payment buttons, missing information on available payment options, unnecessary steps, limited payment options with no alternative methods to credit/debit cards (particularly in B2C) or to traditional wire transfers and bank cheques (particularly in B2B).

Able to meet both B2C and B2B customer needs and meeting the highest security standards, MyBank solution allows users to pay directly from their banks’ online banking service via an immediate wire transfer with real-time confirmation. Easy and fast thanks to its fully pre-filled payment form, MyBank does not require users to make any new registration or to create any new password or account; by providing real-time confirmation of the irrevocable transaction, it supplies payment collection certainty, which makes immediate order processing possible.

Its frictionless and secure solution is already available on thousands of websites belonging to a wide range of commercial sectors as well as in the Public Administration.  

Easily integrated on any e-commerce website, MyBank also offers an even more flexible and versatile tool with a wide field of application in any business sector: the so-called pay-per-link solution, i.e. the payment request based on a link sent to the customer via e-mail or sms: a useful method enabling online payments also for orders collected over the telephone, in person, in store or for overdue invoices reminders.

Regardless of the business industry or context, streamlining and offering a secure experience is imperative in the payment phase: making the purchasing process longer than needed with additional steps or omitting crucial information for proceeding with the transaction can result in missed opportunities for conversions.

Communication

Communication, seen in terms of quality of the human relationship, is something that truly makes the difference in both B2B and B2C. All-round assistance and advice are expected from brands’ customer service, and so is the availability of diversified contact channels (such as live chat, email, social media, SMS): all of these are crucial factors when it comes to building and maintaining the relationship with the customer.

In fact, customer service increasingly becomes a key differentiator: 78% of consumers recently surveyed by Salesforce [5] is inclined to have a tolerant approach towards any issues as long as the seller offers an excellent customer service.

A further key aspect for customer satisfaction is the immediacy of information: timely updates, such as the ones related to payment outcome and order tracking, are essential.

Conclusions

Beyond a seamless user experience and an effective and timely communication, payment security and immediacy are vital to meet new B2C and B2B customer needs, generate trust and boost conversions.

The adoption of a payment solution such as MyBank significantly improves these three aspects, and -at the same time- efficiently streamlines business processes thanks, for example, to automatic reconciliation and compliance with European PSD2, AML and GDPR regulations.

 

 

[1] https://www.salesforce.com/content/dam/web/it_it/www/pdf/connected-customer-report-2020.pdf

[2] https://oroinc.com/b2b-ecommerce/blog/top-5-ecommerce-trends-to-take-advantage-of-in-2019/

[3] https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/consumer-psychology-ecommerce-checkout-infographic?

[4] https://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate

[5] https://www.salesforce.com/it/form/pdf/connected-customer-report-2020/