In the past 20 years, the popularity of online wholesale eCommerce has experienced significant growth, with an increasing number of traditional B2B businesses transitioning their operations online.
This is why wholesalers need good online platforms to sell their products globally. But it can be tricky to pick the best platform from those used to make online shops. Wholesalers sell stuff using a B2B model and this is a big deal financially, even though it’s not talked about as much as the B2C model used by retailers. The B2B market is actually much larger than the one for retailers. Still, both wholesalers and retailers equally need to have a well-designed eCommerce website.
This article will help those who are tired of looking for the best wholesale eCommerce platform that creates an ideal wholesale online shop. Here, our comparison of B2B eCommerce platforms will save you time and give you a clear understanding of what a wholesale eCommerce platform can offer.
What is a wholesale eCommerce platform?
ECommerce platforms designed for wholesalers, also known as wholesale eCommerce platforms or business-to-business marketplaces, serve as B2B platforms facilitating relationships between retailers and reliable wholesalers and manufacturers. These platforms allow businesses to source products and goods from trustworthy sellers.
Within this B2B business model, two parties are involved, the seller and the buyer, the seller supplies the goods or services, and the buyer makes the payment, and transactions often involve bulk shipments at discounted rates. This leads to successful collaborations that often extend over the long term through established contracts.
Why do wholesalers need it?
Wholesalers require eCommerce platforms due to the universal need for effective online sales in both B2B and B2C models as they both rely on selling to people. The geographical distance between wholesalers and customers poses challenges, particularly in markets that are not easily accessible.
For instance, numerous US companies with suppliers in distant countries like China or Indonesia encounter difficulties in accessing those markets. As a result, eCommerce platforms play a crucial role in overcoming these challenges and facilitating successful online transactions.
1. An eCommerce Platform Helps to Find Customers
- Online platforms act as intermediaries connecting sellers and customers.
- Facilitates producers reaching their buyers (distributors).
- Easier to find suitable suppliers, negotiate prices, and settle agreements.
- Streamlines the process with just a few clicks.
2. An eCommerce Platform Helps to Locate Customers
- Major benefit: the ability to locate distributors quickly.
- Boosts sales and customer numbers through expanded outreach.
- Accelerates brand establishment in the market.
- Enables multi-channel sales implementation.
- Online platforms allow wholesalers to collect data about potential customers.
3. An eCommerce Platform Helps to Evaluate Competitors
- Simplifies the evaluation of potential competitors.
- Direct contact with distributors ensures valuable feedback.
- Producers can contact distributors directly, enhancing customer contact.
4. An eCommerce Platform Helps to Reduced Costs and Increased Accessibility
- Elimination of unnecessary costs.
- Increased affordability for B2B operations.
- Round-the-clock accessibility, including holidays in different countries.
- Enhances funding and opportunities for marketing and promotion.
Top Features For Wholesale Online Shop
The success of a customer journey depends directly on the features of an eCommerce platform, making careful selection crucial for your B2B business.
When establishing your wholesale eCommerce website, it’s essential to consider the most popular B2B eCommerce features. Below, we’ve compiled a list of the top features to prioritize when searching for the right platform.
Key anticipated features of wholesale website platforms include:
1. Data synchronization from multiple channels
Data synchronization means making sure all the data from different places match up. Wholesalers have many channels where they sell their products, so they deal with a lot of data. To make things easier, they need to synchronize this data from all their different selling channels. This is where the wholesale platform comes in handy.
Wholesalers gather all the information from multiple devices and channels where they sell. This info includes how customers research products, pick what they want (service or product), and get in touch with sales representatives. It’s important for wholesalers to keep track of all this data, and using wholesale platforms makes storing it easier.
Usually, wholesalers who sell through multiple channels make more sales than those who only sell through one channel. Selling your products on various platforms usually results in 190% more sales, compared to single-channel sell/retail. With an online platform, they can see all their orders from all selling channels using a special admin panel that is provided with the platform. Some platforms even have apps that help analyze and manage sales, making the selling process more efficient.
2. Content marketing features
Content marketing may not be a new idea, but it’s still an effective way to make people know about your brand and products. It gets customers interested in buying from you.
When you use content marketing, it’s not just about giving info to your customers. It’s also great for making sure your website shows up when people search on the internet. Using the right keywords helps people find your products when they’re searching online.
What kinds of pictures and videos can you use on your business website? There are lots of choices, like blog posts, videos, infographics, and special pages to attract people. And it’s the best idea to have sharing buttons that let people share your content on social media.
Even though we mostly see content marketing in regular consumer sales as B2C, it’s also useful for the B2B segment.
3. Third-party integration
To ensure effective sales, a B2B eCommerce website is just one piece of the puzzle. Many other elements, such as advertisements, content, and research, are often provided by third-party sources to enhance the pre-sale experience.
Furthermore, B2B eCommerce websites often focus on providing a comprehensive post-sale experience for their customers. This not only leads to increased sales but also enables the gathering of valuable sales-related information. To manage these aspects effectively, your eCommerce B2B website must integrate with other platforms.
Integration allows for customer customization, creating a unique shopping experience, and maximizes effectiveness for sellers. Therefore, integrating various platforms is a win-win decision, and having a platform that simplifies this process can reduce effort and increase profits significantly.
4. Mobile version of B2B eCommerce site
The rise of mobile technology has revolutionized online retailing, with both B2B and B2C customers increasingly using mobile devices over desktops. Therefore, having a mobile-friendly version of an eCommerce website is essential for modern retailers.
However, certain eCommerce layouts fail to ensure a smooth mobile experience, as the website should also be responsible. Implementing such optimizations will offer customers a user-friendly catalog browsing and checkout process, ultimately leading to increased revenue.
Today, everyone owns a device, making a mobile version of an eCommerce website essential, not just an extra perk. Integrating this mobile version into your wholesaler platform is important to save time during development and ensure efficient management and sales processes. Therefore, ideally, the chosen wholesaler platform should include a mobile app for optimal performance.
5. Customer support
Communication is always an important element when you are trying to make a sale. A study from Harvard Business Review found that delays in communication between a customer and a sales representative result in a rapid drop in sales. Sadly, many B2B companies still do not reply to their customers within 5 minutes, which makes fewer people buy things and ultimately decreases the conversion rate.
Since a lot of purchases are based on emotions, waiting too long to talk to customers might make them change their minds about buying something. One quick way to help customers is through online chat. 92% of people thought that live chat is a quite better way of communicating with companies as they get answers really fast. So, having an online chat on a B2B platform is really great.
Top ECommerce Platform To Create A Wholesale Online Shop
1. B2BWoo with WooCommerce
B2BWoo is a powerful, flexible, and comprehensive solution for setting up a wholesale online shop, catering to the unique needs of B2B eCommerce. It is designed to cater to the needs of wholesalers, manufacturers, and distributors to run online businesses.
B2BWoo is built on WooCommerce, leveraging its capabilities to offer a comprehensive solution for B2B eCommerce. The platform is praised for reducing time to market, as it’s built on the ready-made infrastructure of WooCommerce, which saves time, labor, and resources. It empowers wholesale customers by providing them with self-service tools for a personalized experience.
B2BWoo is known for its scalability, allowing it to accommodate the needs of businesses of different sizes. The platform’s open-source nature provides flexibility and removes barriers to customization. It also offers integration flexibility with various systems like FedEx, Freshworks, Quickbooks, HubSpot, Sage, Microsoft Dynamics, and Salesforce.
Reasons to use B2BWoo with WooCommerce
- Customizable and scalable platform.
- Seamless integration with ERP and CRM systems.
- Bulk ordering, tiered pricing, and custom agreements.
- Advanced user management options.
- Supports various B2B payment methods.
- Excellent customer support and services.
- Fully responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Includes SEO and marketing tools.
- Self-installation or hire a team for implementation.
Key features of B2BWoo include:
1. Custom Pricing Rules: B2BWoo enables multi-layered pricing structures tailored to different customer types, products, and order volumes, with dynamic discounts and price hiding for non-logged-in users.
2. Personalized Catalogs: Create custom catalogs for each customer group or role, controlling product visibility based on customer segments, groups, roles, and locations.
3. Personalized Payment Methods: Integration with payment systems like Balance allows seamless checkout experiences with various payment terms.
2. Quote Management: B2BWoo streamlines the quote process, enabling customers to easily request quotes and communicate with sellers.
3. Feature-Rich Plugin Bundle: B2BWoo offers a comprehensive feature set including custom catalogs, signup forms, quote requests, quick reorders, account management, and more.
4. Bulk Ordering: Simplifies ordering large product quantities, essential for wholesale transactions.
5. Minimum Order Quantities: Enforces minimum order quantities or values, ensuring bulk purchases in wholesale.
6. Integrations: It seamlessly integrates with various enterprise tools and applications, including ERP, CRM, and OMS systems.
2. Shopify Plus
Shopify is a renowned name in the eCommerce platform space as a versatile platform suitable for businesses of all sizes, offering sufficient features for B2B businesses. But if we go specifically for wholesalers, then Shopify Plus might be the best choice. As wholesalers require additional options and features to run their online shop, Shopify Plus is their enterprise-grade solution completing all their needs.
It’s particularly well-suited for wholesale businesses due to its ability to handle high volumes of orders and its extensive app ecosystem. The platform offers advanced wholesale features like custom pricing, bulk ordering, and seamless integration with existing systems. Shopify Plus also provides a high degree of customization through access to Shopify’s theme language, Liquid, allowing you to make code-level changes in the backend for enhanced control over your website. It also provides dedicated Launch Engineers for personalized assistance throughout the setup and integration process.
Reasons to use SHOPIFY PLUS
- Easily manage multiple online shops from one backend.
- Create separate storefronts for selling internationally.
- Your merchant dashboard can accommodate up to 20 sales channels.
- Simplify tax management with integrated Avalara support.
- The platform can handle up to 8,000 orders per minute.
- A diverse app ecosystem accesses over 1,500 apps to meet various business needs.
- Ensure security with an SSL Certificate for checkout and storefront.
- Offers more API integrations like GiftCard, User, and Multipass to enhance third-party app usage on websites.
- More control over the checkout, customizable checkout experiences, and enhanced control through Shopify Scripts for fine-tuning shipping, customer fields, and payments.
- Unified dashboard to manage multiple stores in one place.
3. BigCommerce
BigCommerce stands out as an exceptional tool for B2B wholesale eCommerce, recognized as the leading cloud-based platform globally. BigCommerce provides a range of features and options out-of-the-box aimed at creating a powerful and fast eCommerce website.
For wholesalers, it provides features like tiered pricing, bulk pricing discounts, and advanced inventory management. The platform also has a robust API for integrations and is known for its excellent uptime and security features.
BigCommerce offers robust tool integrations and engines, empowering users to create and deploy their own CMS, DXP, and custom front-end solutions. Its key advantages lie in its user-friendly editing capabilities without coding, mobile optimization, and SEO-friendly URLs.
Reasons to use BIGCOMMERCE
- Eye-catching websites with responsive design.
- Seamless audience segmentation for targeted marketing.
- Flexible custom pricing and special offer capabilities.
- Compatibility with payment solutions tailored for B2B.
- Automated application of bulk discounts.
- Advanced shipping options for streamlined logistics.
4. Magento Commerce
Magento Commerce (now part of Adobe Commerce) stands out as a top-tier open-source eCommerce platform for wholesalers, boasting remarkable functionality and scalability suitable for businesses of any size or nature.
Magento is a powerful choice for wholesale online shops packed with features designed to assist online wholesalers and retailers in reaching ambitious business objectives.
It’s an open-source platform, which means you have the freedom to customize extensively. Magento supports complex pricing models, and large product catalogs, and has strong B2B features like quote management and company accounts. However, it might require a team with technical expertise to manage and customize.
Reasons to use MAGENTO COMMERCE
- Strong merchandising capabilities.
- Comprehensive native B2B features.
- Dependable cloud-based commerce solution.
- Tailored purchasing experiences.
- Unified platform for both B2B and B2C.
- Easy and seamless integration with backend systems.
- Omni channel selling support.
- Management of corporate accounts.
5. 3DCart
3DCart emerges as an ideal eCommerce platform for B2B wholesale businesses featuring diverse product types. Its templates are tailored to seamlessly accommodate various product ranges without hassle.
For deeper customization, 3DCart offers ample flexibility, allowing users to edit files in HTML and CSS as desired, ensuring a perfect fit for your business needs.
3DCart’s strengths lie in its flexible pricing model, allowing you to pay for what you use, along with numerous features such as one-click ordering, multiple payment gateways, and target market segmentation. Additionally, it offers a plethora of features for creating a mobile-friendly online store.
Reasons to use 3DCART
- More extensive feature set compared to other platforms
- Unlimited product listings
- Rapid loading speed on any device
- Diverse payment options are available
- No transaction fees imposed
- Abundance of integrated marketing and SEO tools
- Intuitive user interface
- Unlimited order processing
Conclusion
The wholesale business is currently thriving and expected to grow further, offering sufficient opportunities for expansion. To achieve success, it’s important to consider growth opportunities with your chosen platform.
Want to create a wholesale eCommerce portal with B2BWoo, the most complete WooCommerce B2B solution for getting started with wholesale eCommerce easily, affordable, and quickly. So book your demo now!