How to Avoid the Toughest B2B eCommerce Challenges

How to Avoid the Toughest B2B eCommerce Challenges

Effective change management for B2B companies demands close attention to operational requirements, capabilities, and challenges.  

 

Continuing our investigative approach to eCommerce, the Redstage team regularly meets with B2B executives to discuss the challenges inherent in driving change on a massive scale. For this piece, we spoke with several marketing specialists responsible for guiding B2B companies through the eCommerce transformation process, and we’ve curated some of the most pertinent conversations. 

 

We explore learnings from the cultural, technological, and organizational hurdles they’ve faced to help others understand the procedures that drive successful transformations. They all agree – leading digital change is no easy feat. As you will learn, the outcome is entirely dependent on forming a united front within your organization.

 

Q1: What have been your biggest digital transformation challenges in the past year?

 

 

“It’s tough to find the right partners that can communicate what you’re planning and bring your vision to reality.”

 

 

A: That depends on your perspective. Mindset and process change are the biggest part, because going digital is very different if your company hasn’t adopted digital already. Internally, trying to take people-oriented processes and digitize them for an eCommerce experience means creating new roles and departments; making people at all levels take on new responsibilities, and combating a lot of kicking and screaming on whether or not this is a good direction for the company.

Externally, it’s tough to find the right partners that can articulate what you’re planning and bring your vision to reality. It’s usually hard getting them to understand your business and how to get you to where you want to go.

 

Q2: What has been your biggest challenge with regard to eCommerce?

 

 

“If the data isn’t already in your ERP, you have to change the way you do business in order to make it all fit.”

 

 

A: eCommerce is such a big universe. There are so many moving parts involved in making a B2B eCommerce experience a reality. With many SKUs, our focus was putting a PIM (product information management system) in place to create a more robust, data-driven experience for the end user. If your company is not data-driven already, restructuring your company for eCommerce is a tremendous undertaking. All of your info needs to be there. If the data isn’t already in your ERP, you have to change the way you do business in order to make it all fit… and if you don’t, you end up attempting all kinds of customizations that will ultimately lead to failure.

 

Q3: What are some solutions you would recommend that allowed you to solve past challenges?

 

“More or less, the eCommerce initiative needs to be driven from the top down.”

 

 

A: More or less, an eCommerce initiative needs to be driven from the top down. If you don’t have the backing of the executive group and the resources and patience to do this — that’s the challenge.

 

Q4: What are your biggest fears and challenges about digital transformation in the year ahead and why?

 

 

“Executive management needs patience.”

 

 

A: There are so many obstacles along the way and pressures to quickly launch – but do not launch a site until it’s ready. Set the right expectations with executive management and allow yourself extra time on your roll-out plan for unforeseen circumstances. eCommerce implementations can fail if you don’t have everything working in sync, but I’d also recommend you get the entire roadmap planned out and not just pieces of it.

 

 

Some system integrators we’ve worked with, the big guns come into the office, they’re very knowledgeable, and then you don’t see them again…”

 

 

I had yet to come across a partner that says “Okay, you’re looking at Magento and here’s the 10 things you should worry about…” No questions about the quality of data you have, where you’re going to house product images, your plans internationally, or how you’re going to implement tokenization to meet privacy laws.

Some system integrators we’ve worked with, the big guns come into the office, they’re very knowledgeable, and then you don’t see them again… or the people hired for your initiative start working on another project, and you need to reach them but can’t. Delay, delay, delay, delay.

 

Q5:  If you could give one piece of advice to B2B business owners, what would it be?

 

 

You’re going to need to solve an awful lot of problems along the way, and you need to make sure you have the right people.”

 

 

A: Be a problem solver. You’re going to need to solve an awful lot of problems along the way, and you need to make sure you have the right people involved in your project. Lastly, don’t announce to the world what you’re doing until you’re ready, so there are no expectations. When the expectations are set, make sure you’ve given all parties involved an accurate and well-informed scope of what’s coming, and be investigative with your partners.

 

Final Thoughts:

At Redstage, our engineers are dedicated to helping B2B companies understand the full extent of their needs, challenges and obstacles. Download our B2B Power Index for Manufacturing, Wholesale & Distribution for a better understanding of your current tech stack, and the technologies that can help you become a true digital leader.

B2B eCommerce – 4 Priorities when Diving into Digital Transformation

B2B eCommerce – 4 Priorities when Diving into Digital Transformation

If you’re a B2B merchant still relying on email, spreadsheets, faxes, pen and paper, and other legacy technologies to run your business, you’re leaving a ton of revenue on the table for your competition to snatch up. The single biggest way to expand your business and scale is by diving into digital transformation or adding an online selling channel. 

 

An online selling channel can go by many names, an eCommerce store, an online buying portal, a customer marketplace, or a self-service digital selling platform. They all have one thing in common, giving customers access to buy products digitally, at their own discretion. 

 

Keep this number in mind: 

When compared to the highest revenue-driving sales models, eCommerce beats out email, online chat, video conferences, and phone calls by a wide margin, according to McKinsey and Company’s research. 

 

ECommerce is driving more revenue, and buyers prefer merchants who sell online through eCommerce.  

In the same report, McKinsey found eCommerce was also the single most effective sales channel, beating out even in-person meetings, for the first time ever. The proof is in the pudding, as they say.  

 

With more merchants selling via digital channels this year than any other year in history, the sprint to eCommerce has never been more important or more saturated. 

 

So, what do you do? 

 

As a merchant jumping into eCommerce and online sales channels for the first time, or if the first time didn’t go as planned, there are a couple of things you need to lock down before you dive straight into eCommerce platforms, integrations, feature sets, and all that other good stuff. 

 

Before picking an eCommerce platform on which to build and hire developers, here are 4 things you need to think about on this journey to set yourself up for success:

1. Data Clean up and Consolidation

 

 

We’ve been there… and it’s not pretty 

 

A problem plaguing many merchants, and even more out in the B2B ecosystem, is a seemingly impossible amount of data living in many separate sources, unconnected to each other. Some product data in this sheet, some customer data over here, with no way for these data points to talk to each other besides manual analysis.  

 

This lack of organization/consolidation is the first hurdle you must overcome before you dive into the deep end of eCommerce. 

 

This may seem more daunting than it really is, and one of the fastest ways to alleviate the pressure of organizing and consolidating all your own data is by looking into an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) Solution. A software solution like NetSuite ERP can often really help with data clean-up and analysis. ERPs are an all-in-one business management solution that help businesses run more efficiently using technology. There are also more niche solutions, like BTS-it, an ERP solution specifically for the metal manufacturing industry. Sunshine Metals integrated BTS-it into their eCommerce solution BigCommerce, you can see how they managed it here. 

 

Specifically for product information, a PIM (Product Information Management) solution can help by digitizing and organizing your product data all in one place. There are many ways you can do this, but in our experience, PIMs tend to be the most user-friendly and easy to set up, with a trusted team to help along the way. 

 

If you plan to introduce commerce on your website, these solutions will be paramount in setting yourself up for success down the road. The only way to analyze these data points is to have them all live in the same place, and analyzing data is the best way to decide what your next steps are without guesswork and trial and error.  

 

If your data is clean and able to be analyzed, you are already closer to being the next success story in B2B eCommerce, able to be agile and make data-driven decisions when the time comes. That said, legacy data is RARELY (if ever) “clean,” so it would be prudent to begin data cleanup and standardization as an ongoing practice. 

 

Our friend Amy did a further deep dive into how to clean up your data and get the most out of it in her article, Turn Data Into Dollars with these 6 Tips on Product Data Governance.

 

 

2. Streamlining and Digitizing Admin Processes

 

 

Once your data lives in one platform, allowing us to pull reports and analyses easily, it is time to streamline and digitize the rest of your processes.  

 

But what exactly does this mean? 

 

Well, there are many processes that go into running a business on the back end, from your fulfillment and logistical workflows to payroll, taxes, sales, and many more. 

 

After identifying your data stack, organizing, and digitizing it, your next step is to do the same for all the business processes that take up many hours on a day-to-day basis. No more manually inputting hours and calculating payroll and taxes, gone are the days of spreadsheets and written order forms going to the warehouse for fulfillment.  

 

These legacy processes are stealing hours and hours of your workweek, hours that could be opened for business development and scaling if they were streamlined, digitized, and automated. 

 

A couple of key things to identify when moving to automation and digitization are: 

  • Identifying repetitive tasks done every day, or on a weekly basis, that can be automated by software 

  • Creating standard operating procedures and inputting these standards into software that will keep this standard up. This may include how reports are structured, the correct workflow for getting an order into fulfillment, the process when a new customer is received and onboarded, etc. 

  • Finding the right software and partners that can connect to your website, so all these processes and workflows live in one place, making it easier to maintain and optimize than if they all lived in various spreadsheets and other areas. 

 

With these 3 things in mind, Guy Harvey (an Intradeco company) digitized and automated many of their business processes, like their inventory management, fulfillment, and sales processes. Almost immediately, they saw improvements in productivity, fulfillment efficiency, and overall employee morale. Finding a partner agency to help with the best practices of automation and digitization may be something for you to think about.  

 

For now, let us continue to our next priority.

 

 

3. Security

 

 

Now, let’s talk about security. 

 

At the end of 2020 and into 2021, more than 2,000 websites running Magento 1 post-End of Life were hacked. These breaches gave the hackers access to customer data, like payment information, and brought many of these businesses to their knees. 

 

One of the most important things to think about at this stage of the game is the security of your website. Before moving into eCommerce, you must prioritize security now that your data and business workflows are digitized. One of the biggest mistakes eCommerce merchants make is leaving their security as a “minor priority” or something to worry about in the future. Security is a proactive priority, not a reactive one, and you need to have strong security features in place before your customer’s data gets breached, which can cause major headaches in the future. 

 

The biggest thing to keep in mind when it comes to security is whether you have the resources to deal with it in-house, or if you should look for a security partner, like our friends over at Webscale. If you do not have the capabilities to stay on top of web security with your team, looking externally for help will ensure there is always someone around to deal with site breaches, outages, slowdowns, and more.

 

4. Understand Your Buyers’ Wants and Needs

 

 

The last step before building out your self-service buying portal, selling marketplace, or eCommerce website is knowing what your customers’ wants and needs are. 

 

Of course, this is important for any business, digital or non. However, here are some key things for you to think about pre-eCommerce: 

 

  • How do your customers typically purchase? Credit? Purchase orders?  

  • Do your customers browse your entire catalog, or do they usually utilize search to find specific products or parameters? 

  • Do your customers need advanced shipping options, due to having multiple warehouses, brick-and-mortar locations, or other needs? 

  • Do buyers need to be verified or have a log-in to access your catalog? 

  • Do certain customer segments or profiles get special pricing?  

 

If you are asking yourself these questions, you’re on the right track.  

 

But why do we need to know how our buyers think and interact with the site? Well, this will allow us to plan for what premium B2B features your website is going to need to provide your customers with the buying experience they desire from you. 

 

The Binding Source, a B2B distribution company, took these things and more into consideration before they chose an eCommerce platform for their site to live on. They needed custom product filtering for the search functionality, purchase order acceptance and auto-tax exemptions, advanced shipping options with ShipperHQ, a gated buyer portal requiring log-in verification, and more. 

 

After evaluating what their needs were and what types of site functionalities and features they would need, they chose BigCommerce to build their site on. While BigCommerce is not a one-size-fits-all platform, it fits TBS’s needs perfectly and helped the distribution company improve its conversion rate by 170% post-launch, with a 33% boost in transaction volume.

 

 

Next Steps

 

 

Now, We know it is a lot to process, but these are the 4 most important things for B2B’s to be thinking about before they jump into implementing eCommerce into their online presence.  

 

At this point, we have all our data organized and structured, our business processes digitized and automated, our site security at the forefront of our minds, and our customers’ needs and wants fleshed out. 

 

To take that leap off the diving board and dive in, it’s time to decide whether you have the resources to build out a fully-fledged eCommerce website in-house, or if it’s time to call an eCommerce agency, like Redstage.  

 

The difference between calling an agency and simply dedicating a developer for this is the experience, the expertise and the dedicated time to ensuring your eCommerce implementation is successful.  

 

If you have any questions or want to know the next steps in implementing online selling for your business, you can get a hold of us here.

 

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7 Ways to Boost B2B and Wholesale eCommerce Revenue

7 Ways to Boost B2B and Wholesale eCommerce Revenue

For B2B retailers, it’s no longer enough to simply have a functioning eCommerce website. Instead, you must be able to replicate the same B2C website experiences with which shoppers are familiar in their personal lives.

Shoppers want robust product information. They want advanced search capabilities, so they can quickly find the specific products they’re looking for. And of course, they want to do it all from their mobile devices.

As much as 80% of B2B buying decisions are based on a buyer’s direct or indirect customer experience, with only 20% based on the price or the actual offering. Part of this change in expectations can be attributed to the growing millennial numbers in the workforce. For instance, in 2020, close to half of B2B buyers were millennials — nearly double the amount from 2012. Not only are they in the workplace, but millennials are also much more involved in making business decisions. A recent report found that 44% of millennials are making purchasing decisions while 33% say they are key influencers or recommenders in the purchasing process.

 

So, what can you do to capture their needs and create compelling customer experiences?

 

 

1. Enrich your product catalog

 

 

In the beginning, all search engines were “the same,” they relied on keywords and manual inputs. Merchandisers were left to scour Analytics to find out the search terms that are resulting in zero results. At that point, they would update their catalog. But as that kept happening, they would find they were unable to accommodate the number of words necessary in product titles and descriptions. Then, systems opened the back end and enabled merchandisers to add synonyms there, so they didn’t need to keep adding keywords to the front end. Sounds good, right?

 

The problem with this approach, however, is a customer had to be shown a ‘no results’ page first in order for the retailer to know synonyms needed to be added, resulting in a poor experience. By the time the synonym was added to the system, the real customer was gone, possibly never to return. Enter Klevu.

 

Klevu AI helps retailers automatically add relevant synonyms to their product catalog without any manual work. It takes a product feed, considers the context of a store, and injects synonyms so whatever way a shopper is searching, they will find relevant products. For example, if they type in “jeans,” denim will appear. If they search for “beige,” neutral will also appear. And no customers are hit with unnecessary “no results” pages.

 

Klevu’s product catalog enrichment is a huge time saver for B2B and wholesale businesses who may have large catalogs that update frequently, as well as customers who come back to the website over and over again, searching for items their own unique way.

 

 

2. Make your search look sensational

 

 

Once your products are findable by any query, it’s essential to make search the most magnetic journey on your website. It’s a fact that traffic through site search converts 3-5x better than non-search journeys.

 

First, build a search overlay that immediately displays recommendations right when the shopper clicks into the search bar. Second, exposing the search bar in your main navigation encourages the use of search in the first place. When you expose the entire search bar in your website header, you’re not only encouraging the use of search, you can even make search more appealing. Typically, this really benefits mobile journeys. Brands that use Klevu have seen a 44% increase in orders from mobile search when exposing the search bar.

 

As you can see here on GF Smith, a paper manufacturer and supplier, the search bar is not only exposed, it is highlighted with moving text that describes what the shopper can do.

 

an example of strong on site search for b2b

 

 

For a B2B or wholesale brand, you might explain to your shoppers that you can search using complex descriptions like patterns, price range, or brand. A good eCommerce search engine will be able to support natural language queries such as these.

 

 

3. Eliminate dead ends

 

 

Shoppers will abandon the website if they are faced with a dead end like a zero results page, instead of trying a new search or considering maybe the product is there, but it just didn’t surface.

 

B2B retailers often have to factor in a wide range of search terms. Customers may search by SKU, a part or model number, a trade name, or any number of other identifiers. With this in mind, it’s vital to ensure your eCommerce store’s product discovery solution has the most advanced capacity for interpreting shopper intent.

 

Natural Language Processing

 

Natural Language Processing (NLP) based search focuses, not on the keywords, used but on their actual meaning. For example, a customer may search for “spotty socks” and be served with a range of polka dot socks, even if the term “spotty” does not appear in any of the associated product information.

 

This sidesteps the issues that arise from users inputting a wide range of search terms as they try to second-guess what the store they’re browsing will recognize. By bringing up products that are likely to meet the criteria of the customer, but which do not feature any of the words of their search query within their listing, businesses can ensure higher customer satisfaction and better conversion rates.

 

The bottom line – using an eCommerce search engine with NLP processing can boost eCommerce conversion from search by 12%.

 

 

4. Merchandise, but with the help of AI

 

 

AI isn’t creepy, it’s customer-centric. Merchandisers can waste hours over-merchandising their stores only to realize that shoppers are digging for products a different way, using filters and re-ordering. Klevu allows retailers to balance AI and control by merchandising just enough and letting the AI do the rest, based on real trending data.

 

A great example of this expertise in action is in relation to seasonality, which can be incredibly important in the B2B space. Retailers need a way to be able to promote certain products at specific times. Knowledge that certain seasonal shifts are about to kick in means that the right products can be boosted even before AI picks up on the demand and promotes the trend.

 

Additionally, at different times of the year, retailers may wish to prioritize or promote stock within a small window of time that is about to fall out of favor, or that commands higher profit margins. Again, this is all reflective of a deep and personal understanding of your own B2B vertical that should be integrated into your on-site search.

 

A product like Klevu gives you the opportunity to override the algorithms and merchandise in advance. This means that B2B customers have complete control when it comes to fine-tuning their SRLPs and Category pages.

 

In addition, Klevu offers an eCommerce personalization engine that creates eCommerce experiences that align with an individual shopper’s motivation.

 

 

5. Search-powered product recommendations

 

 

Another way to avoid dead ends on your website is to constantly refresh your product recommendations, and include them on multiple page types including homepage, product listing pages including search and categories, product detail pages, and in the basket. Product recommendations featuring complimentary suggestions or recommendations based on recent browsing history can have a real impact on average order values, at least a 7% increase.

 

Making sure you can keep them fresh without too much resource overhead is really important, though. It’s impossible to do this at scale manually, but an AI solution like Klevu Smart Recommendations uses insights from search to constantly refresh product recommendations to be in line with shopper intent.

 

Eurokangas, a Finnish fabric supplier, has a large product catalog, with some merchandising categories containing hundreds or even thousands of products. Eurokangas saw rapid improvements across a range of KPIs after implementing the full Klevu Discovery Suite: Smart Search, Smart Category Merchandising, and Smart Recommendations.

 

Within just 2-weeks, and with minimal manual effort, click-through rates on category pages more than doubled, and conversion rate across mobile and tablet, which make up more than 60% of visits to the site, increased by 20%.

 

 

6. Curate Content With On-Site Search

 

olam spices b2b marketplace on-site search

By integrating high-quality content such as buying guides into B2B and wholesale eCommerce websites, retailers can give trade customers a reason to keep coming back to buy from them.

 

Some on-site search solutions allow store owners to enable content-based results such as blog posts or targeted buying guides that appear in-line with search results. This is fantastic for B2B retailers as it enables them to serve highly-focused and specialized content to customers who are already displaying a strong indication of intent to purchase.

 

An excellent example of this tactic in action comes from Olam Spices. When a search term is entered into its B2B site, products are recalled, but so too are market reports and articles giving a broad range of relevant and interesting industry content. By displaying this content, Olam helps inform and educate customers, while ensuring they find the right product for them. At the same time, the merchant cements its reputation as a leader and expert in its field.

 

7. Get Smart with Filtering & Facets

 

One of the key issues B2B retailers face regarding the product discoverability of their online stores is the tendency towards large and highly technical product catalogs. If customers can’t find what they need on your website, they know chances are good they can find it quickly on a competitor’s site.

 

Give your customers the ability to narrow down search results and help them hone in on the exact product they need as quickly as possible.

 

b2b search in automotive industry

 

Klevu developed an advanced search function for B2B and B2C retailers in the automotive sector that allows shoppers that know exactly what they are looking for, to choose the make/model/year within search. How it works: Within the product data, associations are made between products suitable for different car makes and models and/or years of a car. So, a shopper can drill down to their specific make/model/year and see products compatible with their choice at the top of the product list. As you can see here with Morris 4x4 Center, the chosen make/model/year persists for the whole session, including subsequent searches, until cleared or changed by the shopper.

 

 

So, what’s next?

 

At Klevu, we believe that great customer experience isn’t reserved for B2C retailers and that technology and innovation aren’t the privileges of a chosen few. B2B buyers are digitally savvy, potentially even digital natives.

Klevu has helped retailers power their on-site search, category merchandising, and product recommendations. Typically, the uplift for most eCommerce brands is:

 

  • Conversion from search increases by 6x
  • Average order values increase by 6%
  • Site-wide eCommerce conversion increases by 15%

 

Klevu helps B2B and wholesale brands create magically personal and relevant product discovery journeys that appear effortless, and build brand equity by delighting shoppers at every click, swipe, or search. Get a free product discovery audit at klevu.com/audit

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Turn Data into Dollars with these 6 Tips on Product Data Governance

Turn Data into Dollars with these 6 Tips on Product Data Governance

I’ve been there. You’re staring at a seemingly impossible amount of data in Excel with no idea how to eat the proverbial elephant. You know that you need structure; you know that data is everything to grow your eCommerce channel and maybe you aren’t entirely sure why. You hear experts talk about “data quality” and “data governance” and quite honestly, you just want to sell more of your product and ensure your site is following best practices for your customers. 

Amy Buchanan

Amy Buchanan

Business Analyst

Hi, my name is Amy Buchanan, and I am a product data geek. I have served in various roles in a data steward capacity, and I love to help companies solve the puzzle of their product data. Salsify Certified and experienced in other product data solutions, I am one of many team members at Redstage that can help your company increase revenue, increase conversion, and optimize your systems for success.

It can be challenging to sell process and back-end systems improvements to senior leadership. The systems are not customer facing and they aren’t bringing anything new and shiny to your website to draw in a customer. Yet as everyone knows, if your house foundation is damaged or faulty, you are likely facing some serious (and costly) issues. Maybe not today but in the future, as your business grows, suddenly you find yourself with a huge mountain of data and no way to consistently manage or gain valuable insights. It’s also common that your company has gone through a merger or acquisition and now you’re faced with multiple sources of data with no strategy to consolidate it into a unified experience for your customers.

We’ll get started with a few tips, to at least make your research efforts more targeted. Need more help? Feel free to reach out to our team and we can get you connected to our Redstage experts.

1. Fix the Foundation – Invest in Structuring Your Data

data structure is the foundation of your business

Depending on the current state of your product data and what system capabilities you have today, you may be able to start applying some structure and getting immediate results.

Question:

Do you have product data attributes that you could clean up and make into a drop-down list?

Each industry is different, but here’s an example applied in the clothing industry:

Clothing is often bucketed in size ranges on websites to help customers browse to the section that applies to them. You may see values like:

  • Men’s
  • Women’s
  • Boys’
  • Girls’
  • Unisex

Or values such as:

  • Adults’
  • Youth
  • Kids’

That seems straightforward. However, if your data is not normalized, perhaps from different sources, you may also see values like:

  • Men’s
  • Mens
  • Men

While to a human reading this list, we will interpret these values as the same thing, your systems cannot.  This will lead to miscategorization of the products due to the redundant filter/attribute values.  The customer may be confused, and they may even abandon their session if this lack of organization occurs as a less effective user experience…and that turns into lost revenue for your organization.

2. Call the Experts – Implement a PIM Solution

pim experts

You’ve tried MS Excel; you’ve tried outdated data warehouse tools. Maybe you even tried to build an MS Access database to add structure to your data, and it just isn’t enough. You have too much volume or even too much complexity to your data and you need help and fast. 

There is good news! There are a variety of PIM (Product Information Management) or MDM (Master Data Management) tools out there that will suit your business. The organizations that support these systems have done all the heavy lifting of providing you with a tool to help your business, and all your team needs to do is work with an implementation team to configure and stand one up. Depending on the size of your product assortment and organization, a typical PIM implementation can take anywhere from 3 to 12 months, and it is well worth the investment.

As you stand back and look at the structured data, workflows to review and approve data, various channels you can create to customize data for different sources, you will see how your team will be able to move faster and reach those company sales goals easier.

3. Does Your Data Speak SEO? – Optimizing Your Data for Search

is your product data SEO friendly?

Your website data may be pristine, but if search engines like Google cannot find it, then you will always be chasing how to get more traffic on your website. If you aren’t sure where to start, Redstage can make some suggestions on SEO partners that can help put together a strategy and plan to get your website where it needs to be.

You can also leverage resources on schema.org to ensure that your website is using the correct markup – that’s the language the SEO Crawler likes best. You can also use the work you put in step one to increase the SEO value of your website. By giving your products the titles that your customers are searching for, you are more likely to increase your ranking in Google Search Results, which means an increase in organic traffic to your website. More customers very naturally lead to an increase in sales!

4. Cross-Selling and Upselling – What does that have to do with Product Data?

selling related products based on customer preferences

While you can manually associate products to one another using your CMS (Content Management System) tool, this can be a time-consuming manual effort. If you have taken the step to implement a PIM solution, many products out on the market will also allow you to create relationships between products.

These relationships can often be created manually or dynamically leveraging how the products are categorized in your PIM. You may have a product that has some accessories you want to suggest to your customers for an upsell opportunity. Or there may be related products (like similar brands or items in the same category) that you want to make available to your customers. Many eCommerce platforms also automatically assist you with this step by offering widgets to display popular products (based on website sales) or even feature new products (based on when products are added to your store) right on your home page, without any additional effort.

5. Use Analytics to Understand Customer Behavior

use analytics to make sure you're servicing customer wants

You probably already have Google Analytics set up on your website, and if you do not, go do that after you read this post!

Question:

How are your customers searching for products?

Make sure you use their words in your website content. Another thing you can do for a quick win is identify which attributes your customers use to shop for your products, and make sure they show up in the filters on your website and are included in your website’s search criteria.

Attributes such as:

  • Size
  • Color
  • Flavor
  • Battery Type
  • Frequency
  • Power
  • Height
  • Width
  • Length

…or whatever attributes suits your products and customer expectations.

Perform some competitive analysis using a tool like Google Trends (for example) or see how your competitors are structuring their data. This type of data can usually be identified from an existing data set if you have written a description of your product on your website’s product detail page. Once you have these attributes separated out, you can also use them to create a more personalized experience for your customer and get them to the content they want, quickly, so they can click “Add to Cart” and make their purchase.

6. Data Ownership – Accountability Ensures Your Business Stays on Track

entrust product data ownership to one person to ensure it gets the care it needs

So, let’s say you perform step 1-5 and you are really proud with all the work your team has put in to get your website product data in good shape. Does that mean you’re done? Unfortunately, not yet.  We would suggesting having someone in your organization to continually monitor your data quality and data completeness, so everything is continuously optimized.

By assigning data owners to different aspects of your product data, you will ensure that someone is continually monitoring and ensuring that your product data meets your company guidelines and fulfills your business goals.

For example, if you have compliance needs, it’s a common best practice to ensure you have a team member that can validate data from a safety and hazardous materials perspective. This may be within your legal department or even an outside agency. Establishing processes to validate new products going to the website can be facilitated by a PIM solution, and periodic review can also be performed to ensure that you catch any compliance concerns before they turn into costly legal issues.

Phew! I know this can seem like a lot and whether you just need some guidance or if you are looking to create a partnership with a team that will be your Sherpa up Mount Product Data, please let us know how we can help you!

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The Hurdles of B2B eCommerce and How to Overcome Them

The Hurdles of B2B eCommerce and How to Overcome Them

Large-scale digital transformations, while increasingly necessary in a growingly digital world, can be daunting and nerve-wracking projects that take a lot of time and investment from many different departments of your business. In the B2B world, these initiatives seem to face even more pushback due to the reluctance of change and adoption of eCommerce in many B2B organizations. Many businesses avoid taking the plunge to really invest in their digital channels due to the risks and fear of failing.

 

After over a decade of experience with these large-scale projects, Redstage CEO Adam Morris and Head of Digital Transformation Matthew Jasper know a thing or two about why companies are reluctant to start an eCommerce initiative and why some of these projects do not come to fruition. Having served over a hundred enterprise companies, from small and mid-market organizations to billion-dollar enterprises, they shared with us what obstacles usually keep organizations from succeeding in Digital Transformation and eCommerce projects.

 

In the first part of this in-depth interview, we will discuss why companies have been avoiding starting these transformation initiatives even in the “new normal” of an almost entirely digital world and what to make sure teams focus on to make sure the project reaches its full potential.

 

 

Why Are B2B Organizations Reluctant To Start Digital Transformation Initiatives?

 

 

I think the challenge is that a core function for us as human beings is that it’s difficult for us to act for the future, right? We’ve been discussing the changing demographics and needs of the buyer with our B2B clients, and it’s something that you can’t really see. When you’re not investing in a digital sales channel, and you’re using traditional methods, it’s hard to see that what are the downstream effects of these changing demographics and needs. What are the downstream effects for your customer experience, for digital natives that are coming in to be your main source of buyers? And what happens is this change happens slowly and is sometimes hard to perceive or see coming.

Adam Morris

CEO, Redstage

Yes. I think one key element is, are companies being proactive about going to kind of a digitally transformed eCommerce strategy? Or are they being reactive? And that, I think, is really what has kept most B2B companies on the slow side in the past. Prior to the pandemic, in order to digitally transform their business, they needed to be proactive and build a roadmap in advance to build out an eCommerce strategy. And most of them didn’t do that because they were chasing the latest thing to react to. But with the pandemic, ultimately, the solution has been digital transformation and eCommerce services to help keep the traditional businesses afloat, leveraging web sales and online sales in that respect.

So ultimately, this strategy has to be shifted from a reactive to a proactive one. So obviously, the pandemic has accelerated a lot of those types of initiatives that should have been happening over the course of the last five, ten, even twenty years, which some of these companies have been around for. But, the B2B space has been some of the last industries impacted by digital transformation in part because they were a little bit downstream or a little bit further nested into supply chains and distribution strategies for some of these other companies. So, they’ve been impacted a little bit further behind, as opposed to the business-to-consumer side of industries. But, that’s partially why they’ve been a little bit slow to react, is because they could get by with business as usual for longer.

Matthew Jasper

Head of Digital Transformation, Redstage

So there are three functions at play when thinking about digital transformation; you’ve got driving new revenue, you’ve got cost savings that might be missed opportunities by not investing in the digital channel, and you’ve got customer attrition issues. From the changing demographics and needs of especially the younger generation of B2B buyers, it’s really hard for some companies to quantify, and then the question becomes who owns that change, right?

Normally, if you’re talking about driving new revenue streams, well that’s traditionally the sales team in a B2B environment. The challenge there is the sales team, a director of sales, a chief revenue officer, their job is really mainly building driving sales teams. Personnel and people management. What is the sales strategy? What’s the funnel-managed pipeline? It doesn’t really include the expertise or KPIs around digital sales. It also has operational ramifications, right, so you need to involve operations, even though they don’t have revenue or sales as KPIs. You also have I.T. that might try to get involved, the CIO is really looking at how to enable business strategy and how to reduce costs. So, this is a cross-functional strategy that I think between the difficulty and challenges of quantifying what the digital transformation will hold for the business, as well as not having a true clear owner inside the organization, it makes it really challenging.

And now, we kind of look at the environment sort of in a post-pandemic world, where we’ve seen the conversation change a lot to okay, well we have to transfer. We’ve seen that the world has to have the digital capability, so we know that we need to change. We need to do five years of transformation that we should have been doing, in one year now. But the interesting part about that conversation is if you dig into why we need to change, the answer is sort of simply well because we have to.

Adam Morris

CEO, Redstage

Yes. I just got off a call with an essential client on the sales side, where they were asking this exact question. They said we know we need to build out a digital solution, and we haven’t done it yet. So, should it live with sales? Should it live with I.T.? Should we build a dedicated digital team or a dedicated eCommerce team? What should we do?

And ultimately, the way which I told them to think about it is you’re building an entire parallel startup that touches all of your business processes. But, there’s going to be somebody who is ultimately accountable for it. Whether it’s the chief marketing officer or the head of product, there’s somebody that’s going to have ownership of this element of the business, but it’s going to touch each individual element of your business. So, if you are the eCommerce operations manager, you might be tasked with figuring out things like how do we get our warehouses or business processes in order to make the digital solution a little bit more efficient? If you are on the marketing side, you might be tasked with figuring what paid advertising solution to use to drive traffic to our website. What does building our marketing pipeline look like on the B2B side of things? What does an Omnichannel marketing strategy look like to drive traffic to our site and then get people to convert? 

So every single element of the business needs to have a stake in the process for a digital transformation when going from a traditional business to a digital one. That comes from buy-in across leadership, as well as accountability for individuals either on the sales or marketing side. 

Matthew Jasper

Head of Digital Transformation, Redstage

Matt, I have something to add there too. You mentioned the word startup, and it’s a very interesting conundrum, and I think this is a blocker for a lot of transformations, especially why B2B companies are so slow to adopt or adapt or transform. We work with mostly larger enterprises, right? And a big challenge is when you’re creating something new, or you’re evolving something that’s in its early stages of maturity, you have to be able to react more entrepreneurial, more agile, right? You have to be able to iterate, you have to be able to test, and you have to move.

So if we’re talking about enterprises, where is this owned? Is it owned by the business unit head? A lot of these business units are mature. You don’t move quickly on purpose, you’re careful and methodical, and that’s going to lead to your success in a mature business. So, how do you balance creating this sort of entrepreneurial iterative culture in conjunction with your I.T. organization that’s going to want to be more methodical? With your business strategy, with your planning and forecasting. All of these things are often at odds with each other, create conflict and create roadblocks. So I think it’s important to acknowledge those issues, and set up a plan and roadmap, and get everybody on board that this is an iterative process. Understand which processes of the core business are going to need to break or need to change, or need to diverge, from what has made us successful to this point.

Adam Morris

CEO, Redstage

Yes, and one last point on that startup mentality versus mature business. Some of our clients have been around for hundreds of years, even. Where they’ve built a model over time by being focused on certain core activities and solving very specific business problems, and building long-term trusted customer relationships with their particular ecosystem. So, given that they’ve been around for so long, they’ve been at a certain scale of business. If you’re generating, you know, a billion dollar’s worth of revenue from traditional models, building a website to sell your products online may disrupt the apple cart, so to speak. Where you lose a little bit of that exclusivity of that trusted partnership with some of your supply chain or your distribution network. So, there’s an element of risk from a B2B customer perspective, whereby opening it up might be weakening some of those ties that have been some of the elements of your secret sauce.

Because of that, you need to navigate that carefully and manage that customer expectation. Where no, you’re not necessarily disrupting your business-to-business network, you’re just trying to support how that buyer wants to do business. They no longer are looking to necessarily be wined and dined in a COVID era, and instead would rather just go to your website and click purchase or maybe get a quote, and then work back and forth via email, instead of even a phone call at times. So, there’s a matter of how do you meet your customers where they are, without necessarily viewing digital as a risk to the business. Which I think is an important point, and maybe some of the traditional hesitancy pre-COVID, to taking your business model and transporting that online.

Matthew Jasper

Head of Digital Transformation, Redstage

 

 

What did we learn?

 

The major factors holding B2B merchants back from reaching their business’s full potential and maximize sales are unexpectedly simple; several departments in your organization need to buy in for a digital transformation to work, yet you need one business head to own the process and see it to fruition. Finally, you need to have an iterative and proactive mindset to these projects, understanding the future benefit while working in the present to see it through step by step. 

 

Often, organizations can see these projects as daunting and too risky to delve into in the middle of the year, or even to delve into at all. Sometimes, you just need an exterior team to evaluate your processes and look at your organization with a bird’s eye view. Contact Redstage today if you need help starting your eCommerce or Digital Transformation journey.

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