Top 6 Ways To Build a Better Relationship With Your B2B E-commerce Customer

In previous years, the B2B e-commerce world has developed swiftly and their brands have admittedly awakened to this fact. According to a study carried out by Forrester Research, 67% of North American B2B firms affirm that e-commerce is radically changing B2B commerce. The study also envisioned that in 2020 the US B2B eCommerce market will hit $1.13 trillion.

This reform has eventually put the B2B sellers into a dilemma. B2B buying occurrences are now gaining attention with 80% of buyers expecting the same buying occurrences as the B2C customers. Therefore, it is highly essential for B2B companies to join this movement immediately and link up with their end customers; to live on, to revolutionise buying experiences, and earn a competitive advantage.

Basic Fundamentals Of B2B E-commerce

Absence of user behaviour visibility on B2B websites: Most B2B companies have sites and e-commerce storefronts that interest users to examine and possibly carry out their next purchase. The only problem B2B website owners face is the lack of analytics needed to make informed decisions about buyer’s behavior. Therefore, making business decisions with insights gathered from traffic on the website is a terrain that’s never been charted by B2B vendors. Useful data like demographics and how visitors interact with products on the website are not readily available to B2B website owners.

More than half of B2B purchases happen offline: The number of interactive websites for B2B purchases has increased in recent years, but a higher percentage of B2B purchases still happen offline. These offline purchases take place in warehouses and through distributors. This situation has severely impacted the B2B sector by limiting their ability to gather reliable data and reviews from customers who purchase their products. Having first-hand data on how the end-user interacts with your product is crucial for your B2B e-commerce. With reliable data, you can serve customers better.

The importance of analytics is often overlooked: Analytics is the lifeblood of any e-commerce business. Analytics can be utilized by e-commerce businesses to gather insights from user behavior on the website and use the information to direct personalized messages to users and customers on their website. With analytics, you can pick up on buyers preferences, demographics and study the time they interact with your website. With these data, you can send tailor-made content to your customers. Analytics helps you better understand your business and your customers. As a result, it will help you make better and more informed decisions that will boost your visibility and improve interactions with your customers.

Statistics show that it’s more profitable to retain an old customer than to acquire a new one. Acquiring a new customer is six times more expensive than retaining an old customer. This doesn’t mean retaining an old customer is a walk in the park, it is not!
Increasing customer lifetime value (CLV) is very tough, it doesn’t matter if you’re selling to an individual or a business.
Using the strategies outlined below, you will have a better understanding of how customers engage with your business. This new knowledge can help you drive compelling and targeted messages that will lead to higher customer retention rate.
Below are the top 6 ways B2B e-commerce companies can build successful relationships with their customers.

Sentiment Analysis

A CEB study has shown that 71% of B2B customers will readily purchase a product if they feel an emotional connection with that product. That’s the power of sentiments in e-commerce purchases. Sentiment analysis, therefore, helps businesses measure emotional responses by looking closely at audience reactions, attitudes, opinions and emotions towards every product. Customer sentiments can be tracked and recorded by following social discussions between old customers and prospects, social listening, tracking your keywords and hashtags, and also conducting polls and questionnaires.

User Segmentation

Segmenting users into different groups can help businesses send more personalized messages to their customers. Customer experience is important to the success of any B2B e-commerce, and customer segmentation helps you send more personalized messages that can help you to improve customer experience on the website.

Chatbots

You cannot downplay the importance of customer support to the success of any brand. Chatbots help to make customer support easier, by assisting businesses in delivering timely, responsible and personalized messages to customers 24/7. With a chatbot, you reduce human involvement in customer relationship while creating unique budget-friendly customer experiences in record time.

Clickstream Analytics

The pathway a website visitor charts when on your website is known as clickstream. Clickstream analytics in the context of traffic while e-commerce analytics is the process whereby a website owner stacks, studies and compiles a report of web page visits and the pathway a user follows when viewing the website pages. E-commerce analysis leverage on several data, clickstream included, to analyze the success of a website as a pathway to market for customer acquisition and retention. This is done by looking at the pages customers spend more time, and what they add and delete from their shopping carts. This can be used to construct better and more personalized messages to these users. The data can also be used for more purposes such as improving and updating your website to meet the needs of old and potential customers.

Mobile Compatibility

The success of a website in this generation depends largely on its mobile-responsiveness. Mobile commerce is estimated to influence over 40% of B2B revenues. A brand that has a more mobile-friendly approach will see an increase in revenue when compared to a brand that does not. Mobile makes it easier to target customers, thanks to GPS. Mobile is easier to collect data because a user is likely to have more of their information stored on mobile than on desktop.

Loyalty and Engagement

If a brand wants more engaged and loyal customers, they have to start providing value to customers that interact with their websites. By providing value, you can inspire users to register in loyalty and engagement programs you specially designed for them. To make this process more beneficial to your business, the enrollment process should be linked to purchase.

With all these in place, as a B2B owner, you are equipped with the right tools to thrive in this impactful era of e-commerce.

Written by Corey Kogan

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