The Difference Between B2C and B2B Web Stores
By Jamie Lippay, MBA, CMA | Keyora Inc.
In the early days of Keyora, when we were nothing but a fledgling e-commerce start-up being run by two ambitious, but very green ex-GP guys with a fanatical interest in all things e-commerce, I used to talk to potential customers and Dynamics® resellers at our trade show booth. The one question that I cringed at every time was:
“What is the difference between B2C and B2B?”
First off, I should explain that B2C stands for “Business-to-Consumer” and B2B stands for “Business-to-Business”. You tend to hear a lot about B2C sites like Dell.com and Amazon.com, those glitzy sites that stole all the headlines back in the late 90’s with the stories of unbelievable wealth and the making of overnight millionaires, but in reality, it’s the B2B sites that dominate e-commerce world these days, especially as companies look to increase efficiencies and cut operating costs.
Now, back to my original question, “What is the difference???”. I cringed because I truly didn’t have a good answer. But how can you not know the answer when you are suppose to be an e-commerce expert, so I used to fill a lot of empty air with generalities about some of the features that seemed to fit a B2B model or conversely a B2C model, at least in my own mind. Not sure if it satisfied the person I was talking to, but at least there wasn’t all that embarrassing silence to deal with!
My business partner, Mike, and I used to get into these same heated arguments over just what that difference was. This conversation went on for years, and I am not sure we ever came to a mutual agreement on what it was. However, now that I am a weathered old e-commerce guy who can talk about “the early days of e-commerce”, I am starting to feel a much stronger sense of confidence when asked the same question. Now, when someone asks me what the difference is, I say:
“B2C is about educating the customers and B2B is all about building efficiency”.
(Love those one line, touchy-feely answers that sum it all up!)
Of course, their next question is “What the heck do you mean by that?” So I tell them, the primary goal of sites designed in a B2C mode is to teach the customer about your product catalogue. They are usually higher in graphic content with a lot of product information, with limited-time promotions and featured items focused on enticing new or occasional customers to add items to their cart. What you are going for is maximum revenue generation. Things like colourful pictures, easy registration, cool search engines and simplified navigation are really important to the site’s success. You are showing as much content as possible without overloading the viewer’s retina to the point of exhaustion.
Business-to-Business sites, on the other hand, are a different breed all together. B2B sites are usually created for existing, repeat customers, not new customers. The audience is already aware of what you do because they have purchased from you in the past, so you don’t need all the same level of content at the top level. Sure, you want to allow them to drill down to that information if they want, but you also don’t want to clog up the screen so they have to jump through hoops to communicate their order to you. You want to make it easy for them to get to the level of content they need quickly and with the least amount of mouse clicks possible. These sites are usually characterized by a high degree of personalization, streamlined process flow, and easy access to past purchase history. Customizable order sheets, ability to save partial shopping carts and copy/paste from old orders are just a few nice features that will convince your customers to enter their own orders instead of phoning them into your CSRs.
100% Conversion Rate
The goal of these B2B sites is all about building efficiencies. Whereas the success of a B2C site may be judged by the number of new customers or incremental increase in revenue, the success of a B2B site is something called “Conversion Rate”. Conversion rate is simply the total percentage of existing customers who have switched from manual order entry methods such as phone, fax or email, to a self-service web portal. The greater the Conversion Rate, the more cost savings to your business. The optimum state, of course, is that your B2B site achieves 100% conversion, meaning that ALL orders are placed by the customer over the web, freeing up your Customer Service Reps from the mundane task of entering orders.
Believe it or not, a few of our clients have actually achieved that lofty 100% goal where all their orders are coming in from the Webfoot® customer portal, being entered by the customer themselves and then just popping up in their Dynamics® Sales Order Entry screen. It’s funny how the brain works. Whenever I mention that fact, I always have this picture in my mind of a guy with his feet up on a desk watching the orders roll in on his computer. Tick, tick, tick. In the background behind his chair is a window showing the warehouse busily packing boxes on to a waiting truck. Ah, Utopia!
Contact Jamie Lippay at jlippay@keyora.com or 1-866-661-6688 Ext 2609 to discuss how to make your e-commerce vision a reality.