eCommerce platform helps businesses in buying and selling their products and services online using the Internet. Over the past few decades, it has evolved dramatically with the help of advanced technology, improvements in network connectivity, added security with payment gateways, and extensive customer and business adoption.
It allowed numerous companies to evolve and grow successfully. From being just an idea to becoming a successful industry, they have now become a crucial part of the world’s economy. It has become relatively difficult to imagine our lives without eCommerce.
But, how far have B2B eCommerce builders evolved over a period of time?
This blog will answer the question by providing you with information regarding the crucial milestones in their development over the years, their contribution to sales growth, and their share of business in the retail industry.
Evolution Of B2B eCommerce Marketplace
The World Wide Web was created in 1991, but it was after almost three years that online purchasing was first introduced in 1994 by Pizza Hut, becoming the first leading business to do so. eBay and Amazon followed suit one year later. To many of us, this was the start of eCommerce as we know it today.
Online sales worth $1 billion took place in 1996, which at that time was a significant jump considering the Internet was only 5 years old. By 2000, businesses clocked sales worth $25 billion. The growth was unstoppable and so, eCommerce solidified its place in the retail industry.
Since then, we have continued experiencing incredible growth in not only B2C but also B2B space. In 2020, the global B2B eCommerce market size was estimated to be $6.64 trillion. Although B2B companies have been relatively late in adopting eCommerce, they are now focusing on increasing their sales by digitizing their brands, keeping in mind the ever-evolving B2B buyer demographics.
Top 5 eCommerce Platforms
The credit for the success of the eCommerce B2B business goes to the top 5 best B2B eCommerce builders. It always helps the industry by working on the changes in the order of the customers, improving the shipping mistakes, and going with the market changes.
Let’s see how they secured their position as the top 5 best eCommerce platforms.
WorksLeader
WorksLeader is one of the leading B2B business builders that takes your B2B business and its sales operations to the next level. It offers sturdy and dynamic business management software, including eCommerce, Sales quoting, CRM, Inventory, and Procurement functionalities.
The platform is designed specifically to meet the business requirements by helping you manage and execute regular operations and distinct business processes.
Worksleader B2B eCommerce platform comes loaded with rich and powerful B2B features which will allow you to set up a highly customizable and modern B2B eCommerce store, and go online in no time.
It offers a customer-centric catalog selection, pricing, payments, etc, which not only helps in improving the operation of the sellers, but also allows the B2B buyers to place orders online conveniently.
Above all, it is a versatile cloud-based application that fulfills all the significant needs of a B2B business and helps achieve its business goals swiftly and efficiently.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is considered one of the best eCommerce platforms for large retail brands due to its robust product search engine. It is also suitable for the people thinking of commencing a B2B business or business owners having a brick and mortar store. It has a wide range of tools that are beneficial for any type of industry to be successful.
Earlier, for developing an online store, you had to be immensely knowledgeable about coding languages. However, today, B2B eCommerce builders like BigCommerce have an easy-to-access user interface that enables you to easily customize your store with the help of customizable templates.
The main aspects that keep it in the top position are its advanced and buyer-centric themes. However, only a few of them are free. Further, it has a community of a variety of designers, developers, and even experts, to provide you with the extra help.
It offers a host of features that enable you to manage products, orders, multiple payment gateways, and customers. It also provides an advanced and in-depth insight into sales, thereby making it the best eCommerce business builder today.
Shopify
After BigCommerce, Shopify is also popular among B2B business owners. It is considered the best choice if you are planning to dropship or rely on Facebook Ads or Instagram marketing.
Its features such as post-purchase one-click upsell and drag and drop interface, makes the designing process seamless. It also provides Shopify POS for accepting payments through mobile apps.
However, like every eCommerce platform, they also have some shortcomings. For example, they provide access to only ten free themes. The rest are available for purchase in the price range of $100 to $180. They also have a rigid URL structure that restricts you from changing sections. They also charge transaction fees if you do not use Shopify payments.
If you are thinking of relying on SEO or building a large store with multiple products, then there are other options other than Shopify.
Wix
Wix has created multiple milestones these years. It has become a leading force in the eCommerce space by delivering incredible value to solo entrepreneurs and small eCommerce businesses. It provides many handy features such as multi-channel integration, abandoned cart recovery, dropship, and print-on-demand capabilities.
Initially, they had SEO related issues, which were later resolved. Their major drawback is that of limited storage space of 20 GB. As your business scales up and you run out of storage space, you will need to switch to another eCommerce platform offering better storage space.
Above all, it offers the best customer support experience while creating a store. It enables you to drag and drop elements for adding cool videos, functionalities, and customize the website as you want.
Magento
Magento is the trusted eCommerce platform of large brands like Nike, Proctor & Gamble, and Cisco. Coding is an integral part of its packages. Therefore, you need to hire a developer for building a customizable and powerful eCommerce store. It also allows you to do and undo the process of development until you acquire the type of online store that you want.
The best thing about Magento is its vast community. There are a large number of developers willing to help you in the development process. It also provides you with a marketplace for extensions and themes to increase the functionality of the platform.
Most of its services are free. However, they offer paid features to large businesses for enterprise solutions. It is a cloud-based platform having fast and efficient additional features like automatic trigger-based email campaigns, cross-sell and upsell. It also offers other features, such as discounts, recurring payments, membership subscriptions, adjusting content per user, unlimited products, and many more.
Key Takeaway
The B2B eCommerce industry continues to grow and evolve, and so do the B2B eCommerce builders. However, to achieve success, you need to take into account two of the most important online retail trends, namely personalization and mobile commerce.
So, select the eCommerce platform that provides you easy access and availability mainly to these two features, to stay ahead of your competitors and to be the top priority of the B2B buyers.
