The B2B eCommerce sphere is quite competitive. The more buyer engagement you have on your B2B eCommerce store, the better it is for the growth of your B2B business. That is why a lot of companies are trying to implement the best customer engagement strategy for their B2B eCommerce platform.
If you are looking for smart ways to encourage buyer engagement and drive store purchases on your B2B eCommerce store then you have just landed on the right page.
In this blog, we will be discussing some customer engagement strategies that you can implement in your B2B eCommerce store. By doing so, you can have a lot of traffic on your B2B eCommerce platform resulting in more buyer engagement and driving store purchases on your B2B eCommerce platform.
What is Buyer Engagement?
When we talk about buyer engagement in terms of an eCommerce store, it generally refers to the interaction between the visitors and the eCommerce platform. Now, this interaction should be effective and it should convince a visitor to buy a product or a service from your B2B eCommerce store.
The ways to boost buyer engagement vary from platform to platform. Mostly it is about appealing to the customers by imagery, CTA statements, etc. The reason why buyer engagement is so important is that it happens with the visitors who are actually going to buy a product from your business. These are the customers who will do business with you and help your business grow.
Tips to Get More Buyer Engagement on Your B2B ecommerce Store
Simple and Easy to Navigate Product Catalog
Increasing buyer engagement in your eCommerce store is all about presenting your products and services in a way that they look appealing. One of the best ways of doing that is by making your product catalog simple and easy to navigate.
This includes categorizing the products, arranging them in a particular order so that users can find them easily, bundling products that compliment each other, etc. The main thing to note is that the user should not have a hard time navigating through your product catalog. Adding sorting and filter options is a must if you deal with a lot of products.
A Search Feature
Sometimes when you sell a wide variety of products which a lot of B2B businesses do, it is quite hard to present all of the products within the visual domain of the visitor. In many cases, even the visitor does not know what product he/she is looking for and where to find it. In that case, having a search bar at the top works wonders.
As per stats, Up to 30% of visitors use a search bar when it is present on a website.
Not only does this help them to find a product or a service but sometimes it also helps them if they get stuck somewhere.
But the important thing to note here is that your search feature should be effective and it should be able to answer users’ queries.
As per a stat, about 68% of shoppers will not return to your site if you provide a poor search experience.
So you have to ensure that your search bar is well optimized for searching and finding the products that match the keywords entered in the search query.
Quick and Snappy Website
Technology is progressing at an exponential pace and everything is just getting better. Modern users do not like a website that is slow and lags. The data is evident for that.
Stats suggest that if your website takes more than 3 seconds to load, 40% of the users will leave your site.
This means that your site should load fast and all the visual elements like the images, videos, and moving text should be present when a user clicks. Otherwise, you will lose the visitors for good. The mobile users are even more strict and they will spend no time if your site lags even a little bit.
Aesthetics
The way we view things plays an important role in customer engagement in eCommerce. Big companies hire psychologists and design experts to work together and come up with new designs that will appeal to the users even more. Our visual perception plays an important deal in our decision-making.
Aesthetics are very important as people form 75% of their opinion on a website’s credibility purely based on aesthetics.
That is why you should spend a healthy amount of time on your eCommerce store’s aesthetics. Pay attention to everything and how things look. Having an eCommerce store that looks visually appealing helps in gaining the trust of the visitors thus increasing your buyer engagement.
Know The Target Audience
To encourage buyer engagement on your B2B eCommerce platform, you must know your target audience. Once you know the audience you are dealing with, you can take their interests into account and add the features to your eCommerce platform accordingly.
Discounts, Competitions, and Giveaways
Offering discounts to customers is a tried and tested method to boost buyer engagement on your B2B eCommerce store. There is not a single person who doesn’t like discounts. Some companies take this game even further by conducting online competitions and giveaways.
Giveaways and contests are quite effective in encouraging buyer engagement online.
According to stats, About 34% of new customers are acquired through contests.
Conducting contests online and making giveaways are not that costly for a business and the benefits are too many. So if you are looking for more and regular visitors to your site, this is something you should consider.
CTAs Must Be Compelling
I can’t stress enough how important CTAs(Call to Action) statements are for your B2B eCommerce store. The B2B market is quite competitive and a lot of businesses sell many common products at almost identical prices. So the big difference maker here is how you sell your product.
Using unique and compelling words, the size and colors of the buttons, the placement of your CTA statements everything plays a big part when you are trying to sell a product. The more compelling your CTA statements will be, the better effect they will have on a visitor, thus, increasing your buyer engagement.
Enhance the Customers Experience
The key factor and probably the most important thing in encouraging buyer engagement is customer experience. A visitor will only do business with your site if she/he has a good customer experience with your site. If their experience wasn’t good enough the previous time, then they will not return to your site.
Customer experience is a big umbrella that contains a lot of small things. These small things include the UI and UX of your site, the transaction options, delivery options, service quality, customer support, etc. Just make sure that you take a customer-centric approach while designing your eCommerce store. Because it is the customers who are going to do business with you.
Include Easy Ways to Reach Out to You
Oftentimes a customer has queries related to a product or a service. While the product description or details page does contain information, it might not be enough. This is why you should add easy methods to reach out to you.
Just by adding your business’s telephone number and email, you establish a bond of trust. Many sites are also using the 24X7 live chat feature which uses AI and human resources to assist the customers.
Social Media
Having a social media presence for any business in this era is a must. Most people interact through social media these days and it is on social media that people share ideas and other things. So if you want your business to be easily discoverable, creating a social media presence is the way to go.
Closing Phrase
That was all about how to encourage buyer engagement and drive store purchases on your B2B eCommerce store. While there are a lot of areas to work on, taking a customer-centric approach to design and implement things on your B2B eCommerce platform is what really makes a difference.
At the end of the day, it is the customers who are going to be engaging with your site. If they like it, they are going to buy from it and if they do not like it then they won’t. So just keep in mind to design a user-friendly eCommerce platform that is easy to use and navigate.
