B2B eCommerce Trends for 2018

As 2018 draws closer, this is one of the best times to be looking at how to improve your B2B Strategy.

With the fast-moving digital landscape, it is hard to keep up. Because of this, we have put together a list of the Top 5 B2B eCommerce trends.

1) 2018 The Year of Voice

If you have a recent smartphone or tablet, you will have noticed how everyone has access to voice assist. With a simple ‘Hey Siri’ or ‘Ok, Google’ customers can research products and even make a purchase. Studies show that 40% of millennials already use voice assist before making a purchase.

This has become even more prevalent with the introduction of Amazon’s Alexa & Google Home.

This has turned the Adword, short & long tail keyword phrase world on its head, as people now search as they would speak. Creating a strong online presence that factors this into your ad strategy will allow your company to appear, when people search with voice assist.

If you are looking to go one step further and create content that is native on the Amazon Echo. Amazon provides developers with an Alexa Skills Kit. This is a collection of Application Program Interfaces, templates and guides to get you started.

2) Gaining Trust

Gaining the trust of your customers is the foundation of converting a lead into a sale. In 2018 customers are, wanting to be connected to the brands they are purchasing from.

Social proofing is an effective means to gain a customer’s trust. One method is having engaging conversation with your customers on your platforms. Whether you are helping to solve queries or provide useful information, engaging with your customers will go a long way.

This will help buyers trust your brand. However, you will also want people to trust the website they are buying from. Google Trusted Stores will provide that extra added layer of trust as Google provides a web rating.

There is nothing worse than going on to a site and not finding all the information you need to make a decision. This will also improve your Google Trusted Store reviews. Make sure to provide detailed product information, dimensions, photographs from every angle and instructional videos. Along with anything else you believe will help your customers make an informed purchase.

3) Omni-Presence

There are many online platforms where people are able to engage with your brand. Building an effective omni-channel experience is not easy, it requires you to integrate all of your platforms to work seamlessly with each other. Success is based on a combination of data, technology and common sense.

There are huge benefits to creating an omni-present strategy such as brand awareness, boosted revenues along with improved relationships with your customers.

As previously mentioned when we spoke about the rise of voice assistance, having a vast presence online will help customers finding you when using a voice search option.

4) Mobile Integration

We live in our mobile devices, mobile wallets services such as, Apple Pay & Google Wallet, allows you to streamline the checkout process. Using a buyer’s information from social media platforms to populate an order form, can be utilised by B2B/B2C sales representatives to make it easy for customers to purchase. Sales representatives can focus on providing a great customer experience, that leads them to buy.

5) Social Media, Chatbots & You

We have heard the buzz words ‘Content is King’ over the past few years, it is more about the context of the content.

Let me explain, say you are at work and talking to your boss about a new project — your mannerisms are professional, the language you use is professional and industry standard.

You then will go home to your partner and you will explain your day. You are now within the comfort of your own four walls and are more relaxed. Perhaps you want to make your partner laugh so while explaining you throw in a few jokes, go off topic and come back again.

You are still you and conveying the same message but the context of the situation dictates in which way you convey it.

This is how you need to look at the different platforms. Creating content that is contextually correct. Be funny if you’re on Tumblr or Facebook, be informative if you’re on LinkedIn and have conversations on Twitter.

I appreciate that distributors or warehouses will not want to share a photo of their latest bulk stock. However, having shareable content that your audience can relate to. Will only further improve your omni-presence and build trust.

There are many ways a B2B ecommerce business can use chatbots. These include, capturing customer complaints, answering basic customer queries and providing promotional alerts to name a few.

Consumers now, more than ever, are using messaging platforms to contact the brands they are doing business with. Having someone (a chatbot) there 24/7–365 is going to be a service you will want to be implementing in 2018.

In summary, the transfer from desktop to mobile is real and it is not a passing trend. More and more people are buying smartphones to make their lives simpler. If you still haven’t made the jump and utilising the online space to market yourself and streamlining your order process, 2018 is the year to do it.

Social media platforms are not just for posting funny photos of cats and family photos, customers are on there and using it to make purchasing decisions. Big companies are using these platforms to get in front of these people. If you are not even on these platforms, you are losing out on business.

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