First and foremost, thank you to Justin King for his thoughts around B2B e-commerce!

So, how do we help companies facilitate their move from legacy thinking to success with online B2B? The Internet is the great equalizer! Companies of any size are capable of competing with their National leaders (and amazon).

We’ve put together three secrets of success for B2B e-commerce.

Secret #1

How to Ethically Steal the Online methods of your National competitor’s…and use them against them?

A system (read: framework) gives one the ability to break down large issues into smaller, more manageable tasks. We’ve always advocated the idea of people, process, and tools. Remember that B2B is NOT the same as B2C.

Fallacy: If you build it, they will come… Hope is NOT a strategy! Building B2B commerce is real work. At it’s core is internal marketing (i.e., change management).

Thanks to B2X Partners for the graphic.

Secret #2

How the Big Companies get 40% of their revenue online?

1. Search
2. Search
3. Search

Search and navigation are an incredibly important part of a B2B e-commerce presence.

The search box should be front and center–not only to encourage your site visitors to utilize… But, the analytics around the search need to be tracked and reviewed to better your site. Another tactic: interview and survey customers to better understand how they prefer to search. A few immediate ideas for bettering your site search:

• Are the search engine results applicable to the search term?
• Is the search term ranked #1 in the results set?
• Should various search terms be pushed down in the ranks?
• Should the search term become a category?
• What synonyms should be employed?

Secret #3

On average, B2B companies see a 20% increase in the number of transactions?

Product content is the key to revenue generation by utilizing taxonomy and merchandising capabilities. Remember that this is a program and not a one-time task. The catalog must have quality and original content.

Feel free to borrow some of the features B2C sites bring to the table like: “Top 100 product Lists” or “Customers also bought this”.

Blendium is here to assist with your B2B needs, feel free to give us a shout!