Struggling with complex orders and outdated systems? Shopify Plus B2B is designed to address these specific pain points, offering a robust platform that streamlines the entire sales process. Manage orders, customize pricing, and automate workflows—all in one convenient package!
Shopify Plus – B2B eCommerce platform
Shopify Plus is an advanced version of the popular Shopify platform, specifically designed to meet the needs of high-volume merchants, enterprise-level businesses, and B2B (business-to-business) eCommerce operations.
Shopify Plus significantly enhances your B2B eCommerce platform by providing advanced customization options for storefronts, robust API integrations, and dedicated support. It allows for personalized shopping experiences, bulk pricing, and automated workflows, streamlining complex B2B transactions.
Additionally, Shopify Plus offers scalability to handle high volumes of orders and supports multiple storefronts under a single account, making it an ideal solution for businesses looking to grow and optimize their B2B operations.
Benefits of Shopify Plus B2B
According to a recent Gartner report, it's projected that by 2025, around 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur via digital channels. This forecast underscores the importance of leveraging platforms like Shopify Plus B2B, which align with this digital trend.
Some of the benefits that Shopify Plus B2B offers include:
- Scalability: Shopify Plus offers unparalleled scalability, making it an ideal platform for B2B businesses with ambitious growth plans. Its cloud-based infrastructure ensures that your online Shopify store can handle high traffic volumes and large order volumes without compromising performance. Moreover, Shopify Plus scales seamlessly, meaning you can add new products, features, or sales channels without worrying about technical limitations holding you back.
- Multi-channel Selling: In today's digital landscape, B2B businesses need to meet their new wholesale customers wherever they are. Shopify Plus makes this possible by enabling seamless integration with multiple sales channels. Whether it's your online store front, social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, or popular marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, Shopify Plus allows you to sell across various channels from a single platform.
- Data-driven Insights: Data is a valuable asset for B2B businesses, providing insights into customer behavior, sales performance, and market trends. Shopify Plus offers robust analytics and reporting tools that give businesses access to actionable insights.
- Dedicated Customer Support: As an enterprise-level platform, Shopify Plus provides dedicated support to its wholesale customers. Businesses have access to a team of experts who can assist with technical issues, platform customization, and strategic guidance.
- App Integrations: Shopify's extensive app marketplace, featuring over 1500 reviewed and tested apps, simplifies integration with various platforms, ensuring smoother operation of online stores. Additionally, Shopify Plus merchants enjoy a higher API call limit, facilitating seamless integration of multiple apps.
Shopify Plus B2B Features
With its suite of features geared towards wholesale and B2B operations, Shopify Plus empowers businesses to streamline their processes, enhance customer relationships, and drive growth.
- Blended and Dedicated Stores: Businesses can choose between blended stores, serving both B2B and B2C customers from one platform, or dedicated stores, providing separate storefronts for distinct customer bases, ensuring targeted experiences.
- Organization Management: It enables you to effortlessly create and manage user accounts tailored to different departments, branches, or subsidiaries within an organization. Moreover, it streamlines centralized control over access rights, permissions, and purchasing authority.
- Company Profiles: Company profiles offer a comprehensive overview of a business entity within an ecommerce system. They typically include information such as company name, contact details, shipping addresses, billing preferences, and purchasing history.
- Draft Orders: This feature is particularly useful for B2B customers who may need to negotiate pricing, obtain approval from multiple stakeholders, or consolidate multiple items into a single order. By allowing users to save draft orders, ecommerce platforms enhance flexibility and convenience in the procurement process.
- Price Lists: Businesses can create and maintain multiple price lists to cater to different customer segments or pricing strategies.
- Payment Terms: By specifying clear and mutually agreed-upon payment terms, ecommerce platforms help streamline invoicing, billing, and cash flow management for both buyers and sellers.
- Ecommerce Automations: These include automated order processing, inventory management, customer notifications, invoice generation, and marketing campaigns.
- Personalized B2B Shopify store: You can present customized product catalogs, pricing structures, promotional offers, and recommendations based on past purchasing behavior, contract agreements, or demographic data.
- Quantity rules: This feature enables sellers to enforce minimum order quantities, maximum order limits, or incremental quantity discounts based on predefined thresholds.
- Vaulted credit cards: Vaulted credit cards refer to a secure storage system within an ecommerce platform where wholesale customers can securely store their credit card information for future transactions. It enhances convenience for repeat buyers by eliminating the need to re-enter payment details for each purchase.
- Customizable B2B logic: Shopify Plus lets you configure pricing rules, discount structures, approval workflows, shipping policies, or integration with backend systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.
- Self-service: Self-service Shopify Plus B2B features empower B2B customers to independently manage various aspects of their purchasing journey, such as browsing products, placing orders, tracking shipments, accessing invoices, or requesting support.
- Global expansion: Global expansion capabilities enable businesses to scale their ecommerce operations across international markets, catering to diverse customer segments and regulatory environments.
- Custom B2B solutions: Shopify Plus B2B involves custom development, integration with third-party systems, or specialized functionality such as quoting tools, contract management, or procurement portals.
B2B on Shopify – Pricing plan
Shopify Plus offers businesses two options for crafting a Shopify Plus B2B pricing: selecting the Shopify Plus plan directly or using third-party apps like Wholesale Pricing Discount from the app Shopify store.
Using Shopify Plus plan directly
Introduced in June 2022, Shopify Plus unveiled its B2B Shopify Plus features, enabling D2C stores on the Shopify platform to manage both wholesale and retail operations seamlessly within a single Shopify store. For store owners in their early stages or those generating modest profits, the cost of upgrading to Shopify Plus may appear prohibitive.
The Shopify Plus plan commences at $2,000 per month.
Using third-party apps like Wholesale Pricing Discount from the app store
If Shopify Plus is beyond your budget, you can opt for a third-party Shopify B2B app to establish a wholesale experience for your B2B customers.
The Shopify app store offers numerous third-party apps with wholesale features tailored for B2B stores. Prices for these apps vary based on the selected features, typically starting at around $30 per month.
Additionally, they offer tiered pricing options, such as $39 per month for the Basic plan, $105 per month for Shopify, or $399 per month for the Advanced plan.
Build your B2B on Shopify Plus
Building a B2B on Shopify Plus involves several strategic steps to ensure a seamless and efficient experience for your customers. Here's a guide on how to do it:
Step 1: Select the Right Shopify Plan
The first step in launching a successful B2B store on Shopify is choosing the appropriate Shopify plan. This decision is pivotal as it sets the foundation for your store's capabilities, features, and scalability.
Each business will have specific needs, budget constraints, and growth projections. Therefore, Shopify offers three main plans, each tailored to businesses of varying sizes and requirements:
- Basic Shopify
- Shopify
- Advanced Shopify
For small businesses or those just starting out, the Basic Shopify plan may suffice, offering essential features at an affordable price point. However, as your business grows, you may find the need to upgrade to the Shopify or Advanced Shopify plans to access additional features such as lower transaction fees, advanced reporting tools, and third-party calculated shipping rates.
Step 2: Craft a Professional Store Design
Once you've selected the right Shopify plan, the next step is to create a professional and visually appealing store design that instills trust and credibility among B2B customers.
Your store's design serves as the first point of contact with potential customers and plays a crucial role in shaping their perception of your brand. Shopify offers a wide range of customizable themes, ranging from free options to premium, paid themes developed by professional designers.
Alternatively, you can opt to hire a Shopify expert or web design agency to create a custom theme tailored specifically to your brand's identity and requirements. When designing your wholesale store, prioritize elements such as intuitive navigation, clear product categorization, prominent calls-to-action, and mobile responsiveness to ensure a seamless browsing experience across devices.
If your business doesn't have the expertise to craft a high-quality store design, it's worth investing in professional help. PageFly, for instance, offers a comprehensive collection of guides and tools specifically tailored for building and optimizing store designs on Shopify. These resources cover everything from basic design principles to advanced customization techniques.
Step 3: Integrate the Appropriate Apps
Enhancing your B2B store's functionality and capabilities requires the integration of specialized apps and tools tailored to meet the unique needs of B2B commerce. Shopify's App Store offers a vast array of apps spanning various categories such as sales and conversion optimization, customer support, inventory management, and marketing automation.
Identify key areas of your B2B operations that could benefit from app integration, such as wholesale pricing and discount management, customer relationship management (CRM), order management, and inventory tracking.
Essential apps for B2B stores include:
- Wholesale Pricing Discount for implementing custom pricing tiers and volume discounts.
- Wholesale Lock Manager for restricting access to certain products or pages.
- Wholesale Order Form for streamlining bulk ordering capabilities.
You should thoroughly research and evaluate each app based on factors such as features, user reviews, pricing models, and compatibility with your existing systems.
Step 4: Develop a Tailored Pricing Strategy
B2B customers often purchase in bulk and expect discounted pricing based on order volume. Implementing a dynamic Shopify Plus B2B pricing strategy that caters to these expectations can help attract and retain B2B clientele.
The Wholesale Pricing Discount app is a valuable tool for implementing custom pricing tiers, volume-based discounts, and personalized incentives for B2B customers. It allows you to create multiple pricing levels based on customer segments, order quantities, or product categories.
Step 5: Enhance Product Pages Optimization
Optimizing product pages is critical for providing B2B customers with the information they need to make informed purchasing decisions. Each product page should feature high-quality images, detailed descriptions, specifications, pricing information, and relevant product attributes to help B2B customers evaluate products and compare options.
Remember to incorporate additional information such as product dimensions, technical specifications, material composition, and packaging details. You can also use filters and sorting options to allow B2B customers to refine their product searches based on criteria such as price range, product type, and availability. Implement features such as product recommendations, related products, and cross-selling opportunities.
Step 6: Simplify the Checkout Experience
The next thing you need to do is to leverage Shopify's built-in checkout system to customize checkout settings, payment options, and shipping methods to align with your business requirements and customer preferences. You can remove unnecessary form fields and steps to expedite the checkout process and reduce the likelihood of cart abandonment.
Besides, consider integrating third-party solutions such as Shop Pay to offer expedited checkout options, save customer information securely for future purchases, and streamline the checkout process across devices. Some payment options available like credit cards, PayPal, and invoicing to accommodate diverse payment preferences will provide seamless transactions for B2B customers.
Step 7: Prioritize Superior Customer Service
Finally, prioritizing superior customer service is not just a nicety but a strategic imperative for any successful B2B operation on Shopify. Exceptional customer service fosters trust, builds loyalty, and enhances the overall customer experience, ultimately driving repeat wholesale business and referrals.
You should offer multiple communication channels like email and live chat for prompt support as well as utilizing Shopify's built-in tools and consider integrating third-party solutions for advanced support needs.
Wrap-up
In conclusion, as the demands of the B2B market continue to evolve, Shopify Plus remains committed to providing innovative solutions that empower wholesalers to stay ahead of the curve. With a focus on user experience, flexibility, and innovation, Shopify Plus B2B is poised to continue leading the way in transforming the wholesale industry for years to come.
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