The B2B Wholesale eCommerce Storefront

B2C Experience

My B2C customers typically find my brand via Google searches, via online campaigns and social media. They browse my B2C eCommerce site, they select where they are ordering from and we show them the products we have. We use a lot of images to showcase the individual product, for some products we even have videos of a person wearing the shoes.

When the B2C customer browses our site, they are exposed to discounts, vouchers by signing up to newsletters, seasonal offers and things like that.

We spend a lot of time describing our return process as this is very important to B2C customers as we sell shoes, which is considered a product that is difficult to purchase online as it is impossible to know if they’ll fit.

Since the B2C customer is based in a region with a different sizing scheme than the one we default to, we have a size guide pop up that displays the shoe sizes in a comparison table. We have sizes for US, UK, EU, and China. For each region we have three categories for sizes, Mens, Womens and Kids.

Some customers buy two of the same pair of shoes in different sizes. When they do so, we know that one pair is going to be returned. Potentially even both of them.

When the B2C customer has decided to purchase a pair of shoes, they go to checkout, but first they are blocked by an upsell campaign where we try to sell them some shoe care products. After skipping the campaign or selecting a product, the customer is taken to the checkout section.

In the checkout section they input all of their information in order to be able to pay for the products and finally receive them.

During the checkout process, the customer’s shipping is re-calculated (if they are not within the default shipping zone).

Once they’ve filled out the checkout form, they select their payment method and the order goes through final processing.

Based on the customer’s location, they might be prompted by their bank or government official security service to approve the transaction.

All that the B2C customer has to do at this point is to go back to the checkout section, enter the 6-digit security code to approve the transaction, and click complete.

That is what it takes for a B2C customer to place an online order for a single pair of shoes.

The checkout process for a B2C customer relies heavily on the individual products and exposure of various marketing elements to (hopefully) squeeze that extra product into the order before it is submitted.

You’ll also notice that a lot of the elements in the B2C checkout flow focuses on the individual as they are the end-user of the product. They relate to the product as not just the potential buyer of it, but also the user of it.

The transaction for a B2C customer is simple in a lot of terms. The order has one or a few products, all users are considered the same, the customer has to deal with what’s in front of them to complete their purchase and there’s no or very limited purchase consideration.

The business value of the transaction is equally simple/small. There’s no way the B2C customer can be handled in any other way than the rest of the group. That’s the very essence of a B2C eCommerce effort. To be able to serve this customer group efficiently, we need to offer them an experience that facilitates that.

B2B Experience

Our B2B customers are special. We have a brand strategy that also relates to the retailers and B2B accounts that we work with. This also goes for the potential B2B customers we have. We can’t just accept anyone without evaluating if it’s a business that aligns with the profile that we want to work with (this could be in terms of the type of business it is, where it is located, the customer segment that they serve, existing B2B customers in the same area, and so on). To protect our brand and how it is perceived, we just need to review any potential partnership.

We use a Retailer Request Form in Turis to do that. We’ve added fields for what we want to ask our customers. When they submit the form, we get a notification and if everything checks out, we approve it.

The B2B customer has now received a notification with a magic link to our B2B eCommerce site.

They click the link and they’re in.

The customer can browse all the products we’ve given them access to with a price list that matches the customer type.

Unlike the B2C example, my B2B customer is not shopping for themselves. They are buying products for one or more retail locations. Still, it is important that our brand identity is reflected in our B2B eCommerce storefront. With Turis we can do that just how we’d like to with no code or developers, all while preserving the most efficient checkout flow for B2B and wholesale orders. We can create custom pages using drag and drop, we can add banners to category pages, customize our login page with our logo and an image showing our current collection.

When a B2B customer is purchasing shoes from us, the sizing challenge the B2C customer had is not present. For the B2B customer, sizing is all about purchasing the individual shoes in a size range relevant to their store (it might be kids, adults or a mix). To make it easy for the customer to do that, we have set up our products in a line view in Turis that shows the core shoe itself along with all the sizes (in the size applicable to the retailer’s region) and the B2B customer can select all the sizes they want, and for each color way, right there in one pop up.

The line view is relevant for any type of product that comes in several colors and sizes and makes it super easy for B2B customers to buy the exact selection they need (and ultimately entices them to go for a bigger range that they normally would).

Here’s a simplified example featuring a basic t-shirt

With just a few clicks, the customer has added a bunch of shoes to the order. Different styles, multiple sizes and colorways. Exactly how we’d like our B2B customers to order, handled and guided in the simplest manner by Turis.

The Turis B2B storefront has been purposely built for B2B and wholesale which means that the ordering process is all about that. This means that your B2B buyers can quickly get an overview of the products you offer, the categories, the variant options and finally they are able to add the products they want with a minimum of effort.

This is also why that brands on Turis get comments on orders from buyers praising the super simple ordering process that actually gives them an easier way to place more complicated orders.

When the customer is ready to submit their order, they get this nice and informative preview of their order

It has exactly the information a B2B buyer needs and based on the way that such a customer makes purchases. SKUs are important (your customer can often recognize a product on the SKU), their minimum order amount (in general or for them individually), the number of cases they are ordering and how many unique types of products that represent this as well as the VAT information (if VAT applies to the customer).

From this point, the customer can easily edit their order or go directly to checkout.

Remember the B2C checkout process? Well, B2B eCommerce is also very different on this area. We already know the customer, their delivery addresses, their payment terms (and thereby the payment options, invoice, credit card or freedom to choose what they prefer).

Some B2B customers order way in advance to prepare for seasonality (for instance) and find it very important to be able to select a desired order date for individual products). By keeping history of your customer’s purchase history in a CRM (such as HubSpot), you can even plan structured outreach with different forms of communications (tapping into newsletter platforms like Mailchimp).

If you sell a special type of products that require documentation to go with the order, your customer can even upload a file that you can access in the order data.

Does your customer have a Purchase Order number from their internal systems? No problem – they can add it in the PO field and it will also be featured on the order data (this can go from the order to your ERP or accounting system using one of many integrations, such as Xero).

It’s confetti time

Turis ships with confetti pre-installed. If that’s a bit too cheery for you and your brand, don’t worry – it can be turned off in your settings.

Now we’ve placed a B2B order of 129 products.

We’ve made sure that the customer was able to easily add the relevant variations and sizes and in general provided an eCommerce experience made for B2B and wholesale allowing the customer to focus on stocking up, rather than trying to figure out how to order in the first place.