On the surface, brands, wholesalers and distributors selling online have a similar goal to major B2C operations like Amazon and Walmart: Providing an experience that makes online ordering simple and productive. Proper presentation and management of your B2B Ecommerce catalog is a key aspect of making that possible.
So today, let’s look at a few tools where online technology can not only make the experience better, but reduce pressure on your sales team, so your buyers can place their own orders online.
Faceted Search: Finding the Right Product
We often see B2B Ecommerce catalogs that fall into one of two extremes – a small, focused product set of under 100 items, or a complex catalog with thousands and thousands of SKUs. For that latter category, you can run into challenges with choice overload, where your buyer doesn’t know the right products for them.
Faceted search can provide a lifeline by making it easy to search by various product data attributes. Many times more complex catalogs are driven by the need to have various items for various systems, such as parts for equipment or accessories of different sizes for various technology products.
By allowing a buyer to search based on device, or sizing, or whatever features make your specific products unique, they can quickly drill down to the right set of products they need to order. This can facilitate your buyer’s ability to find the right products without needing the support of a salesperson, something that historically was raised as a major obstacle for moving to a digital reality.
Table View for Product Presentation
B2B buyers historically would receive catalogs in the mail, with an array of products presented in various forms, most often tables of information. These tables were designed to make it easy to compare various permutations of a product line to know which one was necessary.
A similar presentation can offer the same benefit when presenting your B2B Ecommerce Catalog. A table view can be one way to present information in a clear, concise way to provide that same benefit online that it did in print.
Product Discovery for your B2B Ecommerce Catalog
Even when you have a small B2B Ecommerce catalog, your buyers may not be fully aware of everything you have to offer. They could just be used to ordering certain products. So if you want to drive awareness of other items in your catalog, or new products you may offer, product discovery features can be helpful.
This can be as simple as showing related products on product pages or the cart. It could be leveraging marketing tools like email solutions for educating buyers. Analytics solutions can evaluate items commonly ordered together to help select the right items to surface as recommended with what they are ordering.
Zoey customer Manamed said that using our recommendation tools has helped them drive awareness of other products:
“Most of our customers only buy 2-4 products out of our 58 products because they would previously only buy what they are directly sold. Now, while they are in Zoey, they can see our entire product lineup as well as recommended products and related products. This has opened the door to more sales conversations which is a big advantage to us.”
–Erik Lorenz, Chief Information Officer, ManaMed
Zoey Can Help You Present Your B2B Ecommerce Catalog
Contact our team to learn how you can better present your products to buyers, ensuring a stronger scenario for online success:
