While historically, ecommerce platforms have predominantly focused on B2C offerings, it has become increasingly evident that B2B businesses can seriously benefit from investing in their ecommerce experiences for B2B customers. From account management to bulk order processing, having an effective platform can make all the difference to a B2B business, regardless of who their audience is. While B2B purchasing experiences can often be more complex from the additional requirements, major ecommerce platforms such as Adobe Commerce and Shopify are now simplifying and productising their ecommerce capabilities for B2B brands looking to scale and grown online.
B2B ecommerce market
The B2B ecommerce market has grown with fervour over the past few years. In 2020, an estimated 60% of B2B companies had ‘zero to limited’ ecommerce capabilities, but just two years later it was worth $20.4 trillion dollars - over 5x the size of the B2C market (Statista, 2023). It shows no sign of stopping, with 80% of B2B buyers predicted to be using digital channels to purchase by 2025 (Gartner, 2023). While modernisation and digital integration is moving apace, many B2B businesses struggle with retraining their long-standing and loyal customers away from clunky ‘old-school’ ways of ordering. As digital natives become responsible for B2B buying, many follow B2C shopping habits: researching on agile, information-rich platforms to locate required information (e.g. Amazon) before visiting the ‘brand’ site to complete the purchase. Ensuring all the required information is in one place (the brand site), and help is easily accessible, can help smooth and speed up the buying process.
One company who has undertaken a digital modernisation is our client, Fixfast. A building industry supplier who needed a new high-end, self-service offering for their core customers; they wanted a platform that would help direct customers online, rather than on the phone.We worked closely with Fixfast to transform their existing Adobe Commerce site, overhauling their Product Information Management to Akeneo and implementing Hyva and Storyblok to the front-endfor speed and improved UX for their customers and team.
Traditional ecommerce companies, such as Adobe Commerce (Magento) and Shopify have both extended their platforms capabilities to support B2B business – from small suppliers to multi-national behemoths. If you’re one of the 77% of B2B companies who see digital transformation as critical to success (Deloitte Digital, 2023), what should you consider when comparing which platform is best for your business?
Fixfast, Product Information Page, 2024.
Scalability / Connectivity
Many B2B suppliers have large product catalogues, and a requirement to connect with multiple services, from ERPs to ESPs, to ensure the whole process flows effectively. Adobe Commerce is built for big. The platform is designed to deal with complex requirements, providing the processing power to support International selling, multi-warehouse inventories and storefronts and high volume sales. It can deal with large numbers of SKU's and complex pricing requirements, and has numerous extensions and partner integrations for services it can’t support. In short, if you have a complicated product set and workflow – Adobe is where you go. However, it does require in-depth knowledge to get the best from it.
Shopify Plus is also scalable, albeit on a less grand scale. While it can also handle multichannel selling and international store fronts, Shopify’s emphasis has always been on speed and ease of use, over complexity and micro-functionality. As it’s a hosted solution, it also removes the worry about server management and maintenance.
Customisation and Flexibility
Adobe’s platform is highly customisable, able to be tweaked to the nth degree. Workflows are not a problem thanks to its seamless integration with ERPs, CRMs and PIMs. This makes it especially effective as a B2B platform. As with the self-hosted functionality, this means it’s best implemented in a business that has an in-house (or agency) team able to set up, maintain and provide ongoing support for the platform.
Shopify Plus doesn’t shy away B2B service offerings either, although less of it is done natively. It offers a range of plugins and APIs for corresponding services (such as tax management), and it designed to offer a more composable solution than the heavy lifting done by Magento.
Ease of Use
Adobe is the complicated Lego technics set from your youth. Much of its success is tied into the team tasked to build and maintain the infrastructure and effective workflows, which is why finding an agency you can work closely with is paramount to it's continued success. Once it’s set up, it will require ongoing development to ensure it continues to perform – but with the right team in place, will be a central cog in the overall business.
Shopify, by contrast, is the IKEA of platforms. Whilst you'll most likely want to work with a Shopify agency to get everything set-up, the cost and time required to maintain thereafter is usually much less, it sacrifices some of the peripheral (but none of the key) functionality for speed. While in the right hands and with the appropriate knowledge, it can grow and provide everything a B2B company needs – its strengths lie in its agility.
Dedicated B2B Features
Accepting that B2B features vary, if we consider ‘core’ B2B functionality to primarily be:
Customised Catalogues
Bulk/wholesale Ordering
Complex (e.g. bulk discount) pricing rules
Customer Account Management
Customer Groups
Personalised recommendations
Multi-store options
Warehouse management
Then both platforms offer them without a hitch – either natively or via extensions. Where Adobe offers more is in defined B2B services such as quote management, corporate account hierarchies and multi-level account structures.
Shopify provides retail and wholesale management on one platform – meaning for joint B2B/B2C businesses it might be the better choice. Migrating to Shopify was the right choice for our client, House of Hackney. They have a dual B2C and B2B functionality on their ecommerce site, which made Shopify an easy choice, especially considering they were able to launch a Shopify app alongside the migration and expand their mobile offerings at the same time.
Price
Adobe will likely cost more, depending on the level of customisation, hosting requirements and development work required. Shopify is more granular in its pricing and hosting approach. It tends to be quicker to design and develop, at the literal cost of weightier functionality. The Conran Shop is another of our homeware clients who will soon be introducing B2B functionality to their site. They migrated from Magento to Shopify at the start of this year and have been able to reduce their total cost of ownership by a whopping 75%. You can learn more about this in our recent blog.
Summary
There is no ‘right’ platform for your B2B requirements. Both Magento and Shopify offer a wide range of options, workflows, plugins and customisation – so really it comes down to your current and future business requirements. What is key is ensuring that an online B2B experience is fit for purpose. Ensuring the platform has all the relevant information in one place, is easy to use and offers the right level of service.
If you're looking for migration or platform consultancy, get in touch with our team for a no obligation chat. We can make some early recommendations and set you on the right tracks to achieve a successful migration or digital transformation project.
