B2B businesses have a unique set of challenges they have to handle to make revenue, from the longer sales cycle to a higher standard for trustworthiness. B2B eCommerce platforms will need to follow quite a different approach from any other business to succeed.

This article will explain the basics of what B2B buyers want from businesses and how you can increase revenue in your B2B eCommerce business.

The Evolving B2B Buyer and Their Expectations

One of the largest issues a B2B business has to deal with is the sheer length of the sales process. Due to most B2B purchases being a rather heavy investment and the existence of multiple competitors to choose from, buyers spend more time researching their options. One study reports it can take upwards of 80 touch points and 800 impressions to close a B2B deal across different channels. Those touchpoints may be viewing a social media post, interacting with a Google Ad, or subscribing to a free trial.

Personalization has also become a major factor in B2B sales, as an Accenture study shows 73% of buyers want their vendors to understand their unique challenges. Your company has to perform well across all of the touch points, most likely with different stakeholders, and show an adequate level of personalization to all of them.

Most buyers prefer to be served by a mix of self-service options and traditional sales reps, not one or the other. A recent Gartner study shows this is the combination that produces the least customer regret. This means B2B companies have to invest in both channels.

One of the major sales channels you’ll need to optimize for is mobile, as many B2B buyers are likely to use a mobile device at one of the steps on the customer journey. Your company’s B2B eCommerce experiences should stay engaging across your B2B website and other online places where your business can be discovered, as a growing percentage of B2B buyers are now older Millennials.

Essential Features of a Successful B2B eCommerce Website

Since a website is one of your biggest web assets, you need to maximize its potential. Here are the main characteristics of the most important elements of the site.

Catalog Organization & Product Descriptions

You can’t organize product descriptions like a B2C website, with a focus on nudging towards a fast, impulsive purchase. Your main job in creating a product catalog is to provide as much information to the viewers as possible. Add detailed specifications relevant to your B2B products, and images that showcase your products’ characteristics and main strengths.

In some cases, you might need to make the catalog available in other forms, like a PDF brochure or an Excel file.

Robust Search and Filtering

If your catalog is rather large, you need to implement advanced search and filtering to make sure every client can find what they’re looking for. You don’t just have to make predictive search suggestions to make searches faster; you also have to add the option to search SKUs, product technical details, or use cases.

Add a series of detailed filters to make looking for groups of products easier. Consider doing client interviews to find what filter options you’re missing.

User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX)

Due to the amount of details about B2B products, the decision makers might want to know before purchasing, UX is even more important in this niche. If you don’t design your site to provide simple and clear answers, you risk confusing and alienating your audience.

Consider who your buyers are and what they want to learn about the products. Base your website architecture, navigation, and format of the pages on that.

Security and Trust

Trust and reliability of a supplier are more important for B2B purchasing decisions. Start cultivating trust with website security by keeping the SSL certificate up to date and using the best practices to avoid data leaks.

Consider creating a review system on your website or displaying product reviews from third-party sources to show that your company is trustworthy.

Speed Optimization

User expectations for website speed might not be as high as in the B2C sector, but a slow-loading website can still be a factor that can prevent sales. Improving website speed by prioritizing the loading of essential elements and minimizing images can also improve your site’s SEO.

Personalized Customer Experience

B2B buyers expect a high level of personalization in digital experiences. Here’s how to increase revenue in eCommerce with personalization.  On your website, this can take the form of suggesting products related to the ones users have viewed before or showing previously viewed products based on cookies.

Customization and Pricing Flexibility

Not all businesses are the same, and some buyers require flexibility, whether in the products you provide or in pricing. Being able to do that and informing your potential customers about this on the website can help increase eCommerce sales. The downside of doing that is having to spend resources on customizing products and making a deal that works for both of you.

Flexible Checkout and Delivery

Another area of flexibility is offering more checkout and delivery options. You can do this by providing different payment methods, longer payment terms for cash flow management, or buy now, pay later offers. In terms of delivery, you can offer scheduled delivery or offer delivery to multiple locations.

Customer Support Tools

When it comes to customer support, variety is your best option. You should give users the ability to find answers on a self-service portal, ask an AI chatbot, and contact a support representative on the site, via email, a social media messenger, or by calling.

Covering a wide range of support options helps you provide each customer with a solution that works for them.

Multi-Language Options

Implementing multiple language variants based on the countries you operate in and on what you believe your customers speak takes you a step closer to the prospects. Double-check the accuracy of the translation, especially when it comes to jargon that may be used in product names and descriptions.

Integration Capabilities

Offering the option to integrate business data to automatically exchange information like purchase orders is crucial for earning long-term contracts with large companies that prefer not to place every order manually.

Strategic B2B SEO for Visibility and Lead Generation

Search engine optimization is important for B2B success because it can bring in organic leads from Google search—people who are interested in buying your product and are in the middle of the sales funnel. Here are the recommendations for optimizing your B2B eCommerce websites.

Keyword Research for Intent

The first step in any SEO strategy is finding the right keywords to target. If you don’t have a list of keywords yet, start with basic keyword research.

• Brainstorm seed keywords, the keywords you think are relevant to your business.

• Run the list through a keyword research tool to find similar keywords.

• Group the keywords by topic to have several related keywords correspond to a single page.

You’ll focus on three main types of keywords.

• Transactional. Keywords like “buy plumbing equipment” with users ready to make a purchase.

• Commercial. Keywords like “best plumbing equipment” with users researching their options.

• Informational. Keywords like “plumbing equipment maintenance” with users searching for information related to your field.

Optimize existing product and category pages for the transactional keywords. For the other two types, you should create content that explains the topic users are looking for.

Buyer Personas and Stakeholder Targeting

The information you provide on the landing pages and product pages should be geared towards the target audience, their preferences, and the search intent.

Start by doing research to understand who your buyers are. You can do this by analyzing sales conversations and conducting client interviews. You might find that you have one or more buyer personas, portraits of a typical buyer.

Figure out what products or services are typically bought by specific buyer personas and provide the information they likely want to see in a format that would work for them. Typically, this means focusing on how your product solves their main pain points.

Then, do search intent analysis of the keywords you target. Read through the content that ranks well for the keyword and find what bits of information it has in common. It’s likely that it’s the information users want to see when searching for the keyword.

Content Strategy: Solving Problems, Not Selling

When you create content for commercial and informational keywords, think about helping the customer first, not making a sale.

For commercial keywords, provide an in-depth review of the products and explain the little details that your customers might not know that would influence their purchasing decisions. You can and should link to the products in your catalog from the content, but focus on providing value to the customer first.

For informational content, go into details on how to solve the customer’s problem and use multiple ways to explain it as best as you can, including photos and videos. Sometimes, it makes sense to link to a product from an informational article, but don’t force it. Instead, opt for converting visitors to newsletter subscribers.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the underlying foundation of your success on the search engines. Without a proper website hierarchy, security, and performance, your site will always rank second to the ones that are better optimized.

In terms of website organization, you want to break down your catalog into easily understandable categories and make sure the product pages don’t take more than a couple of clicks to reach. This makes it easier for the users and facilitates content discovery by search engine bots.

In terms of security, you need to ensure your SSL certificate is up to date and protect customer data from leaks.

There are hundreds of elements that contribute to performance optimization. Use software like the site audit tool by SE Ranking to find issues that prevent your site from performing well and fix them by following the suggestions the tool provides.

Authority Building through Link-Building

Keyword optimization and technical SEO ensure your website can be displayed for the right keywords. A large factor that determines whether your pages will rank high or not is website authority. Google determines it by referencing what websites link to your site.

You can build website authority by earning backlinks from reputable websites. Here are a few ways you can do that.

• Create profiles on local business directories.

• Reach out to industry blogs and create content for them.

• Reach out to journalists and provide quotes for their articles.

• Create valuable content people will link to, like checklists or eBooks.

E-E-A-T Prioritization

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust. What this means in practical terms is that Google values content that shows a level of expertise in the text and the author’s authority. Especially in your money or your life, like medical or legal matters.

To improve this ranking factor, focus on creating content that goes into detail on the topic being discussed and building the authority of your authors by contributing content pieces and quotes to trustworthy publications. 

Long-Term Strategy

SEO is not a strategy that can bring you traffic in a day. It may take several months before you see any results because Google needs time to register the changes on your site. It may take up to six months of optimization before your site starts ranking high.

Treat it as a long-term revenue growth strategy and lay a robust foundation to make sure your SEO campaign is successful. Invest in website performance optimization and understanding the needs of your audience to have a good start.

Emerging B2B eCommerce Platforms and SEO Trends for 2025 and Beyond

Being one of the first to follow the trends that emerge in SEO and B2B eCommerce means keeping up with customer expectations and winning more sales. These are the trends that are likely to define the future of B2B eCommerce.

AI Integration

Relatively easy and inexpensive access to AI tools means you have to either adopt the new ways of improving productivity or lag behind. Here are a few ideas on using AI in B2B marketing.

• Analyzing customer interviews and sales calls to find user behavior trends.

• Finding content ideas that would work for your audience.

• Analyzing sales data for demand forecasting.

Hyper-Personalization

B2B buyers want personalized experiences across all mediums. You can achieve this by doing research into what kinds of people are in your audience and what they need from your solutions. Segment messaging, where you can deliver more relevant information.

Take it a step further by providing dynamic suggestions on your website based on a user’s browsing history.

Omnichannel Experience

Since the B2B sales cycle contains more touch points on average and B2B buyers prefer different channels, you need to invest in improving visibility across all the channels your audience might interact with your brand on. Typically, this includes your website, mobile app, social media pages, and B2B marketplaces.

B2B Marketplaces

Just as Amazon has consolidated a lot of B2C online experiences, B2B marketplaces like Faire and Amazon Business are bringing together suppliers and businesses. Often, being successful on platforms like these takes a lot of effort in organic optimization and advertising, but you can’t pass up these alternative sales channels.

Social Proof

Trust matters more than advertising in any business, but it’s even more important in the B2B sector. Leverage existing assets to build user trust—highlight reviews from Google and other platforms, showcase testimonials, and share case studies. Focus on earning more reviews and testimonials if you don’t have enough at the moment.

A simple technique to do that is to run an email marketing campaign to ask past clients to leave a review.

Headless Commerce

Headless commerce means decoupling the backend from the frontend of your website and building a communication between the two based on APIs. This can help you improve flexibility in UX design and build better omnichannel B2B eCommerce experiences by integrating all storefronts and social media with one backend database.

Mobile Apps

A mobile app isn’t going to help you attract new customers, but it can be useful in improving customer retention and loyalty. The ability to make and track orders on the go can be one of the factors that prompts one-time buyers to become regulars. A mobile app can also provide more opportunities for behavior analytics, personalization, and marketing communications.

Dynamic Pricing

Flexibility in pricing is a competitive advantage. An advanced pricing strategy for B2B eCommerce websites is making your pricing change dynamically based on multiple factors. They can include user purchase history, the segment of customer base they belong to, seasonal factors, or something else. You can implement it with specialized pricing software or with your CRM if it has that function.

Data Analytics

Analysis of sales data, from product discovery patterns to purchasing decision behavior of different segments of your audience, can help you build a better B2B business, both in terms of marketing and product improvements. Use data from your website and mobile app and analyze them with BI solutions, preferably ones based on machine learning, to find trends, patterns, and B2B eCommerce growth opportunities.

Recommendations for B2B Companies

It’s easy to feel there are so many trends that it's hard to understand which ones to follow. Here are the strategies for B2B ecommerce revenue growth that you should focus on.

Prioritize User Experience (UI/UX) on eCommerce Platforms

Poor navigation can be a negative ranking factor, as well as alienate users from browsing your eCommerce website and mobile app. Focus on creating user experiences that prioritize comfort and intuitive navigation. Use standard UX practices during B2B eCommerce website development and categorize your pages in a way that would be easy to understand for your audience.

Develop a Comprehensive B2B SEO Strategy

Despite AI Overviews and AI Mode skewing the search trends towards LLMs, organic search remains a major way of discovering brands in the B2B sector. Invest in developing and executing a long-term SEO strategy that includes all types of keywords as well as Google Merchant Center optimization.

Embrace Content as a Solution Provider

High-quality content might not turn website visitors into buyers on the first interaction, but it can serve as one of the touchpoints for discovering your business. Having the right approach to it will also build an authoritative brand image.

Treat your blog not only as a way of attracting new leads but as a knowledge resource for the industry you serve.

Strengthen Technical SEO Foundations

Doing the basics in SEO can go a long way in improving organic ranking across all of your pages. Run regular website audits to find and improve issues that slow down your site’s loading speed or lead to other Core Web Values problems.

Build Authority and Trust

Trust is everything when it comes to choosing a B2B business to work with. Build trust with your user base across all platforms by producing high-quality educational content and earning user reviews. Display the reviews in places near the call-to-action to improve conversions.

Explore Emerging Technologies

Explore and adopt new technology and tools in the key areas that can help get more revenue from customers as a B2B business. Focus on tools that help with automation, analytics, and personalization. AI-based tools, data manipulation tools, and advanced customer relationship management software are great options to explore.

Adopt an Omnichannel Approach

Despite organic search being the main channel of discovery, other channels are just as important. Invest in enhancing brand visibility across all channels popular with your target audience, whether it’s LLM search or social media.

Implement Robust Measurement and Analytics

You should vet your business ideas with data analytics to make sure you’re on the right path. Implement a robust system of measuring marketing, sales, and usage data to make sure you know exactly what’s going on with your business. Analyze it with ML-based BI tools to find trends in the data.

Prepare for Dynamic Pricing and Data-Driven Personalization

One of the key trends you should focus on is dynamic personalization, both in product suggestions and pricing. Explore the tools that help you do that and consider implementing them on your eCommerce website and mobile app.

Cultivate a Long-Term Perspective

The most important thing in B2B revenue growth is to develop long-term thinking. Unless your organization needs a quick influx of cash flow to stay in the black, you need to focus on planning for years, not quarters.

Invest in solutions that can radically improve your revenue over the long term, even if it means less profit in the next few quarters.

Summary

Increasing B2B eCommerce revenue is a long-term goal and should be treated as such. Focus on building an omnichannel presence, increasing trust in your business, introducing new tech, and creating an analytics system to make informed business decisions.

Analyze the performance of new revenue growth strategies and adjust them as needed.