As we move further into the digital age, Customers pay for more than your product. They also expect to pay for the experience. In order to retain business, B2B companies must embrace digitization and mobile commerce strategy. Customers will quickly move on to other suppliers if you do not provide the web and mobile interfaces they are looking for.
Whether your business is at the beginning of its journey, in the process of formulating its business strategy or already well established, no matter where your business falls in the path to digital maturity, it pays to have a mobile strategy in order to overcome the competition.
Why a mobile strategy?
With the arrival of millennials in the roles of purchasing agents and corporate buyers, we can see a sharp difference in expectations. The B2B buyer wants to get things done. The time spent on phone calls, obtaining quotas and placing orders is time wasted. By integrating the purchasing journey across the computer, mobile, and tablet, we can make the mobile commerce experience seamless while also preparing for future growth.
Some of the things that make mobile commerce perfect for B2B buyers are:
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B2B buyers tend to spend high dollar amounts.
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Most of them are highly engaged with your brand.
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B2B customers are repeat purchasers on a regular basis.
How is it different than B2C?
Plenty of B2B companies hesitate to invest in mobile commerce as it is often regarded as a complicated process on the side of business and technology. While this may be true, we can make the journey significantly smoother if we break the process down into phases and work individually with each part of your organization.
The important point here is not to completely emulate a B2C user environment or even to create something entirely new. Rather, it is to maintain a B2B focus, while melding the B2C processes and solutions that add value to your business.
There is no end point to Digital Transformation. It is a continuously improving process which allows us to advance in areas such as mobile commerce.
Priorities in Mobile Commerce.
Making the process of buying and selling easier is a key part of the mobile commerce strategy. Several B2B executives throughout the industry have echoed the same sentiment. These executives work for companies which are all at different levels of digital maturity and they all circle back to the above point.
While the reason for developing and utilizing mobile commerce or creating a responsive site may differ, depending on where the company is, on its path to mobile maturity, the following priorities remain a constant.
1. Fast and Smooth User Experience.
Mobile has replaced the desktop as the area where the vast majority of customers operate. By focusing on the mobile experience, we can cater to the majority of the customer base. Both mobile and desktop sites require a responsive design that minimizes the number of clicks required for the user to reach their goal. Whether it be placing an order or making a new account, we must reduce and streamline the customer experience so that they can be comfortable with using our site regardless of time and place.
2. Create Personalized content.
As calls and e-mails become less frequent, the gap is filled by the mobile app, which now serves as the direct connection between you and the customer. By thinking out of the box, we can develop an entirely new digital marketing strategy for the mobile platform. With the functionality that comes with mobile phones, such as push notifications we can keep our customers informed when promotions are available or remind them when they would normally be getting low on a product.
Some responsive mobile commerce sites upsell the customers based on purchases they may have made in the past. By understanding the customers, we can provide experiences that are tailor-made for them.
3. Clean Back Office Integration.
Any commerce platform is required to integrate with its back-office tools, such as accounting, ERP, OMS, CRM and is required to sync the various pieces of information, such as customers, pricing, and inventory.
A properly integrated system is essential to reduce errors that may pop up concerning data. We can save a lot of headaches by ensuring that our front-end commerce platform is properly integrated with our back-end systems.
With over half the B2B search queries being made through mobile, and with this trend certain to continue, it is necessary for us to move forward with expanding mobile commerce as one of our top priorities.
