Within today’s E-Commerce and its B2B (Business-to-Business) working model, and in the leading era of digital technology and the internet, we see many businesses moving to the online space for better reach, transaction and sales. We have seen a spike in their numbers especially owing to the current pandemic raging due to the COVID-19 virus.
In the last few years, many platforms and websites have arisen to help these businesses in their E-Commerce ventures. And amongst some of their top-performing platforms, we find Magento and Shopify. How do B2B customers use these platforms? How do they benefit from them? Let’s find out about Magento vs Shopify!
How Magento works for B2B
Magento, now under Adobe, is an open-source platform providing E-Commerce solutions for businesses of all sizes. Magento 2 is the latest version launched in 2016 and has only improved and continues to do so ever since the very first version’s launch in 2008.
It is a powerful platform, but only for those who know to code and hence is an ideal platform for medium to large B2B businesses with their web development team. But it is not to say the small B2B businesses or beginners cannot use it. If they cannot code, they can simply hire a web developer. Hence, B2B Magento is highly reliable!
But since it is a self-hosted platform, the businesses must sort out their own hosting services. With a higher volume of traffic, it is an expensive option. Nevertheless, with high flexibility and unlimited customizability, B2B magento’s customers use the platform in many ways to their benefit.
The businesses here customize and create their desired online outlets perfectly aligned with their vision and goals for their B2B e-commerce platform. They create their Checkout Confirmation page with email newsletters, discount coupons, additional offers and more to increase sales. Hence B2B magento remains as the most popular option for businesses.
The platform also has key features for B2B customers like extensive customer group functionality, supporting multi-stores for management of different websites, catalogues and storefronts, multi-channel integrations to ensure wider reach and sales, centrally managed stores to avoid creating more niche commerce platforms.
The B2B e-commerce platform is expertly equipped with nearly 75 in-built reports including purchases, sales, product information, procurement and detailed ROI that helps analyse the performance of the business and streamline its processes.
How Shopify works for B2B and B2C
Shopify is a hosted platform for E-Commerce holdings, which takes care of everything from web hosting, security, extensions and add-ons for the built online stores within the monthly fees. Businesses can choose from the many templates and edit layouts and elements to
create and customize their online outlet to their liking, preference and ease of use. It also has several mobile-optimized themes within its free and premium package to choose from.
Shopify also offers enterprise-level E-Commerce solutions, now for B2B users, with Shopify Plus which was launched in 2014. When we differentiate Shopify vs Shopify Plus, Shopify Plus has an added license fee and increased monthly fee compared to Shopify.
But it was initially designed to offer solutions for advanced B2C (Business-to-Consumer) businesses, but eventually came to include B2B customers and hence is a little lacking when it comes to some of their requirements. They find that the platform at present is unable to address and handle some of the B2B complexities when it comes to transactions and workflows.
But despite the platform’s template-based approach and limited layout editing options, language availability, storefront options and customer group functionality, small B2B customers do operate within Shopify Plus, those that are just starting out.
The customers use other options on the platform to their benefit— They use the platform’s discount code feature, provided to customers via automatic or standard discount code options. They also integrate multiple channels of Amazon, eBay and more into their Shopify stores to ensure wider reach and sales.
Conclusion:
Overall, both the platforms of Magento and Shopify come with their fair share of benefits and drawbacks, and it is up to the B2B businesses and customers how they can use either of the platforms to their best and for high ROI.
