The B2B ecommerce landscape is evolving fast, and if you’re a B2B business owner, CEO, Sales Director, Marketing Director or IT Director, it’s time to ask yourself a critical question: Is your B2B ecommerce strategy and set-up ready for 2025?
By 2025, Gartner predicts that 80% of B2B sales interactions will occur in digital channels. With the rapid shift to digital-first experiences, the time to future-proof your ecommerce strategy is now.
Why Digital-First and B2B Ecommerce is the Future of B2B Sales
Digital transformation is no longer optional, it’s a business imperative. The B2B buyer demographic is changing, and so are their expectations.
Millennials and Gen Zers are Dominating B2B Buying. A generational shift is underway in B2B buying. In 2023, 71% of B2B buyers were born after 1980, according to Forrester’s Buyers’ Journey Survey. These digital natives expect seamless, digitally rich purchasing experiences, similar to what they encounter in B2C ecommerce.
Self-Service is the New Standard. Gartner Sales Survey found that 83% of buyers prefer to manage orders and accounts online, and many want self-service tools throughout their buyer journey. Offering intuitive, self-service options is no longer a competitive advantage—it’s the minimum.
Additionally, today’s buyers are conducting significant research before even reaching out to a sales representative. They rely on comprehensive, easily accessible product information, technical specifications, and peer reviews to guide their decisions. Businesses that make this data readily available online gain a substantial advantage in influencing purchase intent and closing the sale.
6 Key Trends to Watch in B2B Ecommerce for 2025
- The Rise of Omni-channel
Buyers are increasingly leveraging digital technologies earlier in the sales process. An omnichannel strategy (combining web, mobile, email, and social media) will play an important role in influencing purchasing decisions. - Hyper-Personalisation is Taking Over
Traditional account-based marketing is giving way to hyper-personalisation, where messages are tailored to individual decision-makers using data-driven insights. Expect this to become the gold standard for B2B marketing in 2025. - Social Media as a Sales Channel
Social media platforms are no longer just for brand awareness; they’re becoming integral to B2B sales strategies. Companies are using LinkedIn, Instagram, and even TikTok to nurture leads and close deals. A well-executed social selling strategy can position your business as a trusted advisor in your space. - Dynamic Pricing Strategies
Static pricing models are being replaced by flexible, data-driven pricing strategies that reflect real-time demand, customer segmentation, and competitive insights. - On-Demand Product and Service Data
B2B buyers expect comprehensive product and service information to be available online 24/7. Investing in a robust B2B ecommerce platform, like Shopify Plus, and setting up customer-specific digital catalogues is essential. This not only helps improve the buying experience but also fosters stronger customer loyalty through transparency and accessibility. - Tech-Savvy Buyers Want More
B2B buyers are increasingly leaning into digital tools, from AI-driven chatbots to interactive product configurators. Enhancing the digital experience can help your business stand out in a crowded marketplace.
Is Your B2B Ecommerce Strategy Ready?
In 2025, the key to success lies in staying agile, innovative, and customer-centric. Here are three steps to get your B2B ecommerce strategy ready for 2025:
- Evaluate Your Platform: Is your current ecommerce platform scalable, secure, and integrated with your CRM and ERP systems?
- Embrace Data-Driven Decisions: Use analytics to identify customer behaviours and preferences, enabling hyper-personalised experiences.
- Invest in Technology: From AI-driven recommendations to dynamic pricing models, invest in technologies that enhance the customer journey.
Let’s Talk About Your B2B Ecommerce Strategy
At the Digital Mavens, we specialise in helping B2B businesses optimise their ecommerce platforms and strategies to meet the demands of tomorrow’s buyers. If your current setup isn’t delivering the results you need, it’s time for a change.
Ready to future-proof your B2B ecommerce? Contact our Chief Maven, Kingston Lee-Young for a chat about your business and challenges.
With just under 4-months until Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM), and the start to the traditional Christmas Shopping period, now is the time to ensure your ecommerce platform is ready to handle the end-of-year shopping surge. If your online business is experiencing any of the following issues, it might be time to consider an ecommerce migration:
- Lost Sales Due to Poor Onsite User Experience: Are customers leaving your site frustrated because it’s hard to navigate, they can’t find the products they want, or it’s difficult to checkout and pay?
- Lack of System Integration: Are your business systems disconnected from your ecommerce site, leading to manual processes that cause inefficiencies and errors?
- Inability to React to Customer Demands: Are you struggling to adapt quickly to customer needs or market trends?
- Untracked Analytics: Without proper analytics, do you know which ads are driving sales or which categories are attracting the right customers?
- Stock and Delivery Challenges: Is managing inventory, fulfilling orders, and organising deliveries becoming a nightmare?
- Customer Service Issues: Are customer inquiries slipping through the cracks due to inadequate support tools?
- Missed Opportunities for Customer Retention: Are you unable to nurture customers with email campaigns that encourage repeat purchases? Do you know who your best customer segments are?
- Performance Problems: Are slow load times and technical glitches costing you sales?
- Slow Development Cycles: Does it take months, rather than weeks or days, to deploy essential updates, fixes, or new functionality?
- Improper Site Setup: Is your site not optimised for performance, security, or user experience?
If these challenges sound familiar, it’s time to seriously consider migrating to a different ecommerce platform or enhancing your current one.
Why We Recommend Shopify as the Best Ecommerce Platform
At Digital Mavens, we’ve worked with a wide range of ecommerce platforms, including BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Magento, and UltraCommerce. From our extensive experience, we can confidently say that Shopify is the best choice for most businesses looking to build or scale their online presence. Here’s why:
1. Ease of Use
If a platform is easy-to-use, you’re more likely to leverage its full potential. Shopify’s user-friendly interface makes managing and updating your e-store simple. You can easily modify functionality and features without requiring a large team or technical expertise. Plus, there are plenty of themes and apps to choose from, saving you from having to build everything from scratch. Shopify also simplifies the checkout process and is constantly innovating to improve user experience.
2. Speed of Change
Shopify allows you to implement changes quickly. Whether you’re launching a new product or responding to market demands, you can do it in days, not months - sometimes even minutes. With Shopify, your ecommerce manager can handle many updates in-house, reducing the need to outsource to technical support.
3. Managed Site Performance
With Shopify, you don’t have to worry about uptime, load balancing, or scalability - Shopify handles all of this for you. This ensures your site performs optimally, even during peak traffic periods like BFCM and other promotional periods.
4. Security and Compliance
Shopify is PCI DSS compliant, offering top-notch security for payment processing and customer data. This protects your business from breaches and ensures customer trust. Shopify also enables automated processes to reduce chargebacks and prevent fraudulent purchases.
5. Seamless Integration
Shopify easily integrates with various business systems and platforms, including ERP, WMS, OMS, customer service tools, and analytics. This interconnectedness streamlines your operations and enhances efficiency.
6. Focus on Your Business
With Shopify handling the technical heavy lifting, you can focus on what really matters: driving sales, finding and engaging customers, optimising your product catalogue, and growing your profit margins.
Considering a Move to Shopify? Here’s What You Need to Know About Ecommerce Migrations
If you’re thinking about switching from your current ecommerce platform to Shopify or Shopify Plus, we’re here to help. Ecommerce migrations can seem daunting, but with the right planning and execution, it can be a smooth process. Here are some of the key steps to consider:
1. Your Ecommerce Migration Timeline
Most Shopify migrations take about 3 months. For example, we recently completed a comprehensive migration for Toys R Us in just three months. This involved migrating from OSCommerce to Shopify Plus, redesigning and building the store, integrating with MYOB, installing multiple feature apps, migrating email marketing from MailChimp to Klaviyo, transitioning customer service from OSTicket to Gorgias, handling data migration, and conducting thorough testing.
2. Evaluating Your Current Needs
Assess what functionality, features, and requirements are essential for your new Shopify store. Identify what’s missing from your current platform that you need in your new Shopify setup.
3. Understanding Your Customers’ Needs
What do your customers want for an enjoyable and repeatable shopping experience? Ensure your new onsite experience is designed with them in mind, enhancing their journey, solving their shopper missions and encouraging purchases.
4. Supporting Your Staff
Evaluate what your internal team needs to do their jobs efficiently and effectively. The right tools can positively impact productivity, efficiency, and job satisfaction. Adding Shopify apps could help to improve your internal processes.
5. Data Migration
Carefully plan the migration of product data, customer records, historical orders, financial data, and marketing assets. This step is crucial to ensuring a seamless transition to the new Shopify store and the ability to make sales once launched.
6. Store Design, Customisation, and Configuration
Tailor your Shopify store to reflect your brand, align with your marketing and sales objectives, and support your operational setup and business goals. Migrations onto a new ecommerce platform are a great opportunity to ensure your new store design prioritises user experience and scalability, allowing for future growth and adaptability as your business evolves.
7. Integration with Business Systems
Review all your ecommerce platform integrations with your business systems, like ERP, WMS, OMS, customer service platforms, and analytics tools. Are they all integrated? If not, take the migration opportunity to bring everything together with your ecommerce migration to Shopify. Correct integration will streamline your operations, reduce manual processes, and provide real-time data insights that can drive more informed decision-making and enhance overall efficiency.
8. Testing and Launch
Rigorous testing is essential before going live with your new Shopify store. Make sure you have allowed time to test, have documented processes, and have a cross-functional team to test every part of the process before going live. Consider testing across different devices and browsers to ensure consistent performance and usability, make real-life orders and refunds, and have a contingency plan in place to quickly address any unexpected issues post-launch.
9. Ongoing Optimisation
Post-launch, make sure to continue monitoring and optimising your new Shopify store to adapt to customer feedback, behaviours, sales results and changing market conditions. At Digital Mavens, we don’t just launch and leave; we can also provide ongoing support to ensure growth and success until you’re confident enough to build your own internal team.
Need More Information or Advice Before Migrating? Let’s Chat
If you’re ready to explore migrating to Shopify but need more advice or information, we’d love to help. Schedule a time to Speak to the Chief about your ecommerce needs and challenges. With our expertise, we can ensure your migration is smooth and that your new Shopify store is set up for success - just in time for BFCM and end-of-year sales opportunities.
Let’s make sure your business is ready to thrive this season and beyond.
Find Out More About How We Can Help You With Your Ecommerce Growth
Checkout out our ecommerce services, Ecommerce Copilot Program and Shopify Virtual Shopping pages.
Everyone wants to scale and drive ecommerce growth online these days. Here at the Digital Mavens we have been helping online businesses scale and transform online. We even created an Ecommerce Copilot Program in 2020 to support our customers as an extension to their internal teams - yes before Microsoft launched their Copilot - in the areas of roadmapping & planning, ecommerce & marketing support and technology management & integration. Some of these clients were Dermalogia Australia, Nestle Purina, Toys R Us Australia and Nerada Tea Australia.
Over the past 15 years supporting clients, here are 3 key observations, we see as limiting factors to sustainable growth in ecommerce businesses.
1. Resource Allocation:
Most ecommerce teams are under-resourced with only 1-2 staff, who then need to cover all the different skill sets required to run an ecommerce site. Management's view is: once you start growing and making more sales we can grow the team.
Suggestion: To grow properly, the business needs to invest in the right tech, the right team, and relevant ongoing marketing activities. Just throwing money at Google ads and Meta Ads only buys short term wins if the tech is not optimised and you don't have all the right skill sets to manage properly.
2. Understanding Your Sales:
Driving online sales to meet performance targets requires a good understanding of your ebusiness. Many businesses struggle because they don't have visibility of all the different ecommerce components that will help them to make sales each week or month.
Suggestion: Just like traditional retail you need to know: what is your estore positioning, who are your target customers, who are your competitors, what is your product range and catalogue, what should your pricing be, which are your best sellers, when do your customers shop, what helps conversion, and what drives customers to abandon their cart. Focus on the whole process and fix your fundamentals.
3. Speed of Action:
Running an ecommerce business, there are lots of things to do and manage. Success and growth come from being able to constantly improve and adapt to the market and data. Anything that slows you down or takes time to change, implement or fix is costing you sales and repeat customers.
Suggestion: Review your ecosystem and set-up. Are you on an ecommerce platform that can allow you to make changes in 30 minutes or will it take days, weeks or even months? How easy is it to test and trial a new functionality or feature that could positively impact your sales or would you need to custom develop it? Keep up with the times and move to tech, people and apps that allow you to adapt faster.
Find out more about how we can help you with your ecommerce growth:
Or checkout out our ecommerce services and Ecommerce Copilot Program.
Or if you want to have a chat about improving your ecommerce store or digitally transforming your business please book a meeting with our Chief Maven - contact us.