Customer engagement plays a vital role for businesses transitioning existing B2B customers to eCommerce sites. Without active engagement, there is a high chance that your customers will revert to their traditional buying behaviours, leading to wasted time and effort for both your business and theirs. This article outlines six actionable strategies to boost customer engagement with your eCommerce site for better customer loyalty and increased revenue from repeat businesses. Let’s dive in!
What is B2B customer engagement?
B2B customer engagement is a crucial next stage following customer adoption. It refers to strategies or best practices businesses use to foster active engagement and usage of eCommerce sites among their current B2B customers.
The goal of this stage is to enhance B2B customer retention and loyalty. To achieve that, the focus is on understanding and anticipating your customers’ needs, consistently delivering value, and encouraging meaningful two-way interactions throughout their customer journey.
Benefits of increasing B2B eCommerce customer engagement
Increasing B2B customer engagement offers several advantages, such as improved customer loyalty and retention, a boost in revenue from returning customers, and enhanced operational efficiency.
- Increase revenue from repeat purchases and cultivate customer loyalty: Increased customer engagement on eCommerce sites offers more detailed and real-time data on actual customer behaviours, such as which items are often bought together, past purchase history, browsing patterns, and frequently searched products. With this data, you can refine your sales strategy to boost up-selling and cross-selling success, driving higher revenue from repeat purchases with personalised product recommendations and customised bundles that match each customer’s preferences. A personalised buying experience also makes customers feel valued, strengthening their loyalty and encouraging them to return.
- Save time and improve operational efficiency: Increasing customer engagement leads to greater operational efficiency because engaged customers can independently place orders, track shipments, check stock, and manage invoices. This helps reduce your sales teams’ workload and redirect their focus from order-taking to high-value activities like nurturing key accounts, identifying upsell opportunities, and building stronger customer relationships. Additionally, higher engagement provides valuable data insights, helping businesses analyse buying trends, forecast demand more accurately, and optimise inventory management, reducing stockouts and excess inventory costs.
Challenges of increasing customer engagement among current B2B customers
It is important to acknowledge that B2B customers who are familiar with traditional sales methods might have some resistance and difficulty when engaging with eCommerce sites, which leads to some challenges you might encounter as below:
- Limited digital familiarity among customers: Many traditional B2B customers may lack experience with eCommerce and other online platforms. After a successful onboarding process, they might still have difficulty using eCommerce features effectively. This can lead to a disruption in their buying journey across online channels and decreased satisfaction.
- Complex decision-making processes: B2B transactions often involve multiple decision-makers within an organisation (typically buyers, purchasing managers, technical experts, end-users, and even external partners), with each of them seeking different information. If your eCommerce platform doesn’t provide transparent information for each stakeholder and address their specific needs, frustration can build up over time. It can lead to customers relying more on your sales team or even seeking alternative solutions.
- Need for personalisation: Forrester’s Buyers’ Journey Survey 2022 reveals that 74% of B2B customers expect experiences tailored to their demands and preferences. This trend isn't just limited to the modern sectors; even traditional B2B businesses, such as wholesalers and manufacturers, are adjusting to meet these evolving buyer expectations. As a result, it becomes essential to provide your B2B customers with personalised experiences in features such as search and product discovery, pricing, promotions, and self-service dashboards. Achieving this can be challenging as it requires advanced technology to streamline data across systems and channels.
Best strategies to boost customer engagement in B2B eCommerce
1. Proactively collect customer feedback
For your existing customers to actively engage and use your eCommerce store during their buying process or in daily operations, you should take their feedback and experiences into account. Below are some methods to effectively collect their feedback:
- Regular check-ins to strengthen customer relationships: Regular check-ins are key to building strong, lasting relationships with your current B2B customers after onboarding them to your eCommerce site. These conversations not only help you understand their satisfaction but also give you a chance to address their concerns before they escalate. You should schedule them consistently on a monthly or quarterly basis and ask specific questions about their experience. You should also address past feedback and share updates on adjustments made based on their input. This proactive approach builds trust, resolves concerns, and ensures your eCommerce site continues to meet their needs.
- Targeted online surveys and questionnaires to strategically assess customer satisfaction: Besides regular check-ins, you can use customer feedback surveys strategically to monitor satisfaction and refine your eCommerce site continuously. For example, you can create surveys to assess customer experience with key features of your eCommerce site, such as website usability, product selection, checkout process, etc. You can also send surveys at strategic timing, such as follow-up surveys after their purchase, to gather insights about their satisfaction with the ordering process, delivery times, and product quality.
- Implement a customer feedback portal: Another best practice is to implement a customer feedback portal on your eCommerce site where customers can submit suggestions, report issues, or share their experiences. This allows for continuous feedback collection and shows customers that their opinions are valued.
2. Optimise your eCommerce site for increased customer satisfaction
Having an established eCommerce site does not guarantee your current customers can fully benefit from it. To increase customer engagement, it is essential that you continuously collect customer feedback, analyse the data and optimise your eCommerce site accordingly. Below are some best practices for you to follow:
- Identify key drop-off points and streamline the checkout experience: You can start by using analytic tools or directly soliciting customer feedback to track where they might face issues during the checkout process. For example, if you notice a high drop-off rate at the payment step, it may indicate limited payment options or unclear pricing. You can streamline their buying process by providing popular payment options and ensuring that all costs are transparently presented from the start.
- Optimise your eCommerce website design for a better customer experience: You can use tools like heatmaps and session replays to visualise where your customers are clicking, scrolling, or experiencing frustration. By understanding these behaviours, you can make informed decisions to improve website navigation, improve website layout, and ensure that essential information is easily accessible.
- Personalise the experience further: You can leverage data to personalise customer experiences on your eCommerce site. For instance, after analysing purchase history and the click-through rate of product recommendation pages, you might have insights into your customers’ demands and behaviours. You can then use them to segment your customers better and adjust product recommendations accordingly to meet their demands more effectively. This will result in a higher success rate of cross-selling and up-selling efforts.
3. Provide ongoing support and resources to help your customers adapt better
As mentioned above, many traditional B2B customers lack experience with online purchasing, even after they have been onboarded. To address this challenge, you can educate your customers to overcome limited digital familiarity by adopting the best practices below:
- Provide real-time customer support: Even with strong onboarding and self-service resources, your customers may still face urgent issues, which is why it’s essential to provide instant responses to address their concerns effectively. You can use an AI-driven chatbot to handle common inquiries instantly, such as checking order status or guiding users through troubleshooting steps. These chatbots can also assign complex issues to a human agent when needed, ensuring customers receive the right level of support without long wait times. For high-value customers, consider assigning dedicated account managers or customer success representatives to provide personalised assistance, ensuring they receive proactive support and tailored solutions to meet their unique needs.
- Build a comprehensive resource centre and continuously optimise your resources to help your customers adapt: To help your customers gradually build up their confidence in using the platform, you should provide a centralised hub with FAQs, video tutorials, and best practices for customers to access ongoing support whenever they need it. The resource centre should be easily accessible, prominently linked on your site, and written in simple, non-technical language. Additionally, your resources and materials should align with their existing, familiar workflows to help your customers adapt better to eCommerce functionalities. For example, if your customers are used to ordering via phone or email, you can create tutorials that show how to replicate these steps on your eCommerce platform in a simple and intuitive way. You can offer these tutorials in multiple formats, such as short videos, downloadable PDFs, or interactive walkthroughs, so customers can engage with the materials in the way they find most comfortable. You can also optimise your onboarding process and materials to enhance their effectiveness in increasing customer familiarity with your eCommerce site.
4. Provide incentives to drive repeat orders and increase revenue per order
To enhance customer engagement in your eCommerce store, consider offering incentives to your current customers. This can motivate them to place repeat orders, discover related products, and boost their overall order value.
- Volume discounts: You can offer tiered pricing based on order volume. The more a customer purchases, the greater the discount they receive. This encourages larger orders and repeat purchases.
- Bundled products: You can promote cross-selling opportunities by offering bundled products at a discounted rate. For example, if a customer orders a specific type of machinery, offer related tools or accessories at a reduced price when purchased together.
- Exclusive access to new products: You should also provide existing customers with early access to new products or special promotions. This can make your customers feel appreciated and more inclined to make additional purchases.
- Personalised offers: Use customer data to create personalised offers based on their purchasing history. For instance, if a customer frequently buys a specific product, offer them a discount on related items.
- Post-purchase follow-up: After a customer makes a purchase, it's beneficial to reach out to them with a thank-you message and provide a discount for their next order. This helps to strengthen their positive experience and promotes the likelihood of them returning for future purchases.
5. Leverage content marketing to keep your customers informed and engaged
Content marketing plays a vital role in keeping your B2B customers informed, engaged, and loyal. Here are actionable practices you can apply:
- Create educational content: Develop high-quality, informative content that addresses the specific needs and challenges of your B2B customers. This could include whitepapers, case studies, and how-to guides that provide valuable insights into your products and industry trends. A study conducted by FocusVision revealed that the typical B2B buyer engages with 13 pieces of content throughout their buying process, highlighting the critical role of content marketing in B2B businesses.
- Develop role-specific content: You can tailor your eCommerce content to address the unique needs of different stakeholders by adopting dynamic content customisation. This approach allows your platform to display personalised, real-time content based on the user’s role and behaviour.
IBM serves as a practical illustration of how role-specific content enhances customer engagement. To improve user experience, IBM implemented dynamic content customisation with personalised content based on user roles. Software developers received access to API documentation and technical resources, whereas business executives encountered case studies and ROI calculators. This targeted approach to content delivery led to a notable increase in user engagement. While IBM is a B2B SaaS company, this lesson learnt from this success are relevant to traditional B2B companies as well.
6. Utilise an omnichannel approach to strengthen customer relationships
An omnichannel strategy means connecting with your customers across multiple platforms in a consistent way. It ensures your business is present where your customers already spend their time—whether it’s LinkedIn, Facebook, email, or other channels. It provides them with a seamless and unified experience, which boosts their satisfaction. Below are some best practices to help you implement an omnichannel strategy effectively across different platforms.
- Deliver consistent information and messaging across all channels: To build trust and authority, the information and messaging your customers receive across all channels should be aligned. This consistency is crucial, as your B2B customers often need to compare and verify information from multiple sources before making purchasing decisions. For example, if you're promoting a new product line, ensure that the key benefits, value propositions, and technical specifications are communicated consistently across your website product pages and catalogues, email campaigns, social media posts, and sales materials. Misaligned information, such as conflicting specifications between your website and catalogues, can confuse customers and lead to lost sales.
- Integrate online and offline experiences seamlessly: You can ensure a smooth customer experience by letting your customers switch effortlessly between online and offline channels. For B2B customers used to traditional sales, this flexibility offers them more options that align with their past buying habits, enhancing their overall satisfaction. Additionally, when connecting online and offline channels, it’s crucial to provide consistent information to prevent misunderstandings. For instance, if a customer finds an item in stock online and goes to pick it up, but it’s not available in-store, it can lead to frustration and loss of trust.
Watsco, a global HVAC supplier with over 500 physical locations, replaced its outdated eCommerce store by investing in Magento, a modern and scalable eCommerce platform. With an omnichannel approach, Watsco allows contractor customers to order from job sites, check real-time product availability, and choose between picking up in-store or scheduled delivery for added convenience. They maintain a consistent experience whether customers shop online or in-store. Their Baker Distributing division further improved this by personalising searches based on customer purchase history and local stock, making interactions quicker and more relevant. In just five years, these strategies have boosted Watsco’s online sales to $1.4 billion, showing how a strong omnichannel strategy can enhance customer engagement and loyalty.
Key B2B eCommerce customer engagement metrics to measure
The key difference between traditional and digital B2B customer engagement is that the engagement between customers and your eCommerce site can be tracked and measured. This offers your business accurate data, translating into valuable insights to optimise the eCommerce store. Below are some customer engagement metrics you should measure and analyse:
- Frequency and depth of platform usage: It measures how often and how extensively customers use your platform. Frequency refers to the number of times your customers log in or interact with the platform, while depth assesses the range of features or functionalities they utilise during those interactions. Suggested KPIs are the number of user sessions, average session duration, and the number of features accessed per session. By analysing these metrics, you can uncover your customers’ behaviour patterns and what features they find most valuable.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction Scores: NPS and CSAT are effective metrics that offer insights into customer satisfaction and loyalty. NPS measures how likely your customers are to recommend your company or your offerings to their colleagues and friends. Meanwhile, CSAT indicates how satisfied customers feel with a specific interaction or feature. You can collect and calculate these metrics through quick surveys at key touchpoints in the customer journey, such as post-purchase, after-support, or regular check-ins.
- Frequency of repeat purchases and the success rate of cross-selling or up-selling efforts: This measures how frequently your current B2B customers make repeat purchases or increase their order revenue. In B2B eCommerce, these metrics are crucial as they reflect how well your platform supports the ongoing needs of B2B customers with reliable performance and efficient purchasing processes.
Conclusion
Improving B2B customer engagement in the digital age is crucial for long-term growth. This article outlines 6 practical strategies to enhance B2B customer engagement on eCommerce sites. Key strategies include proactively collecting customer feedback and providing resources and ongoing support to help them adapt, optimising your eCommerce store for increased customer satisfaction, offering incentives to encourage repeat orders, and leveraging content marketing and an omnichannel approach to strengthen relationships.
To implement these strategies effectively, it’s important to work with a trusted eCommerce partner like On Tap, a member of the B2B eCommerce Association. On Tap is a leading eCommerce solution provider that offers expert consultancy and tailored solutions to help businesses improve B2B customer engagement. Contact On Tap to learn how we can help you increase customer engagement on your eCommerce site, thereby growing your business.
