Difference Between B2B and B2C Ecommerce

The eCommerce industry can be considered a vast market these days including a large customer base. It is the most adopted sector by businesses to gain profits and maximize revenue. There are two types of business marketing models including B2B and B2C used by enterprises when it comes to product manufacturing, marketing & promotion, pricing structure, and other important business practices. No matter if you are a newbie or an established business owner, you must know about both types of eCommerce models to sell something at a valuable price. Let’s get to know about them while getting details about B2B vs B2C eCommerce-  

What is B2B eCommerce?

B2B refers to a business-to-business working model that let organizations and businesses use online platforms to sell their services or products to other businesses. It also facilitates businesses to maintain relationships and all types of transactions with other businesses, retailers, suppliers, and manufacturers by using an online enterprise platform. There can be included some complex processes as well as they can handle a large volume of orders. An example of B2B eCommerce can be companies that generate raw materials and sell them to manufacturing firms.     

What is B2C eCommerce?

B2C indicates the business-to-consumer model directing to relations between vendors and their customers. In this, sellers focus on selling products and services directly to the customer base with the help of an online retail platform. This model is helpful to target a small segment of users and brand value is created by advertising and promoting the product. Nowadays, most businesses are opting for B2C eCommerce development services from eCommerce development company as it is more lucrative. A suitable example of this can be buying any product or booking a hotel or flight online.  

Differences Between B2B and B2C eCommerce Model 

It is seen that the B2B eCommerce business model is inclined to be more intricate than the B2C model. A B2B platform uses online platforms to sell its goods and services to other existing businesses, whereas B2C businesses target customers directly. A manufacturing business with a lengthy process can be a good example of a B2B model, on the other hand, the B2C model doesn’t go through a lengthy process as they deal with the customers only. 

These both are different; hence, it becomes necessary to choose one before getting eCommerce software development services. Various factors represent the difference between B2B vs B2C eCommerce, let’s look at them-    

  • Marketing Content & Approach 

When it comes to purchasing products and services, businesses always tend to make bulk purchases in comparison to customers. Hence, B2B eCommerce demands to indulge in logic and more product research including comprehensive product information like FAQs, guides, videos & posts to get more data. B2B marketing is more focused on building a strong bond with the customers, therefore, the integration of chatbots and click-to-call buttons is a more important approach to apply for building personal customer relationships.      

On the other hand, B2C marketing is completely aimed at getting the attention of customers.  Thus, it is comprised of attractive, flashy, and appealing marketing content with the right approach including paid ads, influencer marketing, and content marketing to grab the interest of people. B2C is also focused on enabling fast point of sale and relies on customer data to provide personalized recommendations and discounts. Here, enterprises need to emphasize web designing services while creating the website to grab more customers.   

  • Consumer Base 

While opting for a top eCommerce development company, you must know about who your target audiences are because Both B2B and B2C have different clientele. B2B firms target other businesses to sell their goods, while B2C provides services to individual customers. Here, the thing that differs is the requirements generated by businesses and consumers. Businesses have larger requirements as they produce goods. 

For example, an IT company will order a bulk of chairs at a time, whereas individual customers will tend to do limited purchasing in B2C eCommerce. Though B2B takes a longer purchase process rather than B2C. In B2C, firms make large investments but frequent purchases and in B2C, customers make small investments but frequent purchases.         

  • Order Range

The huge difference between B2B Vs B2C eCommerce is order size. B2B organizations have limited customers but they do bulk purchases. These firm also sells goods in high volume; hence they provide the least pricing structure. Some organizations set a limit for purchasing to provide the minimum pricing level where customers have to buy those number of products to get huge discounts. This condition only applies to B2B eCommerce as B2C eCommerce doesn’t have such a minimum. In B2C eCommerce, firms can only set the maximum limit of the products on the specific high-demand commodities purchased by a particular user. They also have to fulfill the order request accurately and fast.         

  • Support 

B2B eCommerce firms need to have more advanced support teams to handle the intricate business processes and relations, getting assistance from a website development company is not enough for them. The support from the team strengthens them with various aspects such as 24*7 chatbots, community forums, FAQ pages, agents, and other helpful videos. In B2B, there are established long-term relationships with a high CLV (customer lifetime value), hence they prefer robust support infrastructure to sort the problems.   

Whereas B2C eCommerce companies require a support team lesser as there is no such issue to solve because their customer base has easy queries. They have enough FAQs and chatbots to manage those doubts or issues including questions relevant to product knowledge and return policies.   

  • Website Design 

Both B2B and B2C organizations have different requirements when it comes to web designing services because of their customer base. B2B eCommerce includes maximum corporate audiences who prefer responsive and simple-to-use homepages rather than bright and flashy designs. A B2B website also needs to have detailed product information including images, videos, blogs, etc. to help the corporate professionals in the research procedure. Alongside, they also integrate click-to-call buttons and live chat windows to help customers easily find the products and support from the team. 

While the B2C retailers choose to design their homepages as vibrant, interactive, and loud to grab attention. They include limited product information such as price, features, and color options. The B2C websites have a preference for fast checkout procedures and self-services.    

  • Pricing Structure 

B2B eCommerce organizations have a flexible pricing structure for their customer base as they order in Bulk. On the other hand, B2C organizations include a fixed price for their products and customers can find suitable products as per their budget by using the sort and filter feature comprised at the time of having website development services. B2B organizations only have minimum pricing levels focusing on long-term product sales including the high CLV of their customer base. 

For instance, a B2B organization can sell any of the required products to a growing firm at a low price expecting to have more business with them in the future. They also offer other companies customized products comprising microservices. Due to this, their price can also differ according to the customer base.   

In B2C eCommerce, they offer less customized and easy products with a fixed price. Thus, there is no price alteration due to any type of product customization. In another form, they offer discounts and specialized deals to frequent customers to increase user interaction and engagement.   

The Final Verdict 

Above we have described all the major differences between B2B and B2C eCommerce models. Companies can choose between them considering the requirements of their targeted audience base. Selecting the suitable one will help them in gaining high customer engagement and profits faster. If you are also planning to launch a B2B or B2C website, you can hire eCommerce developers who will help you to get the one with a smooth storefront. No matter, if you are going for B2B or B2C model, the only thing you must consider is customers. Though these two also have some similarities but develop the website by keeping in the mind the differences such as design, content, and tech stack.