Our constant analysis of the existing and new eCommerce solutions on the market – in general – and in the context of evaluations for our customers – leads us this time to a representative whom we know well from the B2C environment, about whom we have not yet reported. One that has become an indispensable part of the professional B2C world and is now knocking louder and clearer on the door of the B2B world in the B2B sector as well. We are talking about Shopify (in the Plus version).
By the way, this is exactly the path Salesforce has taken in the past, which has positioned itself in the B2B eCommerce world with a lot of effort with a new solution – but in short, it only makes sense for customers with a complete Salesforce universe. Other representatives, such as Emporix, take a different approach and offer B2B and B2C eCommerce on modern MACH architecture within one solution, which is an exciting constellation for many companies.
But back to Shopify Plus – and why we have dealt intensively with this solution, which has often been ridiculed from a B2B point of view in the past.
We are observing in the market that many B2B companies want to open a new channel for a new customer group in one form or another with a B2C shop. Their existing B2B solution is not flexible enough with the processes that are deeply integrated into the (B2B) ERP and are not “marketing-like” enough. A lean, cost-effective B2C eCommerce solution is intended to enable a quick start into the end customer world. This is primarily intended to gain experience and at the same time ensure scalability for later expansion stages.
In this application scenario, Shopify has already made it to our evaluation recommendation once in a balanced consideration of functional coverage, a good match in terms of cloud-native SaaS, flexible tech stack and, above all, with a short time-to-market (including low project costs) and payable license costs. In another case, we got to know Shopify very deeply in a proof of concept through the integration of a central, external business service from the implementation side.
And all of a sudden, we are faced with the serious question of B2B eCommerce: Is Shopify Plus a valid candidate that we can recommend to customers with a clear conscience in the event of an evaluation or, in the case of implementation, can implement it ourselves with manageable risk in the usual quality?
The “Shopify Plus B2B Series Resource Hub” offers a good and structured introduction to the Shopify B2B world for all interested parties and is also a convincing statement that Shopify has many ambitions here – with good videos and additional extensive FAQs about it: https://experience.shopify.com/B2B-Series
This provides information on the most important available B2B features and allows you to form your own opinion. The most relevant points for us are:
- Domain Model: Understanding and Interplay of Company-Location-Customer-Catalog
- B2B Early Login: How it works, activation and effects
- Location Selection: Initial choice for current shopping session & options for customization within the checkout
- Custom Shipping Address at Checkout: Enabling Other Addresses and Data Storage
- Payment Terms: Creation and display of payment terms in the checkout
- Payment Reminder Email: Management of Reminder Emails
- Order Submission: Submission of a draft order for review and follow-up processes
- Order History: Ordering of locations and further promotions, dealing with the “New Customer Accounts”
- Reorder: Possibilities for reordering, dealing with the “New Customer Accounts”
- Account Management: Editing profile settings, dealing with the “New Customer Accounts”
- Vaulted Credit Cards: Storage of Credit Card to Location, Handling Shopify Payment as a Payment Provider
- Quick Order List: Tabular listing of different product variants with direct shopping cart add-on option, insertion via product template, handling of original add-to-cart logic
- Draft Order: Handling of draft orders – initiated by the customer or a sales rep via the Shopify backend, reservation of items, possibilities of sharing
- Custom Product Assortment: Creation of specific product assortments via catalogs, includes and excludes, assignment to company locations
- Custom pricing: flat-rate surcharges/discounts via catalogs, definition for individual products, pricing logic for multiple catalogs
- Quantity Rules: Dealing with minimum/maximum quantity, defining steps to increase quantities
- Volume pricing: display of gradations, logic of graduated prices
We have also been waiting very eagerly to see what Shopify will launch in its annual big announcement of the Winter Edition 2024 (end of January) regarding B2B:
https://www.shopify.com/editions/winter2024#b2b-sales-rep-permissions
Conclusion of the Winter Edition 2024 regarding B2B: the development and the resulting offer of Shopify is already going very much in the desired direction, even if a few things like the trade theme for B2B are only an announcement for the time being, and only later can it be checked how good the thing really is (= whether the Liquid variant will be relevant for B2B at all – the only valid variant so far for B2B has been the headless variant with Hydrogen and Oxygen).
What has also developed well and makes us very positive are the expansion options: Even if certain functionalities are not yet available in the storefront as desired (hopefully they will come with the trade theme mentioned), the APIs already provide a development of the classic B2B use cases we examined!
Encapsulated “seamless” functionalities can be introduced via your own apps (and that works brilliantly!).
In addition, there is the app cosmos, which already offers a lot of “additional” things in the direction of B2B.
In the interim conclusion, this sounds very good – but we wouldn’t be diselva if we didn’t go one step deeper. And that’s what we’ll do in the next post Shopify for B2B eCommerce – Part 2 of 2. In it, we shed light on how Shopify performs in some classic B2B key criteria. And draw an overall conclusion that goes beyond the functional requirements.
Until then, happy eCommerce!
… and if you are also facing an eCommerce evaluation and are wondering whether Shopify fits your requirements, then feel free to get in touch!