What Is B2B Ecommerce? Examples and How to Start

Want to break into a multi-trillion dollar industry? B2B ecommerce is the way to go. Learn how to start your B2B ecommerce business today with this guide.

B2B ecommerce is the process of a business marketing and selling products to other businesses online. 

The goal is simple: expand customer reach and reduce cost to serve to drive more revenue for your business. 

But how do you start a business in B2B ecommerce, and what does the future hold? 

If you aren’t familiar with this ecommerce model, don’t worry. This guide will take you through how it works and how to get set up on a B2B ecommerce platform, as well as some successful B2B ecommerce examples to inspire your own operations.

How B2B ecommerce works

Business-to-business (or B2B) refers to the sale of products and services directly between two businesses. 

As a business model, B2B differs significantly from B2C, in which businesses sell directly to consumers. B2B ecommerce involves transactions between a manufacturer and wholesaler, or a wholesaler and a retailer, through an online sales portal.

B2B ecommerce is one of the fastest-growing sales models. Some estimates value the US B2B ecommerce market at over $2.5 trillion, taking up 14% of total B2B sales.

Innovation and technology from B2B ecommerce platforms have helped drive the movement. B2B commerce traditionally involved labor-intensive, manual sales and marketing processes. The introduction of digital commerce helps B2B companies reduce costs and improve efficiency through ecommerce automation.

B2B sellers work with:

• Wholesalers
• Large retailers
• Organizations such as schools or nonprofits 
• Resellers

Buyers and sellers can now meet in one digital marketplace, placing and managing orders from their mobile phones and creating new opportunities for businesses to connect with distributors and suppliers.

Key advantages of B2B ecommerce include:

• Automated sales processes between businesses, suppliers, and distributors
• Reduced infrastructure and overhead costs 
• Less need for intermediaries
• Higher growth prospects
• Ability to reach a mass market at scale
• Omnichannel branded presence available 24/7
• Better partner relationships
• High employee productivity 

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed many weaknesses in supply chains, and many flaws in B2B workflows. The silver lining was the move to online selling. While it may seem daunting to move your entire B2B business online, those who do can reap the benefits of better customer experience, streamlined ordering, and new revenue streams for their company.

Types of B2B ecommerce

If you’re just starting out in B2B ecommerce, you’ll likely fall into one of the following four categories. Each has its pros and cons, and many businesses operate in multiple categories simultaneously. 

B2B2C

In B2B2C retail, one business works with another business to sell its products or services. For example, a B2B2C business may manufacture a product and sell it to another business that will market and sell the product to consumers. 

A key difference between B2B2C and wholesale is that the customer-facing storefront retains the branding of the B2B2C business, not of the intermediary business that handles sales to consumers.

Wholesale

A wholesale business sells goods in bulk to other businesses who then sell them to consumers at retail prices. 

If you’re a wholesale supplier, buyer-oriented B2B marketplaces are a good way to advertise your products to buyers and retailers with less marketing effort. In buyer-oriented marketplaces, there are many buyers and fewer sellers.

Manufacturer

Manufacturers produce goods in large amounts and sell them to other suppliers, wholesalers, or manufacturers. For example, a manufacturer might produce specialty shoelaces. Those shoelaces may then be sold to a luxury shoe manufacturer.

With the changing times, manufacturers are tasked with meeting digital demand. Wholesalers, suppliers, other B2B entities, and consumers are looking for increased flexibility in how they purchase manufactured items. Businesses increasingly expect manufacturers to offer online transactions with access to personalized features like pricing, production schedule, or sizing. 

Distributor

Distributors take care of packaging, shipping, and marketing, which a manufacturer may not want to do in-house. Manufacturers have the option of partnering with distributors to sell their products. 

A manufacturer and distributor partnership can be created online. By conducting business through an online platform, the manufacturer and distributor can achieve faster, more streamlined supply chains to meet or surpass customer expectations.

Take Fulfillment by Amazon as an example. Today, many new and established businesses are opting to outsource their fulfillment operations to cost-effective ecommerce giants like Amazon. 

Stages of a B2B business

No single B2B business journey is the same, but there are a few phases almost every B2B business goes through as it grows. Here’s a look at how a business goes from a startup to a mature and profitable operation. 

Startup

Think of the startup phase as the spark phase, when all ideas are fair game. At this stage, you’ve gone through the ideation process and have made a firm choice to start your B2B ecommerce business. You’re testing the market by bringing your idea to life, and getting those first few sales in. 

The startup stage is the feedback stage. As you make sales—or fail to—and take in market feedback, this is the perfect time to be nimble and readjust to meet market demand. 

There are several relevant key goals during the startup phase, including: 

• Validating your minimum viable product through sales
• Ensuring your startup idea solves a problem and offers value
• Figuring out your total addressable market (TAM)
• Creating brand awareness

Reaching these goals isn’t going to happen without your fair share of startup challenges. At this stage, you may find out that your product has flopped and that your audience isn’t interested in buying what you’re selling. 

On the other hand, the complete opposite could happen: Demand for your product could be so high that you run out of the few goods you created for testing. As you scramble to create more, consumers get turned off by your out-of-stock announcement. Admittedly, this scenario is often the exception rather than the rule.

In the beginning, most businesses struggle to make sales and gain traction—but that’s okay. It doesn’t necessarily mean your business idea isn’t viable. As you listen to feedback, experiment with different iterations of your product, and sell to different segments of your market, you’ll eventually start to see growth. This takes us to the next stage. 

Growth

At the growth stage, a few things are starting to come together for you. Your sales are increasing, they’re more predictable, and new customers discover you daily. 

Here’s where you may start getting some room to experiment with offers, possible partnerships, and the chance to reinvest in the highest-ROI areas of the business. In the growth stage you’re also constantly revisiting your systems and how you deal with supply chains, and reimagining your approach to operations. 

Some goals at the growth stage are: 

• Seeking additional investor funding (if that’s part of your growth strategy)
• Hiring key employees 
• Continuing to build supplier relationships
• Experimenting with B2B marketing tactics

Growth can be painful: Markets change quickly, and your businesses can be vulnerable to changing demands, costly mistakes, or fierce competition. Yet if done correctly, the growth stage eventually gets your business to the point where it’s ready to expand more aggressively. 

Expansion

The expansion stage is where you can expect hockey stick growth—that is, growth is only going up according to your sales charts as you boost cash flow, move beyond breaking even, and diversify your distribution channels. 

Depending on the needs of the market as well as the needs of your company, some common expansion goals can be:

• Hiring top-notch talent
• Developing a sustainable customer-support strategy
• Creating a more sophisticated omnichannel marketing experience
• Maintaining growth each quarter

Still, there are plenty of challenges at the expansion stage. Competition is likely fierce, you’re fighting to maintain market share, and revenue relies on critical budgeting decisions. But now you have resources to invest in overcoming those challenges and improving your offerings strategically. 

Maturity

At the maturity stage, your sales are predictable, you can rely on future forecasts to maintain cash flow and growth, and you can hire as needed. 

At this stage, you’re likely:

• Looking to expand your product offering
• Testing new markets
• Investing in new technology
• Considering potential exit strategies
• Expanding your marketing campaigns to maintain growth 

The maturity stage is where you precisely determine your profit margins. You’re familiar with your target market and know what they like, which means you constantly delight your customers with great customer support and a valuable product. 

As a business owner, you have the choice to pivot, try something new, plan your exit strategy, or test new approaches to how you do business. At this stage, you’ve hit a huge milestone. You’ve made it. This means you can breathe easier and lean on reliable day-to-day operations, established business systems, and routines that ensure profitability. 

B2B ecommerce examples

In B2B ecommerce—where $12 trillion is on the line annually—finding a shortcut on the path to hard-won experience is invaluable. 

As Warren Buffett puts it: “It’s good to learn from your mistakes. It’s better to learn from other people’s mistakes.” Better still is learning from other people’s successes. 

Industry West

Industry West’s journey to B2B success took a decisive turn when they migrated from Adobe Commerce to Shopify. 

Facing challenges with their highly variable catalog and complex B2B ordering processes, Industry West partnered with Shopify agency Domaine to reimagine their digital presence. The results were transformative: 

• B2B web-order revenue soared by 90%
• Average order value increased by 20%
• New trade accounts jumped by 10%

What makes Industry West's story interesting is how they merged the worlds of B2C and B2B seamlessly. Rather than creating separate experiences, they recognized that whether someone is buying a single chair for their home or furnishing an entire corporate office, they all start their journey the same way: through beautiful imagery on Instagram or Pinterest. 

The new platform allowed Industry West to create sophisticated product galleries with multilevel zoom capabilities and dynamic product displays that accurately represent furniture dimensions, while simultaneously handling complex B2B requirements like company-specific pricing and bulk ordering.

💡Read Industry West’s story

Lulu and Georgia 

After years of struggling with Adobe Commerce, luxury furniture retailer Lulu and Georgia turned to Shopify to solve critical growth challenges. With over 40,000 SKUs, they faced significant hurdles:

• Site performance issues and downtime
• Inability to scale during high-traffic events
• Limited automation capabilities
• Lack of a robust app ecosystem

After migrating to Shopify, the brand experienced immediate benefits. The platform's stability allowed the team to focus on creating better assets and products rather than fixing technical issues. 

The extensive app ecosystem simplified everything from promotions to gift cards, while a unified checkout seamlessly served both B2B and DTC customers. Now, Lulu and Georgia is expanding into 3D technology and enhanced B2B offerings, proving that the right foundation enables endless possibilities.

💡 Read Lulu and Georgia’s story

Daily Harvest

Founded in 2015, Daily Harvest revolutionized healthy eating by delivering organic, sustainably grown fruits and vegetables directly to consumers. After growing from a DTC success to securing retail partnerships with giants like Target and Kroger, they faced limitations with their homegrown tech stack:

• Legacy systems becoming increasingly complex
• Engineering resources tied up in daily fixes
• Limited ability to scale operations
• Need for omnichannel flexibility

The brand migrated to Shopify to handle these issues and saw positive results. Their new Liquid website enabled faster innovation and easier content management across all customer touchpoints. Shopify's app ecosystem helped streamline operations, while Shopify B2B supported their retail expansion. 

Now, Daily Harvest is exploring loyalty programs and enhanced discovery features, proving that the right technology partner can transform both direct-to-consumer and B2B operations.

💡 Read Daily Harvest’s story

Carrier 

As a global leader in HVAC and building solutions, Carrier faced a critical challenge: launching ecommerce sites for their diverse customer base across 180 countries took up to 12 months and cost $2 million per site. 

Their mission to create frictionless, self-service user experiences was hindered by numerous obstacles::

• Complex, time-consuming deployments
• Prohibitive costs per website launch
• Multiple customer segments with unique needs
• Legacy systems limiting innovation

Through their OneCommerce initiative built on Shopify's platform, Carrier revolutionized their digital approach. Now, new ecommerce experiences launch in just 30 days at $100,000 per site, a 90% reduction in time and massive cost-savings. 

This digital transformation allows Carrier to test billion-dollar ideas at startup speed while maintaining enterprise-grade capabilities, proving that even century-old companies can lead in digital innovation.

💡 Read Carrier’s story 

B2B ecommerce marketing tactics

1. Get your pricing right

Today's B2B pricing must be adaptable and customer-centric. Beyond traditional cost-plus pricing, consider dynamic models that adjust to market conditions in real time.

Structure prices using tactics like anchoring (showing original higher prices) or per-user pricing for scalability. Key metrics to track include customer acquisition cost, lifetime value, and price elasticity. Avoid the "race to the bottom" mentality and focus on communicating value rather than competing solely on price.

2. Offer self-service

The future of B2B commerce is self-service, driven by millennial decision-makers who grew up with seamless digital experiences. 

A successful B2B self-service strategy requires investing in an innovative platform, prioritizing ease of use, and personalizing storefronts—all which can be achieved with Shopify. According to TrustRadius, 100% of B2B buyers want to self-serve at least part of their buying journey, making it essential for businesses to adapt.

3. Sell cross-border

The World Trade Organization predicts steady growth in cross-border commerce, making international B2B expansion increasingly attractive. 

Beyond market access, businesses benefit from economies of scale and the ability to offset regional economic fluctuations. Critical success factors include thorough market research, localized websites and support, compliant payment systems, and an understanding of cultural nuances. Platforms like Shopify offer built-in features to simplify global selling.

4. Personalize the customer journey 

Modern B2B ecommerce demands both digital efficiency and a human touch. 

Personalize the customer journey with market-specific pricing, payment options, and product catalogs, while empowering sales teams to nurture strategic relationships. 

Help reps stay ahead by providing comprehensive customer data and automated reordering tools. The most successful B2B relationships blend self-service convenience with proactive sales support that anticipates customer needs and provides timely solutions.

5. Optimize for mobile 

With 80% of B2B sales moving online by 2025 and millennials comprising 70% of buyers, B2B mobile commerce is no longer optional. 

Modern buyers expect consumer-grade purchasing experiences on their phones. They are looking for lightning-fast page loads (under 1.2 seconds), simple mobile payments like Shop Pay and Apple Pay, and intuitive interfaces. Companies that resist mobile transformation risk losing customers, as 87% of buyers would switch suppliers for a better digital experience.

6. Invest in search engine optimization (SEO)

Traditional SEO metrics don't apply to B2B. Low-volume, technical keywords often signal serious buyers with specific needs. 

Build content for multiple stakeholders across the five-month average B2B buying cycle, from educational blog posts to detailed product documentation. While immediate conversion rates from B2B SEO may be lower than B2C, search remains a top revenue-driver, with 23% of marketers ranking it as their most effective channel.

7. List on marketplaces

B2B marketplaces have become the fastest-growing sales channel, generating $260 billion in 2023. With 60% of business buyers now using these platforms, they offer instant access to motivated customers and simplified operations. 

While marketplace fees can impact margins, benefits include increased buyer trust, streamlined purchasing processes, and built-in international reach. Leading platforms like Faire and Amazon Business also provide valuable extras like payment processing and fulfillment services.

8. Balance DTC and wholesale

Leading brands like Brooklinen, Momofuku, and Supergoop demonstrate the power of a hybrid approach, combining direct sales with wholesale distribution. 

A multichannel strategy provides stability and scale while requiring minimal capital investment. Success requires careful planning: Set strategic minimum order quantities, offer flexible payment terms, and partner with 3PLs for efficient fulfillment.

Modern B2B wholesalers differentiate through both digital excellence and personal service, as today’s buyers expect seamless experiences backed by industry expertise.

📚 Learn: 16 B2B Ecommerce Examples and What You Can Learn From Them

B2B ecommerce myths 

The B2B ecommerce industry is booming as B2B buyers get more comfortable making large transactions to the tune of $50,000 or more, without the need to meet face to face with suppliers. Still, despite the data, many B2B ecommerce myths still abound. 

You might be familiar with the more common ones, including: 

• B2B companies aren’t able to offer key features that support the buying process.
• Digital B2B purchases only work for low-ticket transactions.
• B2B companies aren’t working with sophisticated digital buying channels.
• B2B digital marketplaces are nice-to-haves and not necessary for success.

Each of these myths couldn’t be further from the truth. The bottom line is that the digital approach to large B2B transactions only streamlines the supplier and buyer relationship. Suppliers are investing heavily in top-of-the-line websites where buyers can order thousands or even millions of dollars worth of products without needing to travel, meet in person, or wait to hear back on key production and scheduling information. 

Business-to-business relationships are being revolutionized. The reality is that about 65% of B2B companies wholeheartedly embrace digital channels as a means for doing business—and doing it well. So well, according to McKinsey, it’s now the preferred way of doing business for a majority of B2B sellers. 

Using a B2B ecommerce platform

While many people think a B2B ecommerce platform is just a tool for listing products and accepting payments, Shopify offers so much more. It acts as a control center, where you manage everything from sales to commerce operations, whether it's for B2B and wholesale customers or a DTC website.

What sets Shopify apart is our unique combination of platform strengths. For example, your B2B ecommerce site on Shopify can:

• Deliver the same seamless, intuitive buying experiences your B2B customers enjoy in DTC
• Help wholesale buyers find products with our innovative search and customized navigation
• Integrate customer data from your ERP or CRM through reliable, flexible APIs
• Offer flexible payment options with different payment providers and manual invoicing
• Drive conversions with powerful checkout promotions

Moving beyond traditional methods like faxes, phone calls, and spreadsheets, businesses can now harness specialized wholesale features to accelerate growth. 

If you're getting into wholesale ecommerce, a B2B ecommerce solution can drive sales by helping you:

• Create custom pricing and discounts for specific customer segments
• Automate and review new buyer signups
• Allow B2B customers to buy, track, and reorder products easily
• Sync inventory, purchase orders, and customers with existing systems

In the end, Shopify's B2B platform brings together our strengths in innovation, flexibility, and ease of use to manage everything from one place, with endless growth opportunities. You can set up a password-protected and branded B2B online store today, no coding required.

B2B ecommerce trends

Navigating B2B ecommerce means understanding how B2B brands succeed. Let’s talk about some B2B ecommerce trends we’re looking at for the future.

Give B2B ecommerce the B2C treatment

The rise of ecommerce has led to massive shifts in the overall B2B marketplace. Some of those changes include a host of best practices adopted from the world of B2C:

• High-quality product images and videos
• Robust onsite search with visual merchandising
• Social proof in the form of reviews and ratings
• Flexible shipping options and order updates
• Personalization based on past purchases
• Meant-for-mobile storefronts
• Online catalogs for easy browsing
• Real-time product and stock availability
• Customer service via chat and phone support 

Thankfully, meeting the challenges of B2B ecommerce doesn’t require guesswork. Business customers rank the following B2C capabilities as increasingly essential to their online shopping experience.

Enhance your onsite search functionality

If you sell a large catalog of thousands of car parts, it won’t be easy for customers to find what they’re seeking on your B2B ecommerce website in a pinch.

In the B2C world, site search is now a necessary function of a website. Just like an in-store sales clerk, it aids customers in finding and buying the right products. That’s because customers who use site search are almost two times more likely to convert on your site, and they can generate upward of 40% of your site’s revenue.

Enhancing your onsite search for B2B customers is equally important, and helps streamline the sales process—empowering your sales reps to work in a more consultative rather than transactional role. 

The V-Belt Guys website isn’t exactly sexy or content-heavy. But it doesn’t need to be. Instead, it puts first things first.

Their search strategy includes three separate invitations to submit a query on the homepage, plus word autocompletion and the ability to preview product images and prices while you type.

A customer can select “See all results” to get a full-screen experience, complete with price comparisons, bigger images, and detailed product descriptions.

To increase value, V-Belt Guys provides their visitors with search elements like:

• Part number
• Manufacturer or brand
• Part or full product title
• Product type (e.g., product use cases)
• Item details (e.g., width, function, and number of teeth)

This important feature will assure customers that your B2B ecommerce business can help them find exactly what they need in a hurry. That’s a value proposition that generates repeat purchases—something that’s getting harder to do online.

Make wholesale easy on traditional customers

Some business buyers, like independent retail stores, small- to medium-sized franchises, and B2C outlets, prefer simplicity to the bells and whistles of B2C ecommerce.

Catering to these buyers means offering them a digital version of the spreadsheets and faxed order forms they’re used to. The finer details of online B2C can become a distraction and even a detriment.

“The greatest myth around wholesale ecommerce is that it’s difficult to get your sales channel up and running,” says Pierre Verrier, director of design and development at Noticed. “Using Shopify and the Wholesale Channel is a fast and convenient way to get selling and give your customers the optimal portal to streamline their ordering process.”

For example, The Elephant Pants strikes a similar balance between B2B and B2C through their wholesale ecommerce platform on Shopify. This includes a number of the B2C elements already mentioned—namely, an easy-to-find search bar, quick access to previous orders, an online catalog for browsing, and transparent pricing:

“Initially, some of our retail partners expressed resistance to an online wholesale portal,” explains James Brooks, CFO at The Elephant Pants. “For us, the move was about replacing our pieced-together method of phone calls and QuickBooks with something faster. For them, human guidance was still important.

“We’re in it together with our sellers. We advise them on purchasing and marketing, spec sheets, and POS displays.

“Because supporting them was crucial, we brought on a great sales rep and merged the physical with the digital.

“Today, we help 80% to 90% of our buyers create orders through the wholesale channel. The terms are determined on a buyer-by-buyer basis. As a result, wholesale has doubled for us over the last two months.”

Sometimes B2B needs to offer more than B2C—sometimes, less.

In the case of resellers, small to medium franchises, and B2C outlets, less equals more. The simpler the order process, the more traditional your site should be. If your orders get complex—e.g., with customizations, multiple variants, or fulfillment options—the B2C treatment shines.

Everything comes down to the customers you serve. But before we turn to serving the people who can make deals, we must examine the people who can break them.

Read more: Wholesale Ecommerce: What is It and How to Start?

Generate B2B leads with agnosticism

Over 10 years ago, Seth Godin introduced the idea of permission marketing to describe the “privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them.”

Even though Godin coined the term, the ethos of permission was far from original. Being successful in life and in marketing have always had value at their core. Not value in the product, per se—that should go without saying—but value in advance of the product.

As far back as the early 1930s, BBDO VP and creative director John Caples wrote:

“The best advertisements appeal to the reader’s self-interest—that is, advertisements based on reader benefits. They offer readers something they want—and can get from you.”

What was true then is still true today. Only more so.

As applied to B2B, this means generating leads through supplier-agnostic sales collateral. That might sound like a strange concept, but customers are inherently self-interested. The traditional method of leading with content that elevates your product, solution, or value proposition makes it about you.

The book The Challenger Customer frames the issue powerfully: “This is a big shift for marketers. For the majority of content types you produce, following this content strategy will shift the focus from supplier-centric to supplier-agnostic.”

In place of supplier-centric collateral, lead generation should focus on two types of problems central to your target customers’ own business:

1. Problems they’re aware of
2. Problems they don’t yet know exist

Businesses can use a content-based strategy to funnel customers’ different pain points to their products. Think of your content funnel like this:

1. Understand: to educate buyers
2. Select: to guide purchase decisions
3. Implement: for post-transaction support

When a new customer arrives at your site, they can learn more about their problem, as well as potential solutions. Instead of pitching products, your goal is to foster awareness in the buyer so that they place real value on solving their problem.

Stories are often more powerful than feature lists and product specifications, which is why a great deal of the B2B marketing at Shopify is customer-centric rather than product-centric.

Instead of making the product the hero, our aim in storytelling is to make the business the hero.

By relentlessly zeroing in on the problems your market faces, you force yourself not only to turn away from self-centered sales and marketing, but to earn your future customer’s “permission” before the sales process begins.

“Leads from those [content] initiatives were nurtured with in-depth educational content to help them understand the value of collaboration and how to evaluate different solutions,” says Amy Barzdukas, CMO of WiTricity. “This approach enabled us to build a trusted relationship for traditional, sales-focused follow-up, like demos and product details.

“The benefits of creating content for each stage of the buyer’s journey are shorter sales cycles, higher conversion rates, and increases in our marketing-sourced pipeline and revenue.”

Success means getting “permission” at the top of the funnel, and only then progressing down the funnel with collateral that sells more explicitly.

Humanize your B2B through social media

Despite its undeniable rise in B2C ecommerce, social media has remained largely a mystery to B2B businesses. Networks like Facebook, Instagram, and even LinkedIn are primarily viewed as direct-to-consumer channels.

While social media may not work for direct sales in B2B, it is a powerful source for both outreach and creating the kind of consensus that B2B decision-making necessitates. Why? Because consensus is about people—and people connect with people.

“Social selling,” note Laurence Minsky and Keith A. Quesenberry in their Harvard Business Review article, “concentrates on producing focused content and providing one-to-one communication between the salesperson and the buyer.… [T]he goal is for the rep to form a relationship with each prospect, providing suggestions and answering questions rather than building an affinity for the organization’s brand.”

Price with both automation and negotiation

According to Forrester research, 74% of B2B buyers now research “at least half of their work purchases online.” And 53% complete those purchases online as well.

Today’s B2B buyers insist that B2B ecommerce businesses match B2C companies like Amazon by incorporating the B2C tenets of price transparency, immediacy, and convenience into their core buyer experiences.

The keyword in Forrester’s appraisal is “price.”

The strategy is to use price personalization that’s automated (i.e., dynamic) for buyers in the research phase, and negotiated for those closer to purchase.

All of this is good news for B2C merchants thinking about moving into B2B or wholesale. Instead of recreating the wheel, a compelling B2B site should integrate the best practices your existing site already provides.

To segment the two audiences, Shopify makes creating multiple storefronts easy. Plus, apps like Locksmith let you password-protect specific product collections and create subscriber-only sales and content. 

For automatic pricing, Shopify Scripts offers a simple solution by removing the need for discount codes. Scripts can be used to automatically adjust prices in real time based on factors like quantity, size, customer tags, and product combinations:

For negotiated deals, pricing must be tailored on a buyer-by-buyer basis. This includes:

• Creating multiple price lists for fixed, percentage, or volume discounts
• Applying those lists to individual customers or groups
• Setting minimum, maximum, and quantity increments per product
• Establishing minimum purchase amounts storewide or per customer
• Reviewing draft orders before invoicing for negotiated deals
• Integrating customer loyalty and reward programs automatically

The central theme is personalization: the flexibility to allow different customers to see and select different pricing.

To accomplish this, Shopify’s wholesale channel has three types of pricing lists, which can be used to create as many lists as your business needs. Each list can then be applied to individual customers or customer groups—e.g., “Gold-level-customer” and other tags.

These types of features are why the most successful B2B brands are moving toward cloud-based commerce platforms. They help support new strategies and scale operations. 

For all its complexity, the opportunities in B2B are enormous. Succeeding online means taking advantage of an emerging world that mixes B2C best practices with both traditional and nontraditional B2B tactics.

Go headless

The B2B ecommerce sector is experiencing a significant shift toward headless commerce, with data showing remarkable adoption rates. According to a 2023 IDC survey, while 29% of enterprises currently use full-stack platforms, an overwhelming 91% plan to transition to headless solutions. 

The trend is driven by changing B2B buyer demographics, with millennials who expect seamless digital experiences. However, businesses are adopting varying degrees of headless approaches, from fully decoupled architectures to hybrid solutions. 

While headless offers benefits like extensive customization and faster market deployment, companies must carefully weigh the increased complexity and resource requirements against their specific business needs.

Start selling B2B today with Shopify 

As you can see, B2B ecommerce is a great way to find new customers and increase sales for your business. Whether you’re building an online storefront, improving inventory management, or streamlining your recording process, a B2B ecommerce platform can help you get there. 

Shopify hosts a large ecosystem for customer support, and award-winning Shopify Agency Partners, ready to guide you at every step of your journey.

Those are just two of the reasons—along with a dedicated wholesale channel for B2B sales—our merchants are growing 120% year over year on average.

FAQ on B2B ecommerce

What's the difference between B2B and B2C ecommerce?

While B2B ecommerce involves one business buying from another business, B2C ecommerce involves an individual buying from a business.

How do I start a B2B ecommerce company?

To start a B2B ecommerce company, you’ll first need to decide what you want to sell and evaluate whether there’s market demand. You’ll also need to set up an ecommerce website to list the products you’ll be selling.

Which is more profitable, B2B or B2C?

B2C sales are only about a third of the size of B2B sales, making B2B ecommerce the more profitable model in terms of global gross merchandise volume.

Is B2B ecommerce growing?

Yes, B2B ecommerce is growing and is expected to continue growing in the coming years. According to a report by Statista, B2B ecommerce sales are projected to surpass $1.8 trillion in the US alone by 2023. The COVID-19 pandemic also accelerated the pace of B2B ecommerce growth as more businesses turned to online channels to sell and purchase goods and services. The convenience, cost-efficiency, and speed of B2B ecommerce make it an attractive option for businesses of all sizes. Businesses are also adopting B2B ecommerce to expand their customer base and reach new markets.