If you run a Shopify store, at times you might have thought about reaching more audiences and increasing your store’s sales. While selling D2C or direct-to-customers, the average order size (average order value) is generally low and hence you need a lot of orders to generate high revenue numbers. There comes selling your products at wholesale prices.
Selling B2B on Shopify is a solid way to sell in bulk and achieve higher average order values in your store. This involves selling products in large numbers to other businesses, as businesses prefer to buy in bulk to resell later. In this article, we will see how you can leverage the most by selling B2B on Shopify, and how you can set up B2B functionalities on your existing Shopify store.
Difference between selling B2C and B2B on Shopify
Selling B2C on Shopify is quite different from selling B2B on Shopify. Let us look at the major factors differentiating selling B2B and B2C on Shopify.
Custom Pricing and Discounts
B2C: In B2C, stores generally offer standard pricing with occasional sales or discount codes to attract individual buyers.
B2B: Whereas B2B selling on Shopify requires custom pricing structures tailored to different business clients. Wholesale customers often expect volume-based discounts and special pricing tiers based on their order quantities.
Special Products for B2B Customers
B2C: In B2C e-commerce, it generally focuses on a wide range of products for general consumers.
B2B: While in B2B e-commerce transactions, there are often specialized products or bulk packages that cater specifically to the needs of businesses. This can also involve exclusive products that are only available to B2B clients.
Personalized Experience
B2C: In B2C, stores generally provide a smooth and engaging shopping experience for individual customers and it stays the same irrespective of customer’s profile.
B2B: Whereas in B2B selling on Shopify, there is an emphasis on a more personalized experience for business clients, which can include personalized pricing, specific products, bulk product packages, and more based on the business’s needs.
Payment Flexibility
B2C: In B2C, customers typically purchase products one at a time, with a simple checkout process.
B2B: B2B selling on the other hand requires you to offer more flexibility to your customers to complete their purchase payments, such as net payment terms (Net 30, Net 60). This enables them to pay for the purchase in the future once they have a running cash flow. This ease that you offer to your large customers helps you build strong business relationships with them.
Bulk Order Forms
B2C: In B2C selling, the process of completing a purchase is generally simple as customers don’t tend to buy in bulk from the stores.
B2B: Business customers often need to place large orders quickly. Shopify’s wholesale order forms allow B2B clients to add multiple products and quantities to their cart in one go which allows them to complete large purchases quickly and easily.
How to start selling B2B on Shopify
There are currently two ways through which you can sell B2B or Wholesale on Shopify. Let us now discuss the two options.
- Selling B2B on Shopify with Shopify Plus
Using the Shopify Plus plan you can incorporate a B2B section on your website and set up features like personalised pricing and discounts, wholesale/B2B sign-up form, customer-specific products, fast bulk ordering, flexible payment options and more. However, the biggest hurdle in switching to Shopify Plus is its price, especially for small to medium-sized businesses. At almost $2000 a month, you have to pay a significant amount to avail the B2B features.
Thankfully, you don’t need Shopify Plus to sell wholesale successfully. Let’s explore how you can sell wholesale on Shopify without the need for the costly Shopify Plus plan.
- Selling B2B on Shopify with Wholesale Helper apps
Wholesale Helper provides a range of apps on the Shopify app store that enables businesses to offer a personalised B2B shopping experience without needing to upgrade to a Shopify Plus subscription. These apps help in setting custom prices and discounts, manage who can see what is on their store like products, collections, and prices, and create a bulk order form to ease large ordering.
Let us now look at the apps and their functionality.
- Wholesale Pricing Discount B2B
One of the key aspects of selling wholesale on Shopify is offering personalized pricing to customers. The Wholesale Pricing Discount B2B app allows store owners to set up and offer personalized prices and discounts for specific customer groups. These discounts can be applied based on different aspects and customer parameters. The app also provides a wholesale sign-up form for onboarding new B2B customers, offers Net Payment Terms, and sets advanced shipping rates for wholesale buyers.
- Wholesale Lock Manager
If you run a Shopify store where you sell both to retail B2C and B2B customers, you may want to keep certain products that can only be seen and accessed by either your B2B or B2C customers. Using the Wholesale Lock Manager B2B app, Shopify store owners can hide their store’s content like certain products, collections, pages, prices, and even the entire storefront from specific customers. You can also password-protect your store and share secret links to specific customers, maintaining exclusivity and offering a personalized shopping experience.
- Wholesale Order Form & ReOrder
After setting discounts with Wholesale Pricing Discount and managing store content with Wholesale Lock Manager, you need to facilitate bulk ordering. Wholesale buyers prefer to purchase products in bulk quantities in one shot and take advantage of discounts associated with bulk buying. The Wholesale Order Form app helps you implement a bulk order form on your Shopify store, making it easy for bulk buyers to place large orders.
The best part about the apps is that even combined they cost less than $50 per month, and you can quickly install them from the Shopify app store and get started with setting up and selling B2B on your Shopify store.
Conclusion
Starting to sell B2B on Shopify is a smart way to expand your market reach and increase your sales by catering to business clients who buy in bulk. While Shopify Plus offers advanced features for B2B selling, it is quite expensive and may not be feasible for smaller businesses. Thankfully, you can still create a powerful wholesale experience on your Shopify store without the high costs by using Wholesale Helper apps. These apps provide essential B2B features such as custom pricing, bulk ordering, and content control, all at a fraction of the cost of Shopify Plus.
By leveraging the Wholesale Helper apps you can easily set up a customized B2B section on your Shopify store. These tools allow you to offer personalized pricing, manage access to your store’s content, and facilitate large-quantity purchases efficiently. This approach enables you to provide a seamless and professional B2B shopping experience, helping you build stronger relationships with your business clients and drive higher revenue for your store.
