Designing experiences for mobile is more than how the site adapts graphically to your mobile device. While the design is important, the best mobile experiences make it easy for mobile users to reach information that is of interest to them. Many eCommerce platforms are not built for this type of experience design. Episerver Commerce provides a strong set of tools to facilitate a powerful mobile B2B eCommerce site.
Why Mobile?
In a recent survey from Salesforce, 63% of B2B marketers said that mobile is core to their business. I would question why the number isn’t higher. A recent article from Capterra shows relevant statistics demonstrating that executives are actively using mobile devices to research B2B purchase decisions. In a report from Forrester Research in November 2014, they predict that 2015 will be the year that companies investing in mobile will break away from those who are not.
Mobile-First Design
Episerver Commerce is architected for mobile-first design. Episerver’s MVC architecture enables a clean separation between the user experience and functionality. This allows usability design to occur without hearing your developers say ‘It wasn’t built that way.’ or ‘We could do that, but it will take us 4x longer and be more expensive to maintain in the future.’
With the marketing user in mind, Episerver Commerce is to make maintaining a mobile-first design easy. You can easily type your content into the page, but it will be stored without style information being attached. This enables the style to be applied based on the design that is set up within the page template for that page type. Bottom line, you don’t need to worry about HTML and CSS. You can simply edit the text and drop in the images. You are also able to quickly preview what your page will look like on different devices.
Personalized Content
Manufacturers and B2B distributors have unique challenges when it comes to eCommerce. You are selling to someone based on your relationship with them. Certainly, many consumers have a relationship with the company they are buying from, but this takes on a different form in a B2B purchase. A B2B customer’s relationship is something to be protected. The relationship with your distributor and sales rep needs to be protected. This means that when a customer comes to your site, they need to see their specific pricing, their specific products, and experience your website in a way that is personalized for them.
While there are ways to get this done with other eCommerce platforms, Episerver was designed for personalization. Even to the extent that the site can dynamically personalize the B2B eCommerce experience based on actions the user takes on that visit.
When it comes to mobile B2B eCommerce, your mobile experience needs to offer this same level of personalization and customized value as your desktop experience. Episerver allows you to serve this same personalized experience for both your mobile and desktop users.
Content and Commerce
Using related content to drive more eCommerce revenue is a missed opportunity for B2C and B2B companies, alike. Content provides users helpful information that will assist them in their purchase research and build you up as a value-added supplier. Content also provides rich fodder for search engines to index and display your site to users who are searching for information on your products.
Manuals, Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs), and technical specs provide a unique opportunity for manufacturers to provide helpful content to their customers. In many cases, manufacturers struggle to organize this data in an easy to navigate way on their site. Even if they accomplish this it is rarely usable from mobile devices.
This challenge is made more difficult by most of the eCommerce and CMS platforms on the market. In general, you will find software that does eCommerce well or does content management well. It is quite rare to find software that does both well. Episerver does exactly that – content and eCommerce in a single platform, optimized for mobile devices and personalized for your end user.
Bringing this back to the need for mobile B2B eCommerce, you want to make it simple for users to find your manuals and tech specs, and quickly purchase your products, whether they are on your site from a tablet, phone or desktop. Each of these experiences may be customized, depending on your audience and the top priorities you identify for the users of different devices, but each should enable your customers to get needed content and order products from whatever device they are on.
Questions?
Are you looking to implement mobile B2B eCommerce and not sure where to start? We would love to learn more about your situation and help however we can. Fill out our free consultation form or call us at 414-425-4069 x3.
