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, driving more revenue for your business. For B2B companies that offer it, ecommerce is now the top revenue-generating channel, accounting for more than a third of all sales.
But how do you start a successful B2B business, 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, show you how to get started with a B2B ecommerce platform, and provide successful B2B ecommerce examples to inspire your own operations.
What is B2B ecommerce?
B2B ecommerce is when one company markets and sells to another company online. Buyers can make B2B transactions via ecommerce websites and B2B marketplaces, or in person at conferences and trade shows.
Unlike in B2C, every buyer acts on behalf of a business, and the shopping experience includes contracts, approval workflows, tax handling, and account-level support. Today, B2B ecommerce is far more than a website that takes wholesale orders.
Take Dermalogica Canada, for example. After moving their global B2B store to Shopify, the brand incorporated loyalty-tiered pricing, stored credit cards for faster checkout, and workflow automation to increase conversion rates by 23%.
B2B ecommerce in 2025: Key trends and market statistics
Why B2B ecommerce is growing
Globally, the B2B ecommerce market was worth $19.34 trillion in 2024 and is on track to more than double to $47.5 trillion by 2030, according to Research and Markets.
In the US, an EMARKETER forecast shows that site-based B2B sales climbed 10.5% in 2024 to $2.3 trillion and are on pace to top $3 trillion by 2028.
Buyers are leading the charge. A 2024 B2B Pulse Survey from McKinsey found that 39% of business buyers—up from 28% two years earlier—now feel comfortable placing self-service orders costing over $500,000, and 73% are happy to spend $50,000 or more online.
And sellers are responding with bigger budgets. The McKinsey survey also found that one-third of B2B companies boosted their ecommerce investment by 11% in 2024, betting on lower acquisition costs and the always-on reach that digital channels deliver.
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.

What buyers expect now: The B2C effect
B2B buyers have come a long way with their expectations. Seven in ten B2B buyers now prefer to place orders online rather than via phone or email, and they span an average of 10 digital and in-person touchpoints before they hit “buy.”
Originally plagued by clunky portals and sales rep callbacks, the younger generation of buyers (thank you, millennials) demand a more B2C-style experience.
A 2024 Forrester-commissioned survey found 73% of buyers expect the same convenient online experience they enjoy in B2C, from real-time stock to one-click reorders. And there is still a huge gap between execution and reality, as only 36% of buyers rate current B2B sites as “excellent.”
But just signing up for a B2B ecommerce platform and calling it a day won’t do the trick. If you don’t meet buyers with personalized, fluid experiences, they will walk away.
Digital procurement and integration trends
Procurement has made massive strides in the past 18 months, with 52% of CPOs in Keelvar’s Sourcing in 2025 study saying they already use automation or AI in daily sourcing workflows. Early adopters of Gen AI are enjoying 54% higher staff productivity and 47% lower process costs.
The change is driven by the shift in how and where B2B purchases are happening. Buyers are moving to a purely online, rep-free experience. Forrester predicts that more than half of big-ticket deals ($1 million or more) will be handled entirely through self-service or marketplaces in 2025.
To keep pace, teams are overhauling their tech stacks. PwC reports that 94% of procurement teams already run an end-to-end source-to-pay (S2P) suite, and the average department is targeting 70% process digitalization by 2027. One in two organizations will add or upgrade contract lifecycle management (CLM) tools in the next three years to reduce costs and save time.
AI and automation in B2B ecommerce
Artificial intelligence has taken the world by storm in recent years. McKinsey’s State of AI 2025 survey shows that 71% of companies already use generative AI in one business function, up from 65% a year earlier.
And for good reason. Accenture’s Next stop, next-gen report found that companies with the most mature AI-enabled supply chains are six times more likely to deploy generative AI widely, and experience 23% higher profit margins than their peers.
Some ways B2B ecommerce brands are putting AI and automation to work include:
- Dynamic pricing and instant quoting
- Personalized storefronts with tailored catalogs, search, and product recommendations
- Predictive inventory and demand-planning
- 24/7 chatbot and AI quote assistants
- Real-time fraud and animal detection
As it stands, only 3% of organizations lack an AI roadmap, according to Salesforce’s State of Commerce report. Nearly everyone is planning for the AI-enabled future.
Types of B2B ecommerce models
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.
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 then markets and sells it to consumers.
A key difference between B2B2C and wholesale is that the customer-facing storefront retains the branding of the B2B2C business, not the intermediary that handles sales to consumers.
Manufacturers and distributors
Manufacturers produce goods in large amounts and sell them to other suppliers, wholesalers, or manufacturers. For example, a manufacturer might produce specialty shoelaces, which may then be sold to a luxury shoe manufacturer.
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.
Marketplaces and platforms
B2B marketplaces are online platforms that bring together multiple third-party sellers and buyers. They act as a digital intermediary where businesses can search for, compare, and purchase products from a variety of suppliers in one location.
The big players here are Amazon Business and Alibaba, but niche marketplaces for specific industries—like specialty food (Mable) or industrial parts (Xometry)—are becoming more prevalent.
For sellers, marketplaces get you right in front of eager buyers. Buyers can also compare products, prices, and suppliers, making it easier to choose a vendor.
Stages of a B2B business
No B2B business journey is exactly 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, when all ideas are fair game. At this stage, you’ve gone through ideation 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 absorb market feedback, this is the perfect time to be nimble and readjust to meet market demand.
Some relevant key goals during the startup phase are:
- Validating your minimum viable product through sales
- Ensuring your 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 that your product has flopped and your audience isn’t interested in buying what you’re selling.
On the other hand, the 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. 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. Your sales are increasing, becoming 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 areas of the business with the highest return on your investment (ROI). In the growth stage, you’re also constantly revisiting your systems and refining supply chains, 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 business can be vulnerable to changing demands, costly mistakes, or fierce competition. Yet if done correctly, the growth stage eventually positions you at 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 that sharply rises on sales charts as you boost cash flow, move beyond breaking even, and diversify your distribution channels.
Depending on your company’s needs and the market, some common expansion goals might 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 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 fine-tune your profit margins. You’re familiar with your target market and know what they like, consistently delivering 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 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.
Essential B2B ecommerce strategies for 2025
Choosing and integrating a B2B platform
Buyers judge a B2B brand on how easy you are to do business with. Your ecommerce platform, and how it integrates with the rest of your stack, influences revenue more than any single sales rep.
As more deals flow through the B2B storefront, you’ll want a platform that offers:
- Native enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) connectors: Real-time product, price, inventory, and customer data removes “call-your-rep” dead ends.
- API-first, headless flexibility: Thisallows you to integrate product information management (PIM), tax, or payment modules without replatforming.
- Unified data model: One set of SKUs and buyer records across B2B, DTC, marketplaces, and POS prevents stock-outs and pricing errors.
- Granular B2B controls: Company-level price lists, payment terms, minimum order quantities (MOQs), and purchase-order workflows are baked into checkout.
- Low total cost of ownership (TCO): Cloud delivery, app ecosystems, and automations cut dev spend and speed launches.
With Shopify, you can create a password-protected B2B portal on the same URL that powers your DTC store, so your inventory, search, and content stay in sync while wholesale buyers see their own price lists and MOQs. This approach has helped brands like AMR Hair & Beauty triple sales and increase B2B average order value by 77%.
“Right now, we have two login options, one for public consumers and one for B2B customers,” Ammar Issa, founder of AMR Hair & Beauty, says. “We have 10 different pricing tiers for B2B customers, and Shopify automatically shows them the right one based on their customer status.”
Plus, prebuilt connectors for NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365, SAP, Acumatica, and more route orders, inventory, and customer records both ways without custom middleware. Merchants moving to Shopify report up to 36% lower total ownership cost versus multi-system stacks, thanks to fewer servers, upgrades, and ad-hoc integrations.
Personalization, pricing, and customer experience
B2B shoppers expect a website to feel like it was built specifically for them.
Adobe’s Personalization at Scale 2025 study found that nearly three-quarters of buyers want suppliers to “know when, where, and how” they prefer personalized transactions—yet many firms still miss the mark. It also discovered that companies that personalize the entire account journey are twice as likely to beat revenue and conversion goals, with 20% or more cumulative lifts over three years.
Great personalization can take many forms in B2B:
Contract-true pricing and terms: You can show shoppers tailored prices, MOQs, and net terms at sign-in. Industry West attached architect- and designer-specific price lists to trade accounts and saw B2B web order revenue jump 90% while average order value (AOV) rose 20%.

Dynamic catalogs: Only entitled SKUs and inventory show during browsing. WHO IS ELIJAH maps eight regional catalogs (each with its own price matrix) to one Shopify admin, driving 50% YoY wholesale growth.

Role-specific portals: Buyers, approvers, and finance see the data that matters to them. Shopify’s B2B company profiles let you assign user roles and permissions, so procurement sees quick add grids while finance downloads paid invoices.

AI-driven recommendations: Your site displays relevant bundles and add-ons that add value to the buyer’s journey. Search & Discovery and Rebuy apps on Shopify can surface accessories and refills, helping brands like DECKED lift revenue by 4% without discounting.
“We can match dealers not just by proximity and location, but also based on those who have our product displays or only carry specific items from our range,” says Taylor Straley, VP of ecommerce at DECKED.
“This capability allows us to tailor our customer experience and product discovery recommendation efforts more effectively. Importantly, it benefits the customer by enabling us to gather and utilize search and contact data, ensuring a direct connection from our website to the appropriate dealer.”
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Self-service and mobile/everywhere commerce
Buyers now expect B2C-style experiences. They want to place, track, and reorder million-dollar deals the same way they book a rideshare—instantly, from any screen.
IDC’s 2024 buyer behavior study reports that 71% of tech-sector buyers feel comfortable placing large-ticket purchases through digital channels, and 73% already lean on digital tools for complex decisions.
To capture this market, create self-service portals that show pricing, inventory, and order history without manual intervention. Shopify B2B lets you attach price lists, payment terms, and quick order grids to each company profile.

Since nearly 65% of web traffic is mobile, every page, tool, and checkout flow must load in less than 1.5 seconds and fit on a 6-inch screen. Shopify’s native themes are responsive out of the box, and Shop Pay delivers one-tap checkout that converts up to four time higher on mobile than guest flows.
🥇 Case study: Superfood brand Laird Superfood scrapped phone-in wholesale orders for a password-protected Shopify portal. The switch saves $50K to $60K in labor each year and flipped the revenue mix. Wholesale now accounts for 75% of total sales, up from 25% before the move.
Security, fraud prevention, and compliance
The big push to digital payments brings new problems to B2B: cybercriminals and regulations.
Data breaches cost a lot of money to clean up. IBM reports the global average loss is $4.4 million per incident, and finds that 97% of organizations hit by an AI-related breach lacked basic governance controls.
Fraud pressure continues to rise. Juniper Research forecasts ecommerce fraud losses will jump to $107 billion by 2029. Fake purchase orders and vendor bank change scams are two threats for B2B businesses to watch:
- In a fake PO scam, a fraudster poses as a legitimate customer, often impersonating a well-known company. They submit a large PO (or RFQ) for high-value goods. Once the order ships, payment never arrives because the “buyer” used a hijacked email domain, spoofed website, or throwaway account.
- Vendor bank change scams work differently. You might receive a supplier email asking your AP to update banking instructions. Future payments are then routed to the fraudster’s account.
Some ways to stay ahead of security and compliance are:
- Adopt Zero Trust basics. Enforce MFA/passkeys for every buyer and staff login, segment internal networks, and audit API keys regularly.
- Automate anomaly detection. Let Shopify’s ML risk scores flag suspicious baskets, then trigger Shopify Flow to auto-hold or cancel high-risk orders before they ship
- Use Shop Pay and Shopify Protect. Tokenized checkout, built-in 3-D Secure, and chargeback liability shift on eligible orders
- Connect your ERP/CRM through vetted apps. Use Shopify-built NetSuite, SAP, or Dynamics connectors since they inherit Shopify’s PCI and ISO 27001 controls
Referral and influencer marketing for B2B
Word of mouth still closes more deals than any ad, but now it travels through two new channels: referral programs and short-form creator content. Yes, even on TikTok.
Partner referral programs reward existing clients and channel partners for lead intros. The typical incentive is a percentage of first-year sales or credits towards their next purchase.
With influencer collaborations, you team up with niche creators who speak your buyers’ language and co-create with them. The goal is to either drive demo signups or raise brand awareness, like when Salesforce partnered with @CorporateNatalie to create a 45-second sketch on “What is CRM?”
Composable and headless commerce: Future-proofing your stack
The B2B ecommerce sector is experiencing a significant shift toward headless commerce, with data showing remarkable adoption rates. According to a 2025 trend survey, 80% of enterprises have already adopted—or are actively planning to adopt—composable commerce architectures.
The trend is driven by changing B2B buyer demographics, with millennials expecting seamless digital experiences. Businesses are adopting varying degrees of headless approaches, from fully decoupled architectures to hybrid solutions.
With Shopify’s headless tools, you keep control of your data and can change customer touchpoints as needed:
- Hydrogen and Oxygen: Create blazing-fast React storefronts or microsites and deploy worldwide in minutes.
- Storefront API: Pull live products, contract pricing, and B2B terms into apps, kiosks, or AR demos.
- Shopify Functions: Inject volume pricing or net-terms logic at checkout with no middleware, while remaining within Shopify’s PCI scope.
💡Did you know? A headless build with Hydrogen allows for smoother and more flexible integrations with the essential systems that power B2B operations, such as ERPs (for inventory and pricing), CRMs (for customer data), and PIMs (for product information).

📚 Read: Best Practices for Implementing Headless Commerce for B2B Businesses
Global selling and localization
You have big plans to sell overseas and create partnerships with more strategic companies. But if you don’t have the right infrastructure, it’ll be costly and cumbersome to implement.
Global selling involves many challenges, like:
- Managing cross-border customers, duties, and tariffs
- Adhering to international trade laws, tax, and regulations
- Managing longer supply chains and potentially higher shipping costs
- Accurately translating web content and marketing materials
Shopify Managed Markets helps you expand internationally with ease. From the same storefront already powering your B2B business, Managed Markets can translate website copy, convert currencies, and display international shipping rates at checkout.
B2B ecommerce marketing tactics
SEO for B2B in 2025
Traditional SEO metrics don't apply to B2B. Low-volume, technical keywords often signal serious buyers with specific needs.
But don’t let that sway you—First Page Sage’s 2025 ROI benchmark finds SEO delivers an average 748% ROI in B2B, the highest of all 11 marketing channels analyzed.
The name of the game is intent over volume. Long-tail queries like “chemical-free industrial degreaser SDS” may draw only dozens of searches, but every click could be a purchase-ready buyer.
To show up on Google Search or LLMs like ChatGPT, follow these three steps:
- Own a cluster of topics. Google rewards websites that cover every possible angle of a topic. For each pain point your target buyer has, publish articles, comparison tables, implementation guides, and spec sheets that interlink.
- Match content to the buying committee. Various folks can look at one query, so you need to serve each role simultaneously. For example, finance would probably want a TCO calculator, while procurement needs compliance and warranty documentation.
- Add Schema data. These “rich” results can push your pages up in search rankings. Add FAQPage, HowTo, and Product markup so pages appear in Google’s “Guides,” “Discussions,” and AI Overview modules.
Follow these steps, and search will become your most predictable and profitable marketing tactic.
Conversion rate optimization (CRO)
B2B websites generally convert below their B2C counterparts. Industry medians sit between 1.1% and 3.1%, depending on your niche.
Yet 98% of B2B buyers report having issues during the B2B ecommerce checkout, with 83% claiming they would abandon their purchase if there are no payment terms at checkout. CRO in B2B is more about removing blockers to high-stakes deals than performing A/B tests.
Some ways you can remove friction from your checkout are:
- Offer flexible payment terms. Present net-30 terms, PO upload, and pay-by-bank options alongside credit cards. Buyers can clear internal approvals faster.
- Provide quick order and saved carts. Give buyers the option to upload orders by CSV and “buy again” buttons for when they want to skip browsing the catalog.
- Make search and filtering easy. Add semantic search with spec sheets so buyers can quickly locate what they need and buy it.
Through better search functions and checkout optimizations, AMR Hair & Beauty saw a 77% rise in AOV and 93% YoY growth in conversion rates. Read their story.
Video content
Short-form video and interactive tools now assist the B2B discovery process. LinkedIn’s 2025 benchmark found that 78% of B2B marketers already deploy video, and more than half will raise spend on video this year.
Types of content you can create include:
- 60- to 90-second explainers: Clarify your value props in a fun and memorable way. Caption for silent autoplay and lead with the problems you solve, not just a list of features.
- Live walkthroughs and Q&A: Host a LinkedIn Live or YouTube event to promote a live demo and answer questions. Republish highlights across other channels like Instagram and TikTok.
- ROI calculators: Help buyers figure out the returns they’ll get from using your products or services. Calculators are excellent for generating qualified leads and showing the value of your offering to finance approvers.
- AR/3D product viewers. Use Shopify AR to let buyers view products in their own space. Teams can verify fit and style before issuing an RFQ.
Brands like HubSpot regularly post video content on TikTok. While they don’t promote the software directly, the content gets views because it’s relatable. This helps the TikTok algorithm push the videos to new audiences and spread more awareness about HubSpot and their niche.
Case studies and social proof
Case studies and social proof help answer a buyer’s biggest question: “Will this work for a company like mine?”
Forrester’s 2025 trust survey shows 79% of buyers trust current vendors, and almost three-quarters trust peer customers and analysts, far more than they trust ads or sales reps.
Social proof in B2B takes many forms:
- Quantified customer success stories and case studies (e.g., “3-fold reorder frequency in 90 days”)
- Third-party review badges and rating widgets (G2, TrustRadius, Capterra)
- Short video testimonials clipped from live webinars or site visits
- Reference programs that pair late-stage prospects with champion users
- Certification logos, compliance seals, and sustainability scorecards placed beside relevant SKUs
Publish these proof points across your website, nurture emails, and social media profiles. These assets will reassure stakeholders that the risk is low and the ROI is real.
Content marketing
Content positions your brand as a subject matter expert that buyers can trust. Educational assets help stakeholders de-risk the deal and champion your solution internally.
You can publish content like:
- Thought leadership blog series that unpack industry shifts and regulations
- In-depth white papers or ebooks that detail technical specs, implementation steps, and compliance checklists
- Live or on-demand webinars featuring product walkthroughs and customer Q&As
- LinkedIn posts that curate market news and showcase real-world use cases
- Email nurture sequences triggered by role or buying stage, delivering tailored guides and case studies
If you want to collect marketing-qualified leads (MQLs), gate assets like white papers so that buyers have to provide company info before receiving the content.
Platform deep dive: How Shopify enables modern B2B ecommerce
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.
Customer success examples
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.
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
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.
Myths and misconceptions about B2B ecommerce
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 persist.
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.
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.
Read more
- B2B Marketplaces: Top 6 Wholesale Marketplaces to Find Buyers
- D2C Manufacturing: Benefits, Challenges, How To Succeed
- Wholesale Ecommerce: How It Works, Types, and Benefits to Wholesalers
- Why Manufacturers Should Invest in B2B Ecommerce Today
- How To Build Successful B2B Ecommerce Strategy in 2024
- B2B SEO Strategy: How To Turn Search Engine Browsers into High-Value Buyers
- How to Develop a B2B Ecommerce Website that Reaches and Engages Today’s Buyers
- KPIs for B2B Ecommerce: How to Measure Your Progress and Achieve Success
- B2B Sales Funnel: How to Identify Which Stage Your Buyer is In and Convert Them into Customers—Fast
- The 11 Top B2B Ecommerce Benefits
B2B ecommerce FAQ
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 expanding in the coming years. Sales are projected to reach $47 trillion by 2030. 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.