Nowadays, everywhere you see – Internet dominates every aspect of life, so how can business be left uninfluenced by this? E-commerce is the mantra of the day & everybody – right from the corporate bigwigs to the small and medium sized businesses – have invested in B2B (or B2C) websites. The advantages of these B2B websites & e-commerce have been enumerated upon many times in the past & need no further elaboration. Operating in an online market place is quite a tough job & can be rightly said to more competitive than the real one. There are many challenges which are faced by online businesses that are engaged in e-commerce. Some of the most important ones are: –
- Creating Customer Loyalty
This is the biggest challenge encountered when conducting business in an online marketplace i.e. it is very difficult to bind customers to one seller. This is especially true of B2C websites, but the same logic applies to B2B Sellers also. Since the contact between the buyer and seller is impersonal & happens over long-distance, creating customer loyalty is an uphill task. Another factor that makes it more challenging for B2B Sellers is that the buyer can easily shift to another seller without incurring any extra expenses. To avoid this, an online business needs to ensure that there is no scope left for errors. Even the smallest of errors can lead to catastrophic consequences i.e. the customer may leave never to return.
- Making Your Presence Known To Buyers
For online businesses, this is a challenging task indeed, as advertising in the virtual world is a tricky endeavor. B2B (or B2C) Sellers have to wait for potential buyers to make contact with them instead of the other way round. Though there are ways to make your business presence known in the virtual world through means like – placement of links on similar pages, forum marketing, referrals, online banners, etc; it requires careful planning & strategizing to have successful results.
Once these challenges have been taken into consideration & apt solutions found for the same, then B2B sellers can go on with building their customer base in an efficient manner.
B2B Marketplace - Guide & Research Centre 