In global markets across the world, B2B buyers are behaving like mainstream consumers more than ever before.
About 90% of B2B buyers use the Internet to conduct product research. Most make purchases via digital platforms, too. Plus, many B2B buyers say online content has “a moderate to major” effect on purchasing decisions.
This has huge implications for B2B businesses. And it’s one of the reasons B2B companies should consider adding e-commerce components to their websites, especially as they enter new global markets.
The Old Way Versus the New
Traditionally, B2B company websites have served as marketing tools. They’ve provided in-depth explanations of services, product features and information about the company itself to help educate prospective buyers. But there hasn’t been a commerce component allowing customers to buy products and services, leaving them to work with sales reps.
But nowadays, buyers are much like consumers of more traditional retail and product businesses. They are increasingly savvy in their research, they want to see products in a regular website catalog, and they want to buy and re-order things easily without working with a salesperson for every transaction.
But doing that at scale—and for a global customer—means providing an experience in multiple languages, which can put pressure on budgets. It creates operational challenges for lean B2B marketing teams, too. Translating transactional B2B websites means more development, ongoing maintenance and teams to oversee everything on an ongoing basis.
That’s money and personnel that most B2B companies don’t have the resources for.
Translating transactional B2B websites means more development, ongoing maintenance and teams to oversee everything on an ongoing basis.
Why Does My Company Need an E-Commerce Platform?
Bringing your products to new global customers, in their preferred languages, can seem exciting but daunting. Fortunately, digital technologies and e-commerce capabilities can help shoulder a lot of the load. Here are a few reasons to consider adding transactional capabilities on your site:
You Can Attract New Customers
In B2B markets, it’s normal to get to know a product or service by going to conferences or having one-on-one conversations with sales reps. But if your company makes products and services available via your website, global buyers are able to find them easily and quickly through search—even if they aren’t familiar with your brand.
You Can Test Markets
If you’re considering expansion markets that might be interesting and lucrative for your company, it’s incredibly cost effective to first test the waters online. By measuring traffic to your website, tracking content and commerce data, and evaluating purchase data, you can accurately assess demand for your products and services in new markets.
You Can Support Distributors and Partners
Giving international buyers a positive, informational and transactional online experience can bolster the support you give to channel and distribution partners in those areas. By streamlining the purchase process, partners can more easily support sales and focus on supporting those customers in the long term.
MotionPoint Is the Partner You Need
With its fully turn-key approach, MotionPoint localizes website content quickly and easily, and with minimal effort and complexity for your teams. It works seamlessly with all website and e-commerce platforms, ensuring your customers can do business in the language they’re most comfortable with.
Create a localized e-commerce experience that will allow you to grow globally while saving money and staff resources.
MotionPoint’s superior technology and expertise also helps you:
- Conduct keyword analysis to determine the best way to talk about your products in new markets, to maximize search results
- Capture the flavor and voice of your brand and products in every conceivable medium, like PDFs, instruction manuals, information sheets and pricing.
- Modify regional content to ensure that phone numbers, currency, addresses, product specs and other measurements are in the right language, units and taxonomy.
- Create a localized e-commerce experience that will allow you to grow globally while saving money and staff resources.
Conclusion
MotionPoint removes the complexity of translating, deploying and operating multilingual websites for companies that want to expand into new global markets, but have lean teams and budgets.
Adding e-commerce and transaction capabilities to your site is easy with MotionPoint. We help you localize your purchase capabilities, and all relevant content and product information. This ensures your B2B website can reach—and conduct business in—new markets faster than ever before.
Last updated on May 22, 2018
