The onslaught of pandemic has already induced unprecedented changes in the commercial landscape. The widespread popularity of offline retailing has seen a rapid acceleration of digital transformation initiatives. Recent studies from McKinsey shows that 96% of the B2B businesses are happening online. Over the couple of months, many businesses have updated their sales model and doing e-commerce selling, which has been proved fruitful in the following course of time. Amidst Covid-19 when the prolonged lockdown was taking a toll on the sales of physical stores, eCommerce selling witnesses an upward surge.
Many businesses have sustained the shift and continue to grow even during the pandemic. The change in shopper behavior also triggered the rapid growth of digital commerce, reflects Adobe Digital Economy Index (DEI). Since April 2020, eCommerce shopping has consistently tracked above the shopping levels tracked during 2019 holiday season. In fact, June alone pushed $73.2 billion in the online spends, leading up to 76.2%.
However, with Magento eCommerce Development, merchants are enabled with enhanced capabilities to help them capture business potential in the current commercial premises. Here’s how Magento is enabling businesses to cope up with the current commercial premises.
Tracking Purchase Process is Easier than Ever!
As already mentioned, B2B commerce is facing a rapid shift with digital sales being the most effective model amidst the pandemic and post that. To cope up, it’s crucial for the businesses to support their customers’ varying purchasing policies and requirements. With the latest feature of “New approval workflow” functionality equipped in the Magento 2.4, B2B buying companies now can effortlessly customize their approval processes using a simple form. It helps in seamlessly define approval rules, according to the order value, shipping costs as well as SKU numbers. Even multiple approvers can be assigned to specific roles at the same time.
Let’s say, according to any company’s policy any purchase over $3,000 made by a junior buyer needs prior approval by the purchaser’s manager before it is submitted. It can be effortlessly done with this functionality and with an increased efficiency. First of all, approvers are automatically notified, whenever there is any review pertaining to any purchase order. Accordingly, they can approve or reject and sends their comment, which ensures transparency and efficiency at every stage of the purchasing process.
Advancing Magento’s B2B capabilities boosts growth in self-service approval workflows, thus leading B2B sellers to expedite online ordering process, while keeping up with the traditional spending controls. Which is certainly a great combination to attract potential business while fostering growth in the online sales.
Seller-Assisted Shopping Drives Improved Customer Experience
With digital commerce being the primary shopping mode, B2B companies are also enabling their customer reps as a guide to help and assist their customers while making purchase. Magento’s advanced Seller -assisted shopping functionality enables merchants with enhanced account management capabilities while improving customer engagement and delivering exceptional service. Using this feature, customer service reps can easily log into their websites as the customer from the Magento Admin. This way, they can have a smooth access to the buyer’s experience which helps them provide 360-degree support to the B2B buyers, such as:
- Troubleshooting at any stage of the buying process –assisting customers to find a product, set up a requisition list or Wishlist, and instantly address something that doesn’t work as expected.
- Making customers aware of the custom functionalities- Providing customers the exclusive storefront experience, using features like product configurator.
- Creating orders and quotes on behalf of the customers: Seamless handling of the administrative tasks, creating orders, adding buyers, and setting up approval rules.
In-Store Pick up Alongside Online Ordering has Increased
Since March 2021 when the pandemic induced restrictions have somewhat loosened, a spike in the in-store pickup has brought significant value to the business revenue. It arrives with a two-way benefit, first it helps merchants to extend their selling options and increase in the order values, secondly it encourage shoppers to return to the stores once again. Reports from Business Insider reflects that more than 85% of shoppers went for an additional in-store purchase while picking up an online order.
With Magento’s new functionality called “In-Store Pick Up in Inventory Management” (formerly Multi-Source Inventory, or MSI), merchants can have a seamless look over the availability of the physical inventory locations for customer pickup. Accordingly, customers can quickly find a location accessible to them while making checkout. Once the orders are successfully placed, customers get notified about their orders’ status as well as when ready for pickup. And everything with a single click. No doubt it enhances efficiency.
Creating Engagement by Standing Out from the Crowd
With majority of shoppers being online, it’s crucial for the merchants need to stand out from the crowd by offering an engaging experience. Leveraging the latest version of Magento Commerce, merchants can easily streamline their creative workflow with a completely rebuilt Media Gallery that performs way faster to streamline asset management, while saving a lot of time and resources for creative stakeholders. The objective is to build up an engaging customer experience while being unequivocal about your brand value.
The new feature of Magento helps in:
- Streamlined management of the images used across the site by providing details like how often and where any particular image is used by segregating pages, categories, or products.
- Search and filter images in the most hassle-free manner by leveraging image attributes, tags and so on.
- Comes with Adobe Stock integration that automatically moves the licensed image to the Media Gallery simultaneously.
Ensuring Speed and Efficiency in PWA Development
With Magento 2.4, the latest version of PWA Studio is also released to be simultaneously used or the Magento Commerce and Magento Open Source. It enhances storefront experiences with the help of features like Page Builder content, complete cart, and checkout workflow. It accelerates efficiency in the online marketplace while making it easier to customize and extend the capabilities of PWA Studio, both through custom development and apps in the Magento Marketplace.
The Takeaway
However, with all such changes in the shopper behaviour and the merchant needs one thing remains persistent- a secured, fast and hassle-free buying process. With the latest advancement on Magento Ecommerce, merchants continue to prioritize these parameters while providing the B2B buyers an experience they can count on.
