Editor’s note: For long, Magento has been the preferred choice for eCommerce merchants—big or small. While traditionally, this robust platform was favoured by B2C sellers, the new version Magento 2 drastically transformed the market with power-packed features, tailored for B2B businesses. By availing Magento 2 Development Services from a leading agency, you can easily transform your store, making it appealing and intuitive.Â
In the modern world, eCommerce is rising, and most B2B transactions are occurring online. As a result, B2B eCommerce sites that process orders digitally require a robust and secure platform to maximize sales. Thankfully, numerous eCommerce platforms allow businesses to streamline their online operations, and Magento is one such platform.
This eCommerce platform is a powerful system for both B2B and B2C websites.
Source: shutterstock.com
What is the Magento eCommerce Platform?
Magento is a sophisticated e-commerce software system that excels in quality and functionality and is intended for growing large enterprises; yet, it may be too complicated for smaller businesses.
Magento provides nearly infinite customization possibilities. Although this procedure may appear daunting at first, the ultimate product is exquisite and individualized. Nonetheless, drag-and-drop tools and straightforward editors make setting up products and editing pages pretty simple.
Most store owners confuse Magento Open Source with Magento Commerce. However, these two Magento versions differ vastly.
Magento Open Source
You will get complete access to the source code of Magento Open Source. Using this source code, you may build a robust website with fantastic features and full scalability. The most significant disadvantage of Magento Open Source is that it requires advanced technical expertise to develop.
Magento Commerce
Magento Commerce is a fortified version of the open-source platform aimed toward larger businesses. If an open-source platform requires users to build everything from the ground up, Magento Commerce is a PaaS. (Platform-as-a-service). Magento will take care of various parts of your website, such as hosting and security, and customize it to your specifications. The website can also reach its full functionality and scalability potential.
What is Magento Commerce for B2B?
Magento is unquestionably a business-oriented e-commerce platform. It is used by both B2B and B2C industries due to its flexible nature and great functionality.
Regardless, Magento is definitely better suited to larger businesses. You’ll need some programming skills to install and run it, and if you want anything more than the basic free capabilities, you’ll have to pay hundreds of dollars per month.
In a nutshell, it’s a clean and professional platform for scaling large businesses.
Magento’s B2B Features
Magento Commerce has designed its own specific solutions for B2B companies, with highlighted B2B-specific features as the following:
Drag and Drop Merchandising
The drag and drop feature is great for situations when you need to manage the order of products on the front end. It saves the admin a lot of time that would otherwise be spent on the tedious task of rearranging items on the front end.
This feature increases basic Magento capabilities and allows a store owner to quickly and efficiently rearrange product orders and manage categories. Admins can drag and drop products from one spot to another in this extension to categorize them into categories. As the product moves across the grid, the positions of other objects vary dynamically, and when the mouse is released, the products return to their original positions.
Benefits:
- With a simple drag and drop maneuver, you may sort product positions.
- Admin can see the modifications while they are being sorted.
- Easy product layout adjustment.
- Save time and makes the website more appealing.
Responsive Design
B2B shoppers demand intuitive, mobile-optimized experiences for a seamless purchase experience, much like B2C buyers. You can create responsive and intuitively designed e-commerce websites with Magento B2B e-commerce, allowing buyers to place orders quickly and conveniently from any device, at any time. You can drive digital transformation, bring new initiatives to market faster, enhance consumer loyalty, and grow revenue with a seamless purchasing trip.
Source: shutterstock.com
Quick Order
You can enable fast and convenient ordering and enhance sales with Magento’s extensive purchase features. Buyers can either enter SKUs directly, use requisition lists, or replicate a previous order for a quick checkout. You can also help buyers by placing purchases on their behalf, tracking bids, and calculating discounts. Buyers who know precisely what they want will like the quick order tool, which allows them to skip the browsing process and instantly place an order for the things they require. With fast, frictionless ordering, you can speed up the purchase process, allow for quick reorders for typical purchases, and generate recurring revenue.
Benefits:
- Show/edit/create a message to alert customers who do not have permission to enter the Quick Order page.
- Quick Order labels can be customized.
- To begin searching, allow for creating a minimum amount of word characters.
- Limit the number of search results returned.
- Hide the product images on the screen
- Change the background and text color of the heading.
- The background color of the buttons is styled.
Credit Limit
Online B2B transactions are heavily reliant on credit. You may boost your customer relations by allowing them to check out using their credit balance. You can use Magento to store all of your payment and purchase transactions and assign credit limitations to trustworthy customers. Buyers can then use the “paying on account” option at checkout and pay as they go. Credit limitations can also be synchronized with your ERP or CRM system using connectors.
Benefits:
- The administrator can set individual credit limits.
- The administrator can view customer credit limits, both utilized and remaining.
- In the ecommerce store, a “pay by credit amount” payment method is included.
- Option to choose which order statuses are considered for new orders.
- Customers can view their credit limit and their used and remaining credit limits.
- The credit limit cannot be reduced below the total amount of open orders.
Quotation System
Buyers often seek lower prices when purchasing large quantities. An innovative quote system can attract more potential and enhance sales conversions in B2B sales since bulk orders are placed at regular intervals.
B2B transactions involve negotiations, and Magento has a robust quotation system that allows buyers to request a quote. Buyers can use a streamlined request to send quotation requests and price discussions; they can add things to their shopping cart, start the quote negotiation process, and have their credit refunded as soon as a payment is completed.
You can quickly manage quote requests, negotiate rates using a streamlined procedure, and establish yourself as a trusted merchant using Magento.
Benefits:
- The business owner can hide the “add to cart” button and product price on category and product pages.
- Selling things in bulk boosts transaction volume and profit.
- Customers can quote for things if the store owner allows it.
- The store owner has the authority to approve or reject quotation requests as needed.
- Customers can attach files to quote requests; however, the store owner can restrict file types.
- The product’s minimum quote quantity can be established by the store owner.
- The admin can also create a quote on behalf of the customers from the backend.
- Once the quote is authorized, customers cannot change the quantity in the shopping cart.
Advanced Analytics Insights
B2B websites require more personal and in-depth analytic solutions because each customer is unique, regardless of whether they order the same products. It is imperative to have a business analytics software that allows you to track KPIs according to individual catalogs, actions, contracts, etc.
The Magento Sales Analytics suite is capable of tracking any number of important metrics about inventory, sales, customers, etc., in varying levels of detail. It provides insights into customer retention, making it a much more specific dashboard than you’ll typically find.
Customer Segmentation
Offering all buyers the same buying experience may not be the ideal business approach, regardless of their size or industry. The online shopping experience that appeals to one group of customers may not appeal to all.
Based on their browsing behavior or purchase history, you may segment customers and customize experiences to specific groups of firms or individuals using Magento B2B e-commerce. Moreover, you can also segment customers by individual products viewed, products in the cart, total product value, or the number of things in the cart.
Benefits:
- Make marketing promotions and campaigns more personalized.
- Increase client retention and conversion rates.
- Reduce attrition and unsubscription rates among customers.
- Allows retailers to focus on customers rather than technical details.
Content Staging
Suppose your sector has multiple highs and lows in sales and business throughout the year. In that case, Magento’s content staging function can help you develop a dynamic product page that updates on a pre-determined schedule. ECommerce owners can generate numerous versions of material for future updates and easily create, preview, and schedule a wide range of content updates.
When a temporary content update expires, the material automatically reverts to the previous version. You can plan content staging for goods, categories, price rules, CMS pages or blocks, and widgets.
Extensions
Magento extensions are standalone software modules that extend the capabilities of your Magento online store. Depending on the type of extension you want, it could be free or cost hundreds of dollars.
Thousands of marketing extensions, payment plug-ins, dynamic themes, accountancy tools, and other features are available. Your Magento website can be anything you want it to be.
Inventory Management
Source: shutterstock.com
Keeping inventory precise and in sync is crucial, especially if you have many points of sale (online shopping, retail locations, events, etc.). Having a complete picture of where orders are placed, as well as available inventory, is crucial. One of Magento’s strong B2C capabilities is the inventory management tool, which allows you to manage and control customer orders.
You may reduce delivery costs and times by using real-time inventory information across the supply chain. Also, allow your distributors to see how much inventory you have across numerous locations, allowing you to provide a better customer experience and improve sales.
Benefits:
- Magento core products centralization
- Sync inventories across many channels and locations.
- For clever multi-channel and multi-location selling, manage several warehouses as if they were one.
Payments on Accounts
This functionality allows B2B businesses to provide credit to clients in addition to the standard payment methods available in Magento, such as credit cards and PayPal. On each website they use, users can disable the Payment on Accounts approach.
They can control which countries can utilize the payment method and change the payment method’s name as seen by clients in the front. Credit transactions can also select the minimum and maximum order amounts.
They can compare a company’s transactions against its credit and make changes to the outstanding balance. They can also allow a valued customer to order beyond their credit limit.
Source: shutterstock.com
Access to Company Account
B2B commerce requires the creation of corporate and individual accounts because it involves more people with distinct responsibilities and tasks. Merchants can sell B2C on Magento, and if they want to branch out into B2B, they can continue on the same platform and use a separate store manager account to customize offers for corporate clients.
Benefits:
- Unlimited corporate users and multiple account creation
- Role and responsibilities-based hierarchical access and permissions
- Option for store credit
- Admin command over all accounts
Magento’s Pricing
Pricing becomes more difficult. Even though the basic version is free to download and open source, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid version for running anything more than a modest do-it-yourself business.
Upgrading your account will allow you to expand your business, have access to hosting, improve reporting, and receive basic technical support, among other benefits. Despite the benefits, Magento is one of the most expensive alternatives available.
Magento Open-Source Pricing
Magento 2 Open Source is a free edition of Magento 2. This edition can be downloaded and used to create your Magento store.
The Magento platform was first released in 2008. Magento Open Source swiftly rose to prominence in the e-commerce world.
The program has gotten more user-friendly since the release of Magento 2 in 2015. You will benefit from better performance and features. Magento 2 Open Source has set new standards for e-commerce platforms.
Magento Commerce Pricing
In contrast, Magento Commerce is a paid version. The Magento Commerce Starter plan is the cheapest paid plan at $22,000/year.
It includes advanced Magento features and technical assistance, making it great for large-scale stores that want Magento support directly. Besides, business intelligence solutions are available from Adobe Commerce. Consumer behavior and business indicators can both be studied.
Furthermore, the version includes built-in functionalities, meaning third-party addons are rarely required.
Source: shutterstock.com
Many people are concerned with “Magento Pricing” and regard it as an expensive solution. It is, however, a cost-effective option with more than 24500 active installations rising every day. To give you an idea of how popular Magento is, here’s a list of companies that rely on it for all or part of their operations.
- Nike
- Olympus
- Coca Cola
- Jaguar
- Tommy Hilfiger
- HP
Why Choose Magento 2?
The platform has been thoroughly tested and enhanced over the years, with several extensions to offer a wide range of functionalities, thanks to thousands of developers worldwide.
The following part lists some of the best functionalities offered by Magento.
Highly Scalable
Magento 2 outperforms Magento 1 in terms of performance and has an enhanced indexer to boost query performance. To increase the overall speed of your online store, the indexer works to update data on a regular basis, including catalog data, users, prices, and the store.
Mobile Friendly
Magento is responsively designed, making it mobile-friendly, with a mobile-friendly checkout process. The Magento 2 platform now supports responsive design reference themes, allowing you to create and deploy sites that work across all devices and screen resolutions.
The whole Magento 2 admin interface is touch-friendly, making it simple to manage your online Magento eCommerce business. Regardless of the device or screen resolution, your store’s catalog is simple to access.
Advanced SEO Features
Magento does a fantastic job of allowing organic traffic to flow freely. The platform was built with search engine optimization in mind, giving your products a better chance of being discovered on Google, Bing, and other search engines. Individuals with the proper knowledge and skills can also create custom SEO implementations.
Third-Party Integrations
Popular marketplaces like Amazon and eBay can be integrated with Magento 2. This enables retailers to establish an omnichannel experience, allowing their products and services to reach a far larger audience while benefiting from the Magento platform’s easy management.
Vast Community
Magento is an open-source platform with over 315,000 developers worldwide and over 250,000 businesses using it. Support, development, and customization are all accessible from a large community. There will be plenty of support available, as well as a large library of third-party extensions to add almost any functionality to your online store.
The Verdict
Magento is distinguished from its competitors by its dependability, scalability, and customizability. In conclusion, Magento is an excellent platform for B2B purposes, despite certain discrepancies in B2B functionality between the Open Source and Commerce editions.