According to Forrester, B2B eCommerce in the U.S. will hit $1.2 trillion by 2021, seeing a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 7.4% over the next four years. It is therefore essential that B2B businesses optimize the experience for their customers online. B2B sites have typically been known as less usable, but it is time for them to catch up with B2C and make it really easy for customers to do business. B2B eCommerce has unique complexities, which present unique challenges and therefore require a unique set of best practices. We will explore these challenges in our B2B blog series and offer advice and solutions to ensure that your B2B site delivers a superior experience.

Customer-Specific Catalogs

Providing customer-specific catalogs is a unique search requirement for B2B companies and can present unique challenges when it comes to eCommerce. But if it is done well, the personalized experience for your B2B customers will certainly pay dividends.

There are 4 possible situations that a B2B company may need to cater for:

1. The company has products that all customers can see and buy.
2. Certain customers are only authorized to buy from a particular range or category of products. When the customer searches, it is important that they can only view the products that are available for them to buy.
3. Similarly, the availability of products may be based on location. Customers in the North-East might only see products that are stocked in the North-East warehouse. Location of the stock also limits which products a customer should see.
4. There may be custom products produced by a company that are only available to one particular customer. For example, coffee companies need branded cups, so it is important that those custom products are in the supplier’s catalog, but cannot be purchased by anyone else.

Differing needs

Within a typical B2C system, the search system would search the entire catalog and show results, but in the above situations, the catalog indexing process needs to define who can buy which products so that the search system is able to present products in the results correctly. This can become very complex, which is why out-of-the-box search systems can’t handle it. EasyAsk provides a custom implementation for each customer so that any of the challenges described above can be handled.

A paper products manufacturer became an EasyAsk customer and now has certain products in their catalog that are marked with customer IDs, while other products are marked as being global. Their coffee store customer buys branded cups, so when they log in the customer ID is passed to EasyAsk, who pass back only the right products.

The implementation of customer-specific catalogs varies completely between B2B customers, so it isn’t possible to just use defined rules; the flexibility to support all different circumstances is necessary.

B2B Personalization

Being able to search and see personalized results based on pre-negotiated terms is imperative for your B2B customers. They should never see a product that isn’t available for them to buy. Your search system should be aware of product availability for any given customer. Is your search system up to this?

EasyAsk is up to the challenge

EasyAsk offers the only site search and merchandising tool designed exclusively for the rigors and challenges of B2B eCommerce. EasyAsk can be configured for any platform, either commercial or built in-house.

EasyAsk has long served the B2B customer segment and over 200 B2B distributors have chosen us to power their B2B eCommerce sites, including: Aramark, Demco, Kaman Industries, Tacoma Screw, and Crown Packaging.

The post B2B Series Challenge 3: Customer-Specific Catalogs appeared first on EasyAsk.

A: All the difference.

This might just be the single most important component in a successful eCommerce strategy and the key to driving significantly more revenue.

It is essential to get the usability of the search box within eCommerce sites right. Up to 30% of visitors will use the site search tool and these will be highly motivated shoppers who know exactly what they’re looking for. Shoppers who use the search box will buy more:

Search functionality should be prioritized when developing redesigns, whether for mobile or desktop sites. So, what are the most important considerations for your search box?

Accessibility and consistency are key here.

Ensure the search box is positioned prominently and where it’s expected to be; don’t make users search for the search box. The diagram below shows that usually, this is in the top-right of your eCommerce site.

from ‘Where’s the search? Re-examining Users Expectations of Web Objects’ study by A. Dawn Shaikh and Keisi Lenz

Usability studies have shown that placing elements on the right gives instant access to the browser scrollbar. Having said this, with eCommerce giants such as Amazon opting for a top-center search box, this is also now a common location.

If your site uses a modern NLP search engine, the chances are your customers will find what they’re looking for the first time they search. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case for traditional keyword search boxes. For this reason, it is important for the search box to remain in the same place on every page. The search box should be accessible in the navigation bar menu at all times.

The North Face demonstrate this consistency by making the search box available from any page on their site, including non-product pages:

“Consistency is one of the most powerful usability principles: when things always behave the same, users don’t have to worry about what will happen. Instead, they know what will happen based on earlier experience.”

— Jakob Nielsen

The components of a search box may seem predetermined, but there are surprising variations in the composition of search boxes. Once again, it is important that users find what they would expect from a search box, that is, a text entry field plus a button or icon to click and execute the search. It is possible for a user to press the ‘enter’ key to execute, but the presence of a button serves as a reminder that there is an action to take after typing a query.

If your site necessitates more than one entry field on a particular page, make sure that the search box stands out as different from any other fields.

It is not necessary to display advanced search options by default in the search box.

It isn’t quite the case of ‘the bigger the better’… but almost.

A large search box is easier to spot and therefore click. Ensuring an appropriate field size also makes a search box user-friendly. A search box that limits the visible characters too much will conceal a user’s search, leading to shorter, more vague queries. Jakob Nielsen, usability consultant, recommends an ideal width of 27 characters.

For mobile pages where space is more restricted, the search box could be condensed to a magnifying glass which expands when selected.

The search button itself is most commonly labeled ‘search’, but might be labeled ‘Go’ or something similar:

The universally recognized magnifying glass icon is used increasingly to label the search button. It gives a visual clue as to what the text area is. A simple, schematic magnifying-glass icon should be used, without too much graphic detail to speed up recognition.

Every site’s branding and themes are different, but the colors used in the search box should be such that it stands out against its background. For example, if the website background is light in color, consider using a colored search box, and vice versa.

The microphone icon reminds users of voice search functionality, and mobile eCommerce retailers, in particular, should build a microphone into their search experience. Though voice search functionality is a great addition, a microphone icon is worthless unless the search engine is intuitive and understands conversational requests.

Revisit this EasyAsk blog from earlier this year for further detail about the use of the microphone icon.

Some search boxes are left completely blank, but businesses are increasingly using placeholder text in their search box to inform and invite their users.

Inform the shopper of the capabilities of your search box by upgrading the placeholder text from the traditional ‘Search’ text:

Limit the text to a few words for maximum effect.

Auto-suggestion or ‘Search As You Type’ (SAYT) function can guide a shopper by helping them formulate their query. This function shows a list of useful queries as the shopper begins to type. Look out for our future blog post on this topic.

Search box UX is an extensive and important aspect of eCommerce site design. Shoppers who search are looking for something they want to buy, so they need to be able to locate and use the search box with ease. Having optimized your search box, have you also ensured that your site-search technology can provide relevant results when your shoppers actually use your search box?

EasyAsk technology can.

“While I acknowledge that there is a need for art, fun, and a general good time on the web, I believe that the main goal of most web projects should be to make it easy for customers to perform useful tasks.”

– Jakob Nielsen, Designing Web Usability

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