Top Questions to Ask When Considering a B2B Ecommerce Platform

Is your B2B company considering an improved ecommerce vendor platform solution? When B2B buyers vet ecommerce vendors, they are sure to ask about the platform features and benefits but often don’t inquire about the upgrade process. Beyond the upgrade process, there are many considerations, like scalability, page load times, integration and customization capabilities, and more.

This article will discuss several important questions to ask when vetting a vendor to save your business valuable time and money and avoid potential (costly) headaches.

What Is Their Upgrade Process Like?

When vetting ecommerce vendors, ask about their upgrade process and discuss the complexities of launching future platform upgrades. Does the platform provide regularly scheduled updates instead of upgrades? Can you decide when you want to incorporate these upgrades?

Ask If and How the Platform Can Scale Over Time

You’ll want to discover how the B2B ecommerce vendors can help you scale as your business grows. Finding a vendor that can do this and grow with you is the best. You want a flexible platform that can evolve with your growing business and the ever-changing market, keeping you abreast of what’s needed to ensure your business’s ecommerce success grows. If the technology quickly becomes outdated or doesn’t provide more complex features, you may be looking at a costly replatforming in the next three to five years.

Can the Platform Be Optimized for Speed?

Search engine optimization (SEO) and a good customer experience are vital for ecommerce B2B success. Both can be significantly impacted by page load speed. Figure out page load times and consider additional costs such as hosting bandwidth or a content delivery network (CDN). Finding a platform built on a modern architecture that can cache pages and APIs will lead to a faster page load experience.

What Are the Integration Capabilities?

Ask the B2B ecommerce vendors about their integration capabilities. A robust and extensible platform offering a seamless, smooth integration process will save you time and money in the long run as well as enable your ecommerce platform to be consistent with the rest of your business processes. Finding an easily extensible platform, ideally with pre-built APIs will ensure a more straightforward integration process.

What Are the Customization Capabilities?

A B2B ecommerce platform vendor that can help your business improve your personalization framework to create a tailor-made digital experience is vital—providing ecommerce solutions that can be tailored to how you do your business versus having to change to fit the platform. Also, ask about their personalization capabilities, such as creating robust customer-specific catalogs and pricing.

Is There a Clear Product Roadmap?

A clear, defined product roadmap will help you understand the direction and prioritization of feature development. Ask if the platform vendor’s product roadmap is customer-centric. A customer-centric product roadmap is crucial for providing exceptional customer experiences. But also look for innovation, solving problems you may not yet thought of.

Taking Your B2B Company to The Next Level

In today’s era, B2B companies must be more willing to change and adapt. Finding the right ecommerce platform solution is critical to maximizing the next generation of digital success for your business. All platform solutions are not created alike. Be sure you are asking the right questions, making sure you confirm the answers with your potential vendor, and then thoughtfully identify the ultimate solution that best serves your business and client needs today and in the future.

While not the best fit for every use case, ROC Commerce builds leading ecommerce websites across a wide range of industries. In doing so, ROC Commerce partners with B2B businesses every day to maximize every visit to the website.