In 2023, the global B2C ecommerce market size reached US$ 4.8 Trillion [1]. So, if your B2C ecommerce business is not thriving, then it’s not the market; you’re probably doing something wrong.
At the very top of those reasons is having "Bad B2C ecommerce software.”
Dangers of using bad B2C ecommerce software
Here are some of the disadvantages of launching your B2C ecommerce business on bad ecommerce software:
Poor customer experience
Negative reviews kill an ecommerce business faster than bad products. And one of the reasons why customers leave a bad review is if they have an unsatisfactory customer experience.
This could be poor loading speed, problems with the checkout page, or poor UI/UX. All of this can be caused by bad ecommerce software, which then leads to less sales conversions.
Limited customization
Many B2C ecommerce stores sell the same products with very few unique selling points, but branding is one of the factors that differentiates them. Now, if you use a B2C ecommerce software with very limited customization features, your business stands a risk of being lost in the crowd.
You won't be able to create a memorable brand identity, your website will look generic, and you'll blend in with the competitors rather than stand out. All of these factors make it difficult to attract, retain, and stay at the top of your customers' minds.
Inadequate integration capabilities
For an ecommerce website to work properly and scale as it should, both its front-end and back-end need to be worked on properly. Most ecommerce software handles many of the front-end tasks but falls short on back-end functionalities. Good ecommerce software addresses these back-end gaps by allowing integration with third-party tools.
Challenges With Bad Software | Bad ecommerce software often lacks adequate integration capabilities, making it difficult to use third-party tools for payment processing, shipping, inventory management, marketing, etc. |
Consequences | Without proper integration, businesses may face inefficiencies and errors due to manual management. |
Solution | Switching to better B2C ecommerce software can improve the chances of scaling your business. |
One ecommerce software that has been pre-built with functionalities specifically tailored to help you scale your B2C and B2B ecommerce businesses is Shopware.
Founded in 2000, Shopware is one of the few B2C ecommerce platforms that offer advanced customization, flexibility and access to third-party integrations to help business owners scale their online stores.
5 ways Shopware can help you scale your B2C ecommerce business
Read on to find out how Shopware can help you increase your B2C ecommerce revenue.
1. Helps improve customer experience
As also discussed above, a great way to skyrocket the revenue of a B2C ecommerce business is by providing shoppers with a positive customer experience.
According to the CX Index, here are some stats to prove this:
Brands that focus on giving the best customer experience report 60% more profits than brands that don't.
Customers spend 140% more after they have a positive experience.
Because of this, Shopware has built tools whose functionalities are focused on making sure that you give your customers the best buying experience.
One of those features is our spatial 3D and AR capabilities. This enables you to create an immersive and seamless shopping experience for your customers, reduces the difference between the product in the digital and physical space and improves customers’ trust.
Moreover, in this feature, Shopware has also integrated 3D visualization, Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) to help you give your customers a realistic view of the product, increase customer satisfaction and reduce return rate.
This works best for furniture and home decor stores, fashion and apparel brands, electronics and gadgets retailers, jewelry retailers, pet owners, automotive dealers and so on. If your business is in any of the industries mentioned above, this feature will help you gain a much-needed competitive edge rather than using traditional online catalogs.
Not only this, Shopware offers an AI feature that automatically generates customized checkout messages to elevate your customer satisfaction. These post-purchase messages are personalized and tailored to the items in the shopping cart.
More specifically, according to your preference and customization, these messages can either thank customers, give them exclusive pointers on how to use the product, promise them a customized discount on their next order, ask them to leave a review, etc. Simply put, the options are endless.
2. Helps you increase conversion
For a B2C business to grow as it should, it must be able to achieve a high lead conversion rate in its marketing campaigns. The fastest way to do this is by cutting down on the marketing/sales process.
To help you achieve this, Shopware offers a digital sales room feature that you can use to enhance your customer’s digital sales experience and increase conversion.
Here's how it works: with the digital sales room, you can interact with buyers, answer any questions related to your product, give advice, and make recommendations. It's an engaging sales method and gives a human connection to a once-isolated and machine-led sales process.
Moreover, it eliminates the tedious paperwork, lengthy email chains and time-consuming online and on-site meetings that sometimes tire the customers and make them lose interest in your product.
Mind you, this feature is best for B2C ecommerce products that need consultation before purchase. Companies like Tamaris, who have used Shopware’s Digital Sales room feature, have noticed 10x higher conversion rates and 50% shorter sales cycles.
3. Helps you increase customer retention
Acquiring new customers is more expensive than retaining old ones. But that’s not only because of the money that goes into marketing and lead generation but also because of the difference in the revenue generated by those two customer categories.
According to BIA Advisory Services, old (repeat) customers spend 67% more than new customers, and 61% of small businesses depend on customer retention for over half of their revenue. [2] To that effect, Shopware offers a subscription option to help you increase the number of your return customers.
This feature is perfect for B2C ecommerce businesses that offer products that need to be restocked at intervals. This could be everyday essentials like coffee, toilet paper, or pet food. It is also perfect for businesses that offer beauty products, grocery boxes, other food products, subscription boxes, services, etc.
The basic aim of the subscription feature is to ensure that your customers enjoy the luxury of getting your products delivered to them automatically and at regular intervals. It allows your customers to easily create or cancel their subscriptions right from the storefront.
Furthermore, this customer retention feature allows you to limit product subscriptions to certain customer categories. It also enables you to offer exclusive subscription cost discounts to loyal customers and to target a particular customer group with subscription offers.
Shopware’s subscription gives your customers a hassle-free and reliable service while improving their chances of becoming repeat customers.
4. Helps with omnichannel sales
A customer's buying journey is not as predictable as marketers and sales teams would like it to be. Some customers buy products without knowing the brand; some make buying decisions immediately after seeing the ad for the first time. At the same time, some take weeks or even months of (convincing) marketing before they agree to part ways with their money.
Worse of all, some customers can learn about a brand on one marketing channel and end up purchasing on another. So, if you're not practicing omnichannel sales, then you're likely losing a lot of conversions.
To help you remedy this, Shopware offers an omnichannel solution that connects your brand's presence and activities across multiple marketing channels. It allows every sales and communication channel to interact smoothly and removes potential breaks in the whole customer engagement journey. It ensures that your brand does not compromise on a good customer experience across all marketing channels.
Additionally, it also provides complete control and an overview of your business's customer data to help you monitor your customers' buying behavior, your products and stocks, how your employees are doing their jobs, etc. With this data, you can create specific offers and campaigns for a selected customer category across all channels and track the progress of the campaign in as much detail as you need.
With Shopware’s omnichannel sales feature, you can simplify your business’s procedures, expand your market research and marketing and sell to your customer from any channel of their choice.
5. Helps you automate your ecommerce business
There's a lot of work that goes into owning and managing an online learning business. If you're not careful, you'll be so carried away by the technical aspect of running the business that you forget the most important part of the process, which is to get new customers and retain old ones.
Shopware offers a Flow Builder to help prevent this.
It helps B2C businesses carry out ecommerce automation to simplify complex business procedures using an intuitive no-code interface. Plus, it enables you to optimize your ecommerce business ideas and processes by automating routine manual jobs. This frees up time for you to focus on the tasks that scale your ecommerce business ideas.
Moreover, it is a time-saving feature that simplifies complex business procedures and enables you to modify your site's workflows according to your brand's unique challenges and requirements. It allows you to create flows to perform specific tasks. It enables you to set business events that will trigger your predefined tasks.
You can use Flow Builder to automate your email campaigns and send carefully timed and personalized offers based on your customer's shopping behavior. You can also automate your promotions and discounts across multiple yearly events. Plus, you can increase your cross-selling and up-selling marketing efforts by automating the process of displaying appealing offers to your customers post-purchase.
With Shopware's Flow Builder feature, you can have the time and resources you need to release new products, interact with your customers and overall help you scale your business.
Other ways Shopware can help you scale your B2C ecommerce business
Aside from the above five direct ways Shopware can help you scale your B2c ecommerce business, here are other Shopware features that can indirectly help you gather more market share than your competitors.
Data-backed marketing
Shopware is a B2C marketing automation platform that uses artificial intelligence to classify customers and generate insight based on their buying history. This guides you to launch precise marketing campaigns that resonate with what your customers need.
Data-backed product upgrades
Showare also uses AI to gather a tailor-made, at-a-glance compilation of your customer reviews. It then highlights the prominent keywords, which in turn provides insight into the features and benefits of your product that your customers like and the features that need to be changed.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Shopware offers a Search by Context functionality that allows your customers to find your product using everyday search queries. For instance, customers can use "traveling items for my New York trip" to find a B2C ecommerce store that sells clothes.
Shopware also offers a Search By Image feature that allows potential customers to find your brand by uploading images of your product or a product that is similar to yours. We also provide an Image Keyword Assistant feature that automatically adjusts the metadata and your images' keywords to help you rank faster.
International buyers
Shopware’s AI Copilot automatically translates your product description and reviews to enable international customers to understand your product easily and make a purchase. This clarifies your products' offerings and reduces the risk of returns.
B2C ecommerce companies that have used Shopware to scale their businesses
Here are four B2C ecommerce companies that have used the Shopware platform to scale their business:
1. BabyOne
BabyOne, Germany's number one specialist chain for baby and toddler supplies, relaunched their ecommerce store on Shopware 6, and according to Sabrina Mertens, their Director of Marketing, they’ve reached a major milestone towards their goal of being an omnichannel market leader in DACH.
They use Shopware's Flow Builder to shorten their sales cycle and create intuitive back-end processes, among other features. Currently, they have over 100 BabyOne retail stores and use Shopware's omnichannel feature to connect seamlessly with all of them to serve their customers better.
2. La Saporeria
This is an Italian B2C ecommerce store that sells apples. They needed ecommerce software that would allow them the flexibility of creating colorful designs to align their products with their brand's value. So they use Shopware to create unique designs and introduce their customers to the colorful world and different flavors of apples.
3. Armendangels
Armendanagels is a customer-focused fashion brand that needed a flexible and future-oriented ecommerce solution that would allow it to run its business more sustainably. They use Shopware to automate most of their technical processes and concentrate on the creative side of the business.
4. Stabilo
Stabilo, a leading manufacturer of writing instruments in Europe, wanted to start an ecommerce business platform that would allow them to effortlessly combine content marketing and commerce. They also needed a B2C ecommerce platform that would allow them the flexibility of customizing a state-of-the-art shopping experience for their customers.
They use Shopware’s AI content generator to supplement their content marketing process. They also use Shopware’s Rule Builder to create an intuitive user experience for their customers.
Conclusion
The B2C ecommerce industry is rapidly booming, so there’s no reason why your business shouldn’t be growing as fast as it possibly can. Remember that bad B2C ecommerce software is one of the major reasons why an ecommerce business model might not scale well.
So contact us to discover how we can help you scale your B2C ecommerce store.
Frequently Asked Questions
What do you mean by B2C commerce?
B2C (business-to-customer) commerce is a series of sales transactions that occur when a business or company sells products or services directly to consumers. Here, the businesses are the sellers, while individuals are the buyers. This type of transaction usually occurs through online platforms, retail stores, or other direct sales channels.
What is B2B ecommerce software?
A B2B ecommerce software is a platform that enables B2B business owners to create and manage an online store. It is similar to having a website for selling B2B products, with built-in features that cater exclusively to helping B2B ecommerce websites and stores make sales effortlessly.
What is B2B and B2C ecommerce?
B2B (Business-to-Business) ecommerce involves sales transactions between businesses, where one business sells products or services to another business. In contrast, B2C (Business-to-Consumer) ecommerce is a sales transaction between a business and individual consumers.
What is a B2C ecommerce platform?
A B2C platform is software that enables business owners to create and manage a successful online business or online store. It is similar to having a website where you can sell your B2C products, except that it has built-in features that cater exclusively to helping ecommerce stores make sales effortlessly.
