UWear is a family business specializing in the sale of licensed children's products for school and daily use for children up to 12 years old. From its inception, the company started entirely digitally with online sales to end customers (B2C), and later expanded its activities to include wholesale sales.As the business grew, numerous challenges began to arise with the previous system on which the online store was developed. This necessitated UWear to make a conscious and timely decision—to migrate its online store to a new platform.
Thus, in 2020, UWear entrusted our team with the migration and redesign of their B2C online store from Joomla to Magento. Since then, the retailer has relied on technical support and eCommerce consultations provided by the Stenik team.
At the beginning of our collaboration, we decided to start with a single store serving both end customers and wholesale clients. We planned to separate the two segments into individual stores at a later stage, depending on business growth.As the customer base grew, UWear began to encounter some difficulties and obstacles. In the following lines, we will present the challenges faced by the retailer and how our team solved them by developing a separate B2B store that the client manages from the same administration.
Problems the retailer faces when working with a unified store for B2B and B2C clients
Discover the difficulties the retailer encounters when managing a unified store for B2B and B2C clients and the disadvantages for users:
Limited personalization:
- Same interface and functionalities for both types of clients: Lack of adaptation to the specific needs of B2B and B2C clients.
Profile and login
- Standard login for B2B and B2C users: No personalization of the registration process according to the type of client.
- Inability to create corporate accounts and a multi-level structure that allows order approval from users at different levels.
- Inability to create a personalized checkout for the two different types of users, considering the specific business needs.
Administration of individual pricing conditions:
- Additional time resource for managing different pricing rules and discounts, which can sometimes lead to confusion on the public part of the site about which price is for B2C users and which for B2B.
- Need to create groups for individual clients in the administration.
Products
- Limited possibilities for business analysis and reporting based on order history.
Management of claims and returns:
- Processing claims and returns is more complex and requires more resources. Different procedures and policies for B2C and B2B clients, often with B2B being much simpler compared to B2C, which follows strict rules.
- Need for B2B clients to initiate returns themselves: Administrators lose time processing return requests submitted via email, phone, and other communication channels.
Invoice and payment management:
- Lack of access and information about personal obligations, financial documents, and other references in the profile of B2B clients. Loss of time resource for communication between the online retailer and clients via email and phone regarding invoices and payments.
Marketing strategies:
- Marketing strategies for B2B and B2C clients are often different (differences in goals, budgets, and approaches), which can lead to conflicts and inefficiencies when trying to combine them for a single store. For example, your most regular B2B clients might “consume” a significant portion of the advertising budget intended for B2C clients.
Identifying these difficulties, the retailer consulted with us, and based on our extensive experience, we recommended separating B2C and B2B into separate stores, which he manages from a single administration without additional costs. By developing the B2B online store, we managed to provide UWear with personalized solutions that effectively improve the user experience and optimize business processes. Meet them:
Solving the problems with separate stores for B2C and B2B with a common administration on a single Magento platform
Discover the advantages provided by the development of a separate B2B store:
Development:
- Expanding the B2B sales channel to business clients and providing better service and functionalities that meet their specific needs. The two separate stores (B2B and B2C) are managed by the retailer from a single Magento administration.
- Better order management, especially during periods when B2B clients generate a higher volume of orders than B2C clients.
Personalization:
- Different interface for separate online stores and personalized design for the two types of clients.
- Convenient user interface, adapted to the specific needs of B2B clients, and a rich set of personalized functionalities for B2B sales.
- The most important differences between the B2B and B2C stores are reflected in various aspects of the user experience—home page, product listing, product detail page, registration, user profile, cart, and checkout process.
Profile and login:
- Separate login for B2B clients, linking the existing client's profile in the ERP system and providing access to the order history made before the store separation.
- Ability to send a registration request for corporate accounts for B2B clients.
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- Support for flat and multi-level structure, including multiple profiles associated with the same company with different access rights.
Workflow optimization:
- Division of tasks and responsibilities for the retailer's team for serving B2B and B2C clients.
Statistics:
For the retailer:
- Ability to track and analyze the average monthly volume of orders.
- Tracking gross margin for individual orders or specific periods, which helps manage profitability and make informed business decisions.
For the B2B client:
- Access to personal obligations, documents, and other files in the B2B client's profile, usually extracted directly from the retailer's ERP system.
Pricing and flexible pricing rules:
- Ability to manage and administer multiple user groups and different pricing conditions and discounts for each of them. Prices are dynamically extracted in real-time from the ERP system.
Separation of claims and returns:
- Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) system that optimizes the return and claim processes. For B2B clients, a modification providing a simplified claim form is implemented.
Reports
For the retailer:
The Magento administration provides the ability to create separate reports specifically intended for the B2B store that meet the retailer's individual needs.
For the B2B client:
- In the B2B online store, clients can generate analyses and reports based on their order history. This functionality is particularly useful for smaller retailers who do not have powerful warehouse software systems. Clients can review not only online store orders but also those from other channels. All order information is extracted from the ERP system and visualized in the client's profile.
- In the "Reports" section, users can filter data by various criteria such as item, category, brand, and set the period of the report. The report result is presented in tabular form, including information on ordered products, number of products, and total amount for the respective period. The generated report can be downloaded in XLSX format.
- In the "Charts" section, users can filter data by product category and brand, as well as set the report period.
The report is visualized as a colorful pie chart, showing the percentage distribution of items based on order history.
- Check payments and invoices: B2B clients can check payments and invoices and download documents without needing to contact support staff or waste time on email communication and phone calls.
Additional Marketing Solutions:
Segmenting marketing strategies for B2B and B2C into separate stores allows for more precise targeting, better budget allocation, and higher campaign efficiency.
- Automatically sending a satisfaction survey after an order is placed, with the ability to customize the survey for B2B clients compared to B2C clients.
- Automating informational emails about new products in B2B (Follow up) - notifying customers about new items in the store via SMS/Viber notifications through integration with the external provider Link Mobility and email.
- A separate Facebook Pixel for the B2B site to differentiate the traffic and audiences for the two sites.
Results
The creation of a separate B2B store was an important step forward for UWear, improving business processes and customer service. Segmenting the B2C and B2B sectors into separate stores with a shared administration in a single Magento system enhanced sales processes and administration for the retailer, meeting their specific business needs. This approach allowed UWear to respond to the growing needs of its wholesale customers and optimize the management of commercial operations while maintaining centralized administrative control.
The Stenik team is proud of the achieved success and is committed to developing new solutions and functionalities that will elevate UWear's business to an even higher level.
Do You Have Questions About Developing a B2B Online Platform?
Check out our detailed case study on the B2B platform for S&D in our blog and learn more about the unique functionalities we implemented for the retailer in the food and beverage industry. Do not hesitate to contact us for any questions related to developing customized B2B solutions for your business. Our experts are available to help you and implement all the technical functionalities that will support your business-to-business process and sales. Learn more about the advantages of a B2B online store.
