Why it’s important to have a B2B shopping cart:
As someone that frequently shops for wholesale products online, I must say that many websites aren’t properly setup for this type of business.
One of the most dreaded things for me is having to call in to place an order. The other things that I kind of dislike is sending an inquiry via email or having to wait for my account to get activated.
Now, I can somewhat tolerate the activation part because I know that it’s a one-time thing, and that these businesses just need to verify that I do indeed operate a business, but I just cannot justify placing an order over the phone or by email in this day and age. On many occasions I even delayed placing orders just because I couldn’t find the time to call in.
The benefits of having a B2B shopping cart:
I would sometimes come across 2 companies that offer the same product and if 1 of them has an online checkout process, I often purchase the products through them even if it means paying slightly more — after all time is money.
I especially like sites that give you discounts when you purchase in larger quantities. The convenience of seeing these price breaks right on your computer screen is such a time saver.
So if you are a wholesaler, you really should look into a B2B shopping cart. Many offer very flexible features such as: group pricing, tiered pricing, the ability to hide prices from the general public and more.
You can even do drop shipping with many of these platforms. For example, you can charge a little more money to ship your items directly to your reseller’s customers. From my experience resellers love this because they are able to sell without stocking items.
List of shopping carts that are capable of handling business-to-business transactions:
While I did do a lot of research on these carts prior to listing them here, I ask that you verify the details thoroughly prior to downloading/installing the software. Especially since many of these programs get upgraded quite often, and in very rare cases, features are sometimes lost along the way.
Below I have highlighted the B2B features that these shopping carts support.
- Tiered pricing for customer groups.
- Hide price brackets from specified customer groups.
- Input up to 10 different price levels per product.
- Incorporate bulk discount into multiple price levels.
- Product quantity discounts.
- Membership base access to every category.
- Ability to set minimum order limits.
- Tax exempt feature.
- Set pricing groups.
- Product quantity discounts.
- Hide prices from unregistered members.
- Multi-tier pricing for quantity discounts.
- Product quantity discounts.
- Members only storefront (login required).
- Set pricing groups.
- Bulk discounts.
- Quick re-order from from existing orders.
- Complex sales tax support.
- Call center module for mail and telephone orders and CRM.
- Create an unlimited number of pricing levels and assign customers to the appropriate level.
- Enable customers to create saved orders so they can place weekly / monthly stocking orders with just a few clicks.
- Members only storefront (login required).
- Display volume discounts and price breaks by price level.
- Set minimum order limits on a per item or order basis for each price level.
- Customer groups.
- Separate price per customer.
- Group access for products and categories.
- Display price per group.
- Require login to see content.
- Quantity price breaks.
- Product quantity discounts.
- Customer groups.
- Separate prices per customer group.
- Multi-tier pricing for quantity discounts.
- Tax rates per customer group.
- Multi-tier pricing upsell.
- Call center (phone order creation).
Also see Magento Go (the hosted version).
- Manage wholesale and retail customers.
- Password protected login.
- Customer types.
- Product pricing by customer type.
- Product allocation by customer type.
- Customers can enter custom purchase order numbers.
- Exempt sales tax.
- Customer groups.
- Set different prices per group.
- Display prices only to logged in customers.
- Quantity discounts.
- Customer groups.
- Separate pricing per customer.
- Customer groups.
- Allows you to set wholesale pricing by product or as a percentage off retail.
- Set different tax rates for wholesalers and/or make their purchases tax free.
- Supports case pack / inter pack pricing.
- Collect tax ID, EIN or any custom information that you require.
- Price contracts and special pricing levels.
- Manage dealers and partners.
- Segment product categories to specific groups.
- Customer groups.
- Promotion by customer, customer group.
- Minimum purchase quantity.
- Quantity discounts by percentage or fixed amount.
- Muli-tier pricing.
- Set minimum order amounts.
- Password protected login.
- Customer groups.
- Provide discounts or pricing per customer group.
- Display prices depending on membership and reseller settings.
- Define quantity unit.
- Allow purchasing decimal quantities, such as 1.5 meters.
- Set minimum order quantity.
- Product quantity discounts.
- Promote next discount level.
- Display lower prices to resellers after they have logged in.
- Display lower prices to members after they have logged in.
- Define minimum purchase price total.
- Define maximum purchase price total.
- Support for tax exempted customers.
- Automatic validity check of European tax exemption numbers.
- Customer groups.
- Have the option to restrict your store from public access (password protected).
- Define prices based on shoppergroups.
- Price display depending on shoppergroup.
- Tax based on shoppergroup.
- Pricing levels.
- Offer special discount pricing to specific groups of customers.
- Quantity discounts.
- Members only pricing (password protected store that displays special prices to members).
- Members only website (password protected store that only displays prices to members).
- Members only browsing (password protected store that requires members to login before they can view products).
- Enable/disable login requirement for retailers to view merchandize.
- Online retailer-account request form.
- Special product grouping such as pre-packs.
- Allow wholesale factoring, credit card payment and fax orders.
- Wholesale static and dynamic pricing.
- Wholesale pricing and discounts.
- Usergroups.
- Members only categories.
- Customers-defined prices.
- Quantity discounts.
- Retail and wholesale prices.
- Define minimum order amount.
- Tax exempt feature.
- Customer groups.
- Allows groups of users to receive a set discount amount at checkout.
- Products can be set as call for price.
- Minimum or maximum quantities and units – you can sell one per customer, or require at least four and in multiples of two. You can set requirements on a per-product basis.
- Quantity discounts can be configured per-product for varying pricing levels or quantity levels.
- One-time fees can be added to products via attributes.
- Attributes also support text pricing, such as price-per-word or price-per-letter for personalizing.