B2B commerce is a workflow problem wearing a storefront
Trade buyers do not want a better shopping experience. They want their existing purchasing process to take fewer emails.
Consumer commerce optimises for discovery and impulse. B2B commerce optimises for repetition and approval. Treating the second like the first produces a beautiful storefront that trade customers ignore in favour of emailing their rep.
What trade buyers actually do
They order the same forty items every month. They need a purchase order number on the invoice. Somebody above them has to approve anything over a threshold. Their pricing is not your list pricing and has not been for years.
None of that is a shopping journey. It is a workflow, and the storefront's job is to make it faster than the email it replaces.
The features that move the needle
- Requisition lists. Saved, shareable, reorderable in two clicks. This alone converts more trade accounts than any redesign.
- Contract pricing that is visibly correct. If a buyer has to check the price against their agreement, they will keep calling.
- Approval chains that mirror the real org. Including the case where the approver is on holiday.
- Quote-to-order. Rep raises it, buyer accepts it, it becomes an order without retyping.
- Order history that finance can use. Exportable, with PO numbers and cost centres attached.
Measure adoption, not conversion
The metric for a B2B storefront is the share of orders that arrive without human intervention. On the Verdant Supply engagement that number went from under 5% to 83% in two quarters, and the sales team's time moved from order entry to actual selling. Conversion rate, in the consumer sense, was never the point.
