6 Digital Commerce B2B Trends for 2023

The B2B landscape becomes increasingly competitive with each passing year. As we enter 2023, B2B companies must understand digital commerce trends – and how to capitalize on them – to take control of market share and edge out the competition. 

Below you’ll find the top six digital commerce B2B trends for 2023 and how you can make those trends work for you. 

1. Hyper-Personalization

Personalization is essential for brands that want to win the digital shelf. And it’s more than a customer’s desire or expectation. Shoppers demand hyper-personalization in their digital commerce experiences. Brands delivering on these demands will win market share and customer loyalty. 

Personalization can be based on the following: 

• Language
• Location 
• Previous purchases 
• Browsing history 

Personalization is standard in B2C retail. B2B brands have historically fallen behind personalization efforts compared to B2C market leaders. But for B2B brands to deliver frictionless, enjoyable, and lucrative shopping experiences, they must prioritize personalization. 

Knowing users, segmenting your audiences, and providing relevant product recommendations are the foundations of a superior personalized experience. 

2. AI-based Upselling and Cross-Selling

The lines between brick-and-mortar sales and digital commerce continue to blur as each year passes. We see this clearly in new upselling and cross-selling capabilities within the digital commerce space. 

Before the advent of e-commerce, retail stores relied on the talents of their team to execute relevant cross-sell and upsells. Today, brands utilize machine learning and artificial intelligence to deliver personalized, highly relevant product cross-sells, upsells, and add-ons that enhance the consumer’s purchase. 

Advancements in machine learning enable brands to more accurately predict purchase choices based on browsing behavior and buying history. Relevant recommendations not only increase your revenue but they increase the user’s affinity for your brand. 

AI-based cross-selling and upselling make the shopping experience easy for consumers. And in a market with an increasing demand for personalization and convenience, shoppers expect relevant recommendations when they land on your PDPs.

3. Contextualized, Real-Time Pricing

Regional and store-level accuracy is essential for brands hoping to take control of their digital retail markets. Contextualizing product pricing – and content – sets realistic customer expectations, ensures accurate order fulfillment, and promotes an enjoyable shopping experience for the consumer. 

With regular content audits and monitoring, you can manage price, availability, and promotions at the regional, zip code, and store levels. This allows you to ensure contextualized, real-time product data accuracy. 

Regular regional auditing helps you:

• Monitor product inventory changes by location and at scale 
• Confirm and validate merchandise team data 
• Understand and validate promotion coupons in specific regions

Scaling your catalog is a crucial aspect of winning market share. Brands that prioritize and monitor contextualized, real-time pricing deliver more consistent and accurate product data that results in better customer experiences – and a higher CLT.

4. Self-Service Portals

Digital commerce allows shoppers to consume more product information in a shorter time than ever possible in a brick-and-mortar retail experience. With the digital shelf at their fingertips, your consumers have access to everything they could want to know about your products and your competitors. 

As we enter 2023, consumers want their digital shopping experiences to be more streamlined and convenient. Enter self-service portals (or digital sales rooms).

Instead of aid from a salesperson, brands are introducing digital self-service portals where shoppers can receive the same real-time service and support they could expect from a brick-and-mortar retail experience. 

Self-service portals will vary based on your market and your target customer. Consider how your content aids in the creation of a frictionless shopping experience. Preemptively answer consumer questions, provide ample product imagery and video, and include the product data your shoppers need and want to know. Live chat features allow you to quickly answer questions through automated software and then send nuanced questions to your customer service support team.

Digital shoppers prioritize efficiency. Expediting the buyer’s journey will keep your customers returning for future needs.

5. Customer Analytics to Improve the User Experience

B2B brands are increasingly prioritizing the customer experience. As with B2C companies, the B2B market is competitive, and consumers and clients have more access than ever to a brand’s competition. Consumers don’t have to settle, and they won’t. 

B2B companies are innovating methods to deliver exceptional user experiences that keep customers happy now and for the long term. And a big part of this customer-centric approach comes through using customer analytics to improve the buyer’s experience. 

Your customer analytics analyze and evaluate consumer behavior across various channels and touch-points. That behavior’s impact is then measured against your business outcomes. 

Collecting and learning from customer data empowers you to shape your site, service, products, and support around real user needs and wants. Digital commerce consumer analytics can help you:

• Improve inventory management 
• Create personalized content and marketing 
• Identify and fix causes for cart abandonment 
• Understand your most effective marketing channels 
• Enhance the consumer experience 

B2B customers in 2023 expect near perfection from brands. They want tailored experiences and seamless buying journeys. Using customer analytics can help you deliver all the above.

6. Higher Emphasis on Product Content

E-commerce is the way of sales. This became blatantly true for B2C retail a decade ago. As we enter 2023, B2B commerce will see an even greater emphasis on the quantity, quality, and efficiency of online content. 

With more shopping and sales happening via a screen, there is no option – brands must prioritize their product content. When customers interact with your brand digitally, they rely on you to deliver the product content and data they need to learn about your company and your product and make a purchase decision. 

In digital commerce, your content is your product. As a result, you must deliver high-quality, engaging, accurate, and consistent product content on every channel where consumers interact with your company. Your brand and your sales depend on it. 

First, you need to nail the basics. This includes knowing the core information required by each retailer or distributor so you can provide the appropriate, SEO-friendly content:

• Product categorization
• Product titles
• Product descriptions
• Marketing copy
• Bullet points
• Images 
• Videos

Next, you can focus on rich product content, which is an essential component of a successful product content strategy: 

• AR/VR experiences 
• 360-degree spin imagery 
• Product videos 
• Product comparison charts 
• User-generated content

Your content should answer consumer questions, making them aware of their pain points and providing a solution to their needs. And it should be done in an attractive and easily consumable format. 

Product content quality will make or break your sale. Emphasizing and investing in product content allows you to engage more clients and bring them to purchase.

Content Status Solutions for B2B Digital Commerce

Digital commerce is the way of B2B engagement and sales. For your brand to win, you need tools and resources designed for the online market. Content Status has the solutions you need to optimize your online presence and win the digital shelf in 2023 and beyond. Reach out today to learn how.