A buyer needs the same twelve items he ordered last month. On your site that means searching for each one, checking he has the right variant and rebuilding the basket. At the trade counter it means reading out an order number.
He phones. Your website did not lose the sale, it just failed to take it, and someone in the office spent twenty minutes typing.
Step 1: make order history the landing page
For a logged-in trade account, the most useful screen is what they bought before. Putting it front and centre, rather than behind three clicks, changes behaviour immediately.
Step 2: allow reorder in one action
A repeat order button that rebuilds a basket from a previous order, with quantities editable, removes the entire reason to phone.
Step 3: support saved lists
Buyers work from job lists, van stock lists and standard kits. Letting them save and name these, and order from them, is how a store becomes part of their routine.
Step 4: make part number search work properly
Buyers search by manufacturer code, old codes, your code and partial strings with spaces and dashes in the wrong places. Search that tolerates all of it is worth more than any design change.
Step 5: show their price, not list price
A trade buyer who sees list price assumes the site does not know them and goes back to the counter. Account pricing must be visible everywhere, including in history and lists.
Step 6: show stock honestly
Available now, available from a branch and on order are different answers. Buyers plan jobs around them and will not trust a store that says available for all three.
Step 7: allow ordering against a reference
A purchase order number, a job reference or a site name attached to an order is how trade buyers reconcile invoices. Without it they cannot use your store even when they want to.
Step 8: support multiple users on one account
A buyer, an office manager and someone on site all order under one account with different permissions. This is a normal trade requirement and a common reason a store is unusable.
Step 9: keep the counter and the site in sync
An order placed online should be visible to the trade counter and vice versa. Two separate histories are worse than one.
Step 10: make invoices and statements accessible
Reordering is only half the job. Self-service access to invoices removes a large volume of routine contact.
Step 11: capture the enquiries a store cannot answer
Availability on an unusual line, a bulk price or a technical question still needs a person, which is the flow described in bulk order and quote requests on B2B stores.
Step 12: get the account open quickly
New buyers stall at application, which is covered in trade account questions on B2B ecommerce stores, and trade demand often hides in a consumer inbox, as in wholesale enquiries hiding in your retail store inbox.
Step 13: stop retyping the same answers
Recurring questions belong on a page and in an assistant, which is the argument in stop answering the same email twice, automate it.
Getting started
Publish your account terms, stock definitions and ordering options, then answer reorder and availability questions at any hour. SpideyChat for wholesalers and distributors answers from your published pages. Try SpideyChat on your own site, or read about answers on the features page.