With buyers becoming more attracted to consumer-styled purchases within the B2B marketplace, a recent study from Accenture Interactive shows that more than half (59%) of B2B companies report that one-third of their customers place orders online. Research shows that 86% of respondents work for a company that offers customers an option to make online purchases.
The study, Channel Shift: Measuring B2B Efforts To Shift Customers Online, surveyed 50 B2B digital and E-commerce professionals across a wide range of industries, to analyze the purchasing channels B2B organizations offer buyers, tactics leveraged to promote the option for buyers to buy online and the overall results E-commerce can bring to a B2B company’s bottom line.
While more B2B organizations have E-commerce initiatives, it still has not had a massive impact on overall revenue. Half of the respondents noted that their company receives less than 10% of their revenue from online sales. Only 19% note that more than half of their revenue comes from online transactions.
Also, 64% of respondents noted that their long-term customers’ resistance to change was their top hurdle for driving more online sales. Other notable challenges include:
- Inconsistent use of online buying options (54%);
- Unprepared sales teams for online sales, sales resistance (42%);
- The customer’s security concerns (38%); and
- Complex websites make online purchases difficult (36%).
“As the ease and convenience of the B2C E-commerce experience wins over B2B buyers, the adoption of seamless online B2B buying is steadily reaching a tipping point,” said Bob Barr, Managing Director for Accenture Interactive. “The study found that the maturity of B2B E-commerce platforms correlates directly with having substantially higher sales.”
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