B2B eCommerce Checklist for 2022 and Beyond

Where do you focus your eCommerce planning for the New Year?

For many B2B organizations, the new year brings new budgets, new challenges and new expectations to overcome and grow revenue in 2022 and beyond. The most direct and impactful way to grow your online revenue is by investing in your eCommerce.

For B2B especially, it’s time to get yourself thinking about that big eCommerce project coming up in the next year. Are there are any opportunities to get the groundwork started for your project as you head into 2022.

Things to get you started:

1. Product Data 

Your product data has never been more important – 81 percent of consumers conduct online research before making a purchase (Source: Oberlo).

If there’s one truth about eCommerce and product data, it’s going to take you longer to get set up and ready to go than you think.

Getting your vendors (or internal team) to pass along product data takes time. Start contacting them now to get the process started. If you’re just getting started, consult the product data professionals to help further articulate the product data cleansing process and how our solution can expedite it.

The faster you can get your new online store up and running with your latest product data, the sooner you can free up precious internal resources to focus more on selling and other critical aspects to grow your business efficiently.

More about our product data management solution. 

2. Review the Product Catalog 

It’s easy to get caught up on adding new products to your storefront, but optimizing the existing catalog and searching out for opportunities requires only your team’s time.

Frequently, the product groups or pages that used to be big drivers of revenue or orders aren’t working as well as they used to. Or, organic traffic rankings have slipped across the formerly high ranking pages – perhaps as your competition has caught up.

With an understanding of how new products will be coming into your store and reviewing past performance, it’s possible to make smart merchandising and sales updates across the existing catalog to boost performance.

In addition to leveraging those learnings, are there new enhancements available or modern commerce sales tactics available in the setup of the catalog that would increase sales or customer experience? 

Launching product kits, bundles, subscriptions, recurring deliveries, etc. may not have been a good fit previously, but may make more business sense now.

3. Contact Your Integration Partners 

• If you’re running a back-office ERP system, contact your ERP provider to let them know what’s coming, especially if you plan to be investing in a new eCommerce integration.
• Ask them if they have any upgrades or plans going into the next 6-12 months. Do they have any big plans going into the new year? If they’re going to be busy with a big upgrade they may not have time for you.
• For an integration, ask your existing vendors how they provide support. If you’re going to be connecting systems together, it’s best to know who to get on the phone. Find out who their experts are.
• Future partners? Who do you need to be talking to? What other services could help to enhance your storefront?

4. Create and define your priorities

If it’s a New Year, you’ve probably made personal resolutions. More exercise, better sleep or read more books over the next 12 months. You should do the same for your eCommerce storefront, what are those priority items that you want to tackle over the year and when?

• Write down your eCommerce and web priorities for the next 12 months
• High level goals are fine. Don’t get caught up in being very specific.
• Review from a needs / wants perspective
• Compare quick wins vs. biggest return-on-investment
• ‘What are the quick wins that we need?’
• At a very high level, what would an ideal schedule look like? Is it feasible for the coming year?
• If those deliverables are met? What does that change for the business? How does eCommerce play into that?
• Are there any events planned, internal company (new office, new departments, investments)?

This four-part checklist is just the starting point for your dive into B2B eCommerce this year and beyond. Contact us today to set up a brief demo.