B2B ecommerce is selling online from one business to another, through a website or a trade ordering portal rather than by phone, email or a sales rep. A wholesaler taking orders from independent shops, a manufacturer selling spare parts to engineers, or a catering supplier serving restaurants are all examples. The buyer is placing an order for their business, and the website has to work the way business purchasing works.
How B2B ecommerce works
On the surface a B2B site looks like any online shop. Underneath, it usually needs features a consumer shop never would:
- Account-specific pricing: each customer sees their own price list, discounts or contract rates once logged in.
- VAT-exclusive prices by default, because trade buyers think in net prices, with VAT added at checkout.
- Quantity rules: minimum order quantities, case sizes and price breaks for volume.
- Fast reordering: quick order by SKU or part number, CSV upload, and one-click repeat of previous orders.
- Business payment options: invoice on credit terms such as 30 days, as well as card.
- Company details at checkout: a purchase order reference field, the buyer’s company name and VAT number, and several users under one account, sometimes with approval rules.
- Integration with the stock, pricing and accounting systems the business already runs.
Some businesses run a separate trade portal; others run a hybrid site that shows retail prices including VAT to the public and trade prices to logged-in account holders. Most mainstream ecommerce platforms now offer B2B features, either built in on higher plans or through add-ons. Check exactly what your plan includes before you commit, because these features change often.
Why it matters
Many UK trade suppliers still take a large share of orders by phone and email, which ties up staff in keying orders and answering “is it in stock?” calls. A good ordering portal lets regular customers serve themselves at any hour, cuts keying errors, and frees the sales team for new accounts.
It also affects how new customers find you. Business buyers research online, often by searching for a part number, a specification or a product type. If every product page sits behind a login, search engines cannot index it, and Google Shopping ads are off the table too, because Merchant Center requires the landing page to show every visitor the same price the ad does. The choice of what to make public is a marketing decision as much as a technical one.
Common mistakes
- Hiding the whole catalogue behind a login, so none of it can rank or be advertised.
- Mixing VAT-inclusive and VAT-exclusive prices without labelling them clearly.
- Thin product pages with no specifications, dimensions or datasheets, which are exactly what trade buyers search for.
- Site search that cannot find products by part number or trade name.
- Forcing card payment on long-standing customers who are used to a credit account.
- Stock levels that are only updated overnight, so the website promises what the warehouse cannot send.
How to act on it
Start by deciding what should be public: product pages with full specifications and, where commercially acceptable, a list or “from” price, with account pricing shown after login. Add a clear switch between prices excluding and including VAT, and make part numbers searchable on the site and visible in page titles where buyers search for them.
Then build around how your customers reorder, and connect stock and pricing to your back-office systems so the site is always accurate. Making a trade catalogue findable is the focus of my ecommerce SEO work, and for suppliers whose buyers mostly search by specification and problem, it overlaps heavily with B2B SEO.