Guest post by Brian Mechem.
Recent years have seen an explosion of direct online sales in the global B2B sector. The shift from brick-and-mortar to ecommerce that’s been playing out over the past two decades in the B2C world is increasingly impacting B2b vendors. Giants like Amazon have also launched Amazon Business to reach small and medium enterprises.
According to Statista, in the USA alone, B2B sales are estimated to reach $1.2 trillion in 2021—an increase of more than a third from $889 billion in 2017. More than half of B2B buyers say they expect the same user-friendly online buying experience from B2B vendors they get from consumer websites.
Though B2B ecommerce trends are a little different from B2C, both reflect a growing customer preference for self-service. Broad availability of simple self-service interfaces has boosted the market for B2B ecommerce.
