Digital Catalogs: The Future of B2B Sales

Product catalogs are fundamental to e-commerce. Improving the catalogs means improving the buyer’s user experience.

B2C catalogs not only make it easy for customers to find the products they need but also make it easy to find the products they didn’t know they needed.

However, unlike B2C, B2B catalogs are a mess. They make it harder for customers to find the product and their information.

So the question here is, how can the B2B industry provide a seamless catalog browsing experience to their buyers?

The answer: Digital catalogs.

B2B buyer behavior is transforming. Traditional ways no longer bring expected revenue. This has forced manufacturers, distributors, and wholesalers to either innovate or be left behind by the competitors.

From our research, many B2B companies are reacting to these ecommerce trends and not taking it as an emergency.

And one such example is that many B2B companies are still printing physical catalogs.

If we look back to the beginning of B2B sales, printing mail orders was the primary way for retailers, merchants, manufacturers, distributors, and wholesalers to raise awareness about their business. But this has changed.

There is a shift coming in the B2B industry as online catalogs are slowly replacing print catalogs.

Printing catalogs have many disadvantages over online catalogs. They are costly as they have to be mass printed and also need to be mailed to customers’ residences.

Businesses should no longer rely on distributing huge catalogs on paper. Let’s be honest, these catalogs don’t have good user experiences. Your buyers do not want to sift through a thick stack of papers to find the information they were searching for. Do they?

Here are a few ways the online catalog helps in enhancing B2B buying journeys.

1. Provides real-time information

According to Forrester research, B2B buyers want to self educate themselves. Digital B2B catalogs let consumers see pricing, products, and inventory information in real-time. Moreover, they also reduce the errors in data and result in a less frustrating experience for buyers.

Also, a study says that B2B buyers would rather gather the information on their own than interact with sales representatives.

This means, if you do not have digital catalogs, you are losing almost 47% of B2B customers.

One more reason to get digital B2B catalogs.

2. Helps in SEO and Lead Generation

SEO is no longer a customer acquisition strategy limited to the B2C industry. Because of the rapid shift in B2B buying journeys, almost 73% of global traffic to the B2B industry comes from search engines today.

This is the opportunity B2B businesses cannot leave. More and more people are searching online for business. Hence, a digital catalog can help you present your product to a massive global audience. Not only that but digital catalogs can also get crawled by search engines like Google, which indirectly benefits your site’s SEO.

SEO is a top tool for customer acquisition since customers are searching online for business purchases just as much as their personal purchases.

3. Massive amounts of Data

In the 21st century, data is like gold. Digital catalogs help you gain customers’ data. With the help of data specialists and digital tools, you can analyze this data to map your customer’s buying journey.

You can also find out where your customers are facing problems and dropping out of buying.

Having this data will allow you to make smarter decisions. This might not be possible without an online catalog.

Best practice while building an online catalog for your B2B business

• Make sure that every product is described in detail

With the print catalog, you have limited space to provide full information about products. But with online catalogs, you don’t have to worry about space. The Internet has a lot of space. And this is the major advantage of digital catalogs over print ones. To take maximum benefit, include all the information your buyer would be interested in. This will help remove all the doubts regarding the products. This may include shapes, size, color, materials, etc.

• Don’t forget to include high-quality product images

Your product images matter more than you think. High-quality images are the best way to represent what you are selling. Also, product images make buyers stay on the pages for a longer time. Nobody wants to go through a wall of text. Also, you don’t want your buyers to keep thinking about what they are spending their money on? Do you? And that makes it much more important to have high-quality product images on your catalogs.

Here is an ultimate guide to product photography.

• Make sure that your digital catalogs are easy to navigate

The harder you make it for buyers to navigate, the more you lose sales. Searching through the catalog is never fun. Nobody searches through the catalogs because they find it entertaining, do they? They are doing it for their businesses. Hence, as a seller, it is your responsibility to make it as seamless as possible.

You can do this by categorizing products.

• Use tags: For example, use medium tags if your product size is medium.
• Use consistent measurements: Ensure that all the measurements are consistent across the products. If you are using meters for half the products, then don’t use centimeters for the other half. This will confuse your buyers.
• Don’t limit yourself to common product attributes: Use additional product attributes to help your buyers easily find and select the product. For example, you can add SKU numbers, or you can tag the product as ‘vegan’ or ‘gluten-free’ if you are selling food items.
• Ensure you have a digital ordering system

What’s the use of digital catalogs if your customers cannot order the products online? Your users browse through your beautiful catalogs. They are impressed with both the products and the seamless browsing experience. Now it’s time to buy. But they come to know you don’t provide online ordering. Alas, you have lost the potential customer. Hence, it is necessary to couple your digital catalogs with an online ordering system to get maximum sales.

Wrapping Up:

The B2B buying journey is changing rapidly. Customers want to self-educate rather than go on a call with sales representatives. It’s time to change your catalog browsing to help your buyers find what they need quickly. And that can only happen with digital catalogs.

Make sure your catalog fulfills all the above points to fully manage B2B buyers’ expectations.

Now that you know how a digital ecommerce catalog can help you grow sales and become an invaluable asset, it is time to find a catalog manager. Digital catalogs can be difficult to manage. Thankfully, catalog managers are built with e-commerce solutions.

Risor is a leading B2B e-commerce solution for wholesalers, manufacturers, retailers, and distributors. Risor provides the most comprehensive digital catalog functionality for manufacturers, suppliers, retailers, and wholesalers. We have made thousands of B2B customers happy. Now it’s your turn.

Book a demo today, and we will show you exactly how it helps.