Bourke Kelly:
Executive Director of Commerce Strategy
The Thirst of the B2B Buyer
B2B purchasing transactions – already on a journey of evolution – are going through their most significant transformation yet. With buyers yearning for richer experiences, brands will need to reimagine traditional formulas.
Think of someone who regularly interacts with best-in-class experiences (like Amazon) as a consumer. Still, once they get to work and put on their B2B hat, they’re met with dull, minimally visual websites (often about five years behind their B2C counterparts). A great example of this in the marketplace comes to life in the electronics category.
Picture an IT professional who games at home. When they visit Sony’s Playstation site to purchase a new PS5, they are greeted with a product page that is highly engaging and brings to life the core benefits of the product through audio, vivid animation, and an immersive experience. The next day, that same person goes to purchase a new projector from Sony for their office and is met with product pages that lack innovation and creativity and instead rely on a list of features and functions.
B2B experiences have long defaulted to boring, outdated experiences due to the need to communicate complex product details and specifications for a sophisticated buyer. We recently conducted research with IT decision-makers and small business owners to shed light on what their priorities were moving forward. Their responses should encourage B2B brands to break from the status quo of reserving innovative digital experiences for their consumer audiences. And while B2B buyers will continue to require detailed information to make a decision alongside a growing number of stakeholders, they told us that elevating B2B digital experiences to the levels they experience as consumers were among the most valuable things a brand can do as they consider which brands to purchase from.