Shopify for B2B is making a huge impact on the market it serves, and at Fluid Commerce we are receiving an increasing number of enquiries from suppliers, manufacturers and distributors that want to either launch on or migrate to the platform.
Shopify is, without a doubt, a powerful platform for B2B, and we regularly recommend it to clients. However, rather than starting with a platform, I believe all B2B ecommerce projects should begin with the customer, which might sound obvious, but it happens less often than you might think. What I tend to see in my role as managing director of Fluid Commerce is that businesses start by considering the ecommerce platform they think they need, rather than what will actually deliver the best outcomes for their customers.
It’s an understandable approach, and since choosing an ecommerce platform is a significant investment, businesses naturally want to ensure they’re selecting technology that can support their ambitions.
With platforms such as Shopify continuing to develop their B2B ecommerce capabilities and building greater public awareness of them, businesses now have more options to consider. However, having more choice doesn’t necessarily make the decision easier.
I believe the conversation needs to start somewhere else and that before discussing Shopify B2B, Magento, or any other ecommerce solution, we need to understand what the business is trying to achieve, how its customers want to buy and what operational challenges are standing in the way.
Because ultimately, the success of a B2B ecommerce project isn’t determined by the platform you choose; it’s determined by what that platform enables you to deliver.
Contents
- Start with the customer, not the technology
- More features won’t necessarily mean better commerce
- Know the operational challenges before making a decision
- Why Shopify B2B is changing the conversation
- Getting Shopify B2B development right
- The business case should go beyond launching a new website
- My advice to B2B businesses considering Shopify
- The right platform is the one that delivers the right outcomes
Start with the customer, not the technology
One of the biggest challenges in B2B ecommerce is that businesses can get so focused on internal requirements that they lose sight of the people using their website.
Of course, functionality matters. B2B ecommerce often involves complex pricing structures, customer-specific catalogues, multiple account users, approval processes and integrations with ERP systems.
But those requirements need to be considered in the context of the customer experience.
What does a customer need to do when they visit your website? How quickly can they find the products they’re looking for? Can they see the correct pricing and stock availability? Can they reorder products without having to repeat the same process every time?
And perhaps most importantly, is buying online genuinely easier than picking up the phone or sending an email? These are the questions I believe should shape the technology decisions.
But simply having access to B2B specific features doesn’t guarantee a better customer experience. They need to be implemented in ways that reflect how customers actually purchase.
If customers find the website difficult to use, the sophistication of the technology behind it doesn’t matter. They’ll simply revert to the purchasing methods they already know.
That’s one reason it’s important to put all platform options on the table while figuring out how a business’ specific customer types will be served.
More features won't necessarily mean better commerce
It’s easy to get caught up in comparing platform functionality, but leading platforms such as Shopify and Magento are comparable in the B2B features they can deliver. The differences become apparent when you consider how the features will be applied and the costs of different scenarios.
Every business has different requirements that need careful consideration and choosing a platform based on functionality you may never use can introduce unnecessary complexity, increase development costs and make ongoing maintenance more difficult.
Let’s take Shopify as an example. Shopify’s basic plan offers native B2B capabilities including company accounts, tailored catalogues, volume pricing, quantity rules and payment terms (with some limitations). However, Shopify Plus is a more advanced (and costly) platform that some merchants need, but others don’t.
Therefore, businesses need to understand which features they need to offer customers and which they don’t.
I’ve always believed technology should support the business, not force the business to adapt unnecessarily to technology.
Sometimes that means implementing sophisticated custom functionality. Other times, it means keeping the solution as straightforward as possible. The key is to choose the approach that delivers the most value.
Know the operational challenges before making a decision
Another area I believe businesses need to pay more attention to is what happens behind the scenes, as B2B ecommerce development is rarely just about creating an online storefront.
For many manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributors, the biggest challenges involve integrating ecommerce with existing business operations.
That might mean integrating the ecommerce platform with an ERP system, managing customer-specific pricing, synchronising stock across multiple locations or ensuring orders flow accurately into fulfilment systems.
These aren’t necessarily the most visible parts of an ecommerce project, but they can have an enormous impact on its success.
For example, a Shopify B2B website could allow customers to access their own pricing and place orders online, but if that information isn’t accurately synchronised with the business’ existing systems, it can create problems for both customers and internal teams.
A website might look fantastic and offer an excellent customer experience, but if orders require significant manual intervention or customers can’t trust the stock information they’re seeing, the business won’t achieve the efficiencies it expected.
That’s why I think it’s essential to understand the full operational picture before recommending Shopify or any other ecommerce platform.
Where are the current inefficiencies? Which processes create the most manual work? What causes frustration for customers and internal teams? And where could ecommerce deliver measurable improvements?
The answers should influence the platform decision just as much as the customer-facing functionality.
Why Shopify B2B is changing the conversation
One reason I find Shopify B2B development particularly interesting is that it encourages businesses to reconsider long-held assumptions about ecommerce platforms.
Historically, businesses with complex B2B requirements may have automatically looked towards platforms associated with extensive customisation and enterprise functionality.
For some businesses, those platforms will remain the right choice, as we often see when making our recommendations at Fluid Commerce.
But Shopify’s expanding B2B capabilities mean more options are worth considering.
Shopify supports a range of functionality designed specifically for B2B commerce, including:
- Company accounts and locations: Allowing businesses to manage B2B customers, purchasing permissions and different company locations.
- Customer-specific catalogues and pricing: Helping businesses provide relevant products and agreed pricing to different customers, with more granular company-level capabilities available on Shopify Plus.
- Volume pricing and quantity rules: Supporting wholesale purchasing requirements such as minimum quantities, pack sizes and price breaks.
- Payment terms: Enabling eligible business customers to place orders using agreed payment arrangements.
- Self-service ordering: Giving customers greater control over purchasing and order management.
However, I wouldn’t recommend Shopify B2B simply because it offers these features. The bigger question for companies is whether they can support the business’s specific purchasing journeys, operational requirements, and commercial objectives now and into the future.
Some organisations may be able to meet most of their requirements through Shopify’s native functionality. Others may need more extensive custom Shopify development, specialist integrations or a different platform altogether.
At Fluid Commerce, our experience across Shopify and Magento means we can approach these conversations with different technical solutions in mind, enabling the client to make an informed choice about the platform route they want to take.
For me, the objective isn’t to recommend one platform over others. It’s to identify the right solution for the business and its customers.
Getting Shopify B2B development right
If a business decides that Shopify is the right platform, the next challenge is ensuring the development project is approached correctly.
Again, this comes back to clearly understanding customer needs and operational processes, which becomes especially important.
A successful Shopify B2B development project should be built around how the business actually operates, rather than simply replicating its existing website’s functionality.
For example, if customers regularly purchase the same products, making repeat ordering straightforward could have a greater commercial impact than developing complex functionality that very few customers will use.
If the business operates under different pricing agreements across customer groups, the priority may be to ensure those prices are presented accurately and consistently.
If manual order processing creates operational inefficiencies, integrating Shopify B2B with existing systems could deliver more value than investing heavily in additional storefront features.
It’s also important to consider the longer-term implications of development decisions.
Custom functionality can be valuable when there’s a genuine business requirement, but unnecessary customisation can increase complexity and create additional maintenance responsibilities.
That doesn’t mean avoiding custom development. It means being selective about where it adds genuine value.
Ultimately, the objective should be to create a Shopify B2B ecommerce solution that is effective for customers, manageable for internal teams and capable of supporting future growth.
The business case should go beyond launching a new website
Another thing I encourage B2B businesses to consider is how they’ll measure success.
Launching a new Shopify B2B website is an important milestone, but it shouldn’t be the ultimate objective and what matters more is what happens afterwards.
Are more customers choosing to place orders online? Are existing customers ordering more frequently? Has the business reduced the amount of time spent manually processing orders? Are customer service teams spending less time dealing with routine enquiries?
And is the ecommerce operation supporting profitable growth?
These outcomes should inform the investment from the start.
For example, if a business wants to reduce its cost to serve, it might focus more on Shopify B2B self-service functionality, automated ordering, and ERP integration.
If the priority is increasing customer retention, the emphasis might be on making repeat purchasing faster and easier.
If the objective is entering new markets, scalability, localisation and the ability to manage different customer groups may become more important.
Each scenario could shape the Shopify B2B development strategy differently.
That’s why I believe defining the commercial objectives before selecting the platform is so important.
My advice to B2B businesses considering Shopify
If I were advising a B2B business at the beginning of an ecommerce transformation project, I’d encourage its leadership team to focus on three things before getting too far into platform discussions.
First, understand your customers.
Speak to them about how they currently purchase, what frustrates them and what would make their lives easier.
Don’t assume that internal perceptions of the buying journey reflect the customer’s actual experience.
Consider whether Shopify B2B features such as tailored catalogues, account management and self-service ordering would genuinely improve the purchasing experience.
Second, understand your operations.
Map out the systems, processes and dependencies that ecommerce needs to support.
Identify where manual work, disconnected information or inefficient workflows are creating problems.
If you’re considering Shopify B2B development, understand how the platform would need to integrate with your ERP, CRM, inventory management and fulfilment systems.
Third, agree on what success looks like.
Establish clear commercial and operational objectives, whether that’s increasing online revenue, improving customer retention, reducing order processing costs or enabling future growth.
Think about which Shopify B2B capabilities could contribute to those objectives and where additional development may be necessary.
Once those foundations are in place, the platform conversation becomes far more productive.
You’re no longer asking which technology offers the most functionality. You’re asking whether Shopify B2B, or another ecommerce platform, can deliver the outcomes that matter most at a cost and level of complexity that make sense for the business.
And that’s a much better basis for making a long-term investment.
The right platform is the one that delivers the right outcomes
I think B2B ecommerce has reached a point where businesses have more technology options than ever before.
Shopify’s continued investment in B2B ecommerce is providing manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributors with new opportunities to improve their digital purchasing experiences and streamline their operations.
That’s a positive development, but it also makes choosing the right solution more important.
The temptation is to start with the platform, especially when the business already has an internal view of which technology it should use.
However, I advise challenging that assumption: start with your customers, understand your operational requirements, clarify the commercial outcomes you want to achieve, then choose the technology that best supports those objectives.
For many businesses, Shopify B2B can offer the right mix of native functionality, flexibility, and development opportunities. For others, a different approach may be more appropriate.
Considering Shopify B2B development? Speak to Fluid Commerce
If you’re considering Shopify B2B for your business, or questioning whether your current ecommerce platform meets your customers’ needs, it’s worth having the right conversations before committing to a development project.
At Fluid Commerce, we help B2B businesses understand their ecommerce requirements, evaluate their platform options and develop solutions that support their commercial objectives.
Whether you’re exploring a move to Shopify, planning a Shopify B2B development project or looking to improve your existing ecommerce operation, our team can help you identify the right approach.
Contact Fluid Commerce to discuss your Shopify B2B requirements and discover how we can help you build an ecommerce experience that delivers measurable business results.
