How Manufacturers Can Create a Frictionless Digital Buying Experience

Manufacturers looking to improve the B2B eCommerce buyer journey should start with one simple question: How can we make life easier for the customer?

For years, many B2B buyers were perfectly comfortable calling a salesperson, sending an email, requesting a quote, or placing an order with a familiar supplier.

Today, buyers have more options.

They can search online, research suppliers, compare solutions, and make decisions before ever speaking with a salesperson.

That creates an exciting opportunity for manufacturers.

However, simply adding eCommerce to a website does not automatically create a great digital buying experience.

The real opportunity starts with understanding the buyer.

Start the B2B eCommerce Buyer Journey With the Customer

Noah Oken-Berg, Co-Founder & CEO of Above The Fray Design, Inc., joined Curt Anderson and Damon Pistulka for a recent Digital Game Plan conversation about e-commerce, the buyer journey, and AI.

Above The Fray specializes in digital commerce and works primarily with manufacturers, distributors, and companies that make, build, produce, and distribute products.

The company takes a platform-agnostic approach to eCommerce. Rather than forcing a client onto a specific platform, the team looks for the right technology for the job.

Noah summed up that philosophy perfectly:

“Our job is to bring the best tool to the table.”

That same philosophy applies before choosing the technology.

A manufacturer needs to understand what customers are trying to accomplish.

Who is the buyer?

What problem are they trying to solve?

What triggered their search?

What questions do they have?

What could prevent them from moving forward?

Answering those questions creates a stronger foundation for the entire B2B eCommerce buyer journey.

Make Online Buying Easier Than the Old Way

Moving an existing customer from an offline purchasing process to an online experience creates a new challenge.

The online option needs to feel easier.

Noah explained that customers who are not accustomed to online purchasing may have even less patience for a confusing website.

Search needs to work.

Links need to make sense.

Navigation needs to feel intuitive.

Customers should quickly find the products and information they need.

Otherwise, they may simply go somewhere else.

Damon Pistulka reinforced the point during the conversation. When customers move from an offline purchasing experience to an online one, the digital process needs to be easier.

That creates a simple goal for manufacturers:

Remove as much friction as possible.

A frictionless digital buying experience can help customers research faster, make decisions confidently, and return when they need to purchase again.

Don’t Expect Your eCommerce Website to Be Perfect

Launching an eCommerce website is not the finish line.

It is an opportunity to start learning.

Noah recommends beginning with research, available data, and proven best practices. Then watch what actual customers do once the website goes live.

Where do visitors click?

Where do they stop?

Which pages create confusion?

Where do buyers leave the site?

Heat mapping and other website analytics can help answer those questions.

Noah offered a powerful reminder:

“Your users will give you all the answers you need.”

That mindset changes how manufacturers can think about their websites.

Instead of building a website once and leaving it untouched for years, companies can continuously improve the B2B e-commerce buyer journey based on actual customer behavior.

Discovery Comes Before eCommerce Technology

One of Noah’s most memorable examples during the conversation had nothing to do with websites.

It involved stone sculpting.

Earlier in his life, Noah spent time in Zimbabwe and completed a stone sculpture apprenticeship with Shona sculptors.

The process started with a giant boulder.

Creating the finished sculpture required slowly removing material and bringing the desired shape to life.

Noah compares that experience to the discovery process for a website.

A new project starts as the boulder.

Before worrying about tiny details, you need to understand the bigger picture. Gradually, you chip away at questions and challenges until the right solution starts to emerge.

Only then do you reach the fine-tuning stage.

In other words:

Don’t reach for the sandpaper before you’ve used the pickaxe.

For manufacturers, that means resisting the temptation to immediately debate button colors, website layouts, or e-commerce platforms.

Start with strategy.

Ask the Hard Questions Before Building an eCommerce Website

Not every manufacturer needs the same digital solution.

In fact, Noah explained that one of the first questions his team asks is whether they are even needed.

Is eCommerce the right initiative?

Is now the right time?

Will this project create value?

What business problem are we trying to solve?

Those questions can prevent a manufacturer from investing valuable time and money into the wrong solution.

Creating something simple for the customer can actually require significant work behind the scenes.

Strong discovery helps determine what needs to be built before that work begins.

How the Digital Game Plan Supports the Buyer Journey

This is where the B2Btail Digital Game Plan can help establish the strategic foundation.

Before jumping into websites, platforms, or marketing tactics, the Digital Game Plan helps a company dig into questions such as:

• What are our core strengths?

• Where are our best opportunities?

• Who are our ideal customers?

• What challenges are those customers facing?

• What triggers them to start searching?

• What questions do they ask during the buying process?

• How can we help them move forward?

The Digital Game Plan refers to this buyer journey as the Soulmate Success Path.

Understanding that path can help a manufacturer see the buying experience through the customer’s eyes.

Once the strategy becomes clear, specialists can help execute it.

That collaboration played an important role in a project B2Btail and Above The Fray worked on together with Styco.

Styco wanted to move further into e-commerce. The Digital Game Plan helped explore buyer personas and the buyer journey. Above The Fray then brought its digital commerce expertise into the project.

Rather than spending endless time trying to create the perfect solution before launch, the team took a more accelerated approach: get something live and continue improving it.

That approach can be especially valuable for small and midsized manufacturers that don’t have enormous research teams or unlimited budgets.

AI Can Help Manufacturers Move Faster

Of course, no digital commerce conversation today feels complete without talking about artificial intelligence.

Noah sees enormous potential.

AI can provide access to capabilities that previously required more money, time, or specialized knowledge.

That can make AI a powerful equalizer for smaller companies.

However, there is another side to the equation.

Companies can also ask AI to do too much.

An AI-generated answer can sound incredibly confident while still being wrong. Businesses can create code they don’t know how to properly evaluate or introduce unnecessary risk into important systems.

That means manufacturers shouldn’t blindly embrace AI.

They also shouldn’t ignore it.

The better answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Remember: AI Is a Tool

With new AI platforms and features appearing constantly, business owners can quickly feel overwhelmed.

Which tool should we use?

What did we miss?

What should we learn next?

Noah offers refreshingly simple advice:

“Remember, it’s a tool.”

Instead of chasing every new AI announcement, keep the desired outcome as your north star.

Start with the use case.

What are you trying to accomplish?

Then determine whether AI can help you accomplish that goal faster or better.

Most importantly, don’t allow AI to replace human judgment.

When using AI for an area outside your expertise, Noah recommends working with someone who understands that field and can evaluate the results.

AI can provide a shortcut.

Expertise helps determine whether that shortcut leads in the right direction.

Don’t Start With eCommerce. Start With the Buyer.

Manufacturers have more digital opportunities than ever before.

eCommerce can make products easier to discover and purchase.

AI can accelerate research and productivity.

Better technology can create a more efficient customer experience.

Yet technology alone doesn’t create a successful B2B eCommerce buyer journey.

Start with the buyer.

Understand their challenges.

Identify their questions.

Learn how they make decisions.

Remove unnecessary friction.

Then choose the right tools to help them reach the finish line.

That’s where strategy and execution come together.

The B2Btail Digital Game Plan helps manufacturers identify their core strengths, ideal customers, buyer personas, and Soulmate Success Path.

Experts such as Noah Oken-Berg and Above The Fray Design, Inc. can then help transform that strategic foundation into a digital commerce experience designed around the customer.

Because the goal isn’t simply to sell online.

The goal is to make it incredibly easy for the right customer to buy from you.

If you found this information valuable, check out some of our other blogs. 

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