WooCommerce has gained massive popularity in the B2C eCommerce market, but it is also an excellent choice for businesses that sell primarily to other businesses.
Compared to consumer eCommerce, B2B eCommerce developed along a different path because it was subject to different pressures. B2B buyers expect more interaction with salespeople, buyers spend more and more products are bought at the same time, and B2B buyers, especially in larger corporations, have requirements that consumers do not. In consequence, B2B eCommerce was slow to take off and was often built on “enterprise” eCommerce solutions with a hefty price tag.
But, in recent years, B2B sellers have adopted many of the lessons learned by their colleagues in the B2C space. Millennial buyers, when appointed to buying roles within their business, expect the same convenience and customer-focused approach from B2B as B2C. The rise of B2B eCommerce makes comparing and assessing suppliers easier than ever before. The double pressures of a fluid market and greater expectations have influenced B2B sellers to up their game.
As Michael Del Gigante puts it, “With so much of their bottom line on the line, B2B e-commerce companies need to start evolving their businesses by reorganizing their websites to serve their business clients as consumers.”

B2B with WooCommerce?

One of the ways B2B eCommerce users can adapt to B2C-shaped expectations is through the tools evolved to serve the needs of consumer-focused eCommerce businesses. Estimates vary, but about a quarter of the eCommerce sites on the web use WooCommerce, and, although primarily designed to serve the needs of B2C retailers, WooCommerce can easily be made into a powerful B2B sales platform.
But what does it take to turn WooCommerce into the ideal B2B eCommerce application? Not a lot. Out of the box, WooCommerce is secure, reliable, and battle-tested. It is capable of supporting many thousands of products and product variants. Its category and tag hierarchies allow for complex custom catalogs. It is free but so popular that support is widely available. If vendor support concerns cause hesitation with WooCommerce adoption, you needn’t worry. Many businesses exist to provide that support.

Bringing B2B Features To WooCommerce

WooCommerce lacks some features that are necessary for B2B and wholesale selling, but they are available as free or paid extensions. As a WordPress plugin, WooCommerce benefits from both WordPress’ massive plugin ecosystem and its own range of extensions.
Dynamic Pricing adds the ability to configure bulk discounts. It includes custom configurations for building finely graded pricing plans that can be applied according to volume purchased or to specific groups of buyers.
B2B sellers often need to restrict categories of products to groups of buyers. There are several WooCommerce extensions for restricting product access according to various criteria. With WooCommerce Protected Categories, sellers can password protect product groups according to category and lock-down product categories by role or user. The extension can be used to create private areas for individual clients and separate B2C and B2B or wholesale areas. The related WooCommerce Private Store can lock-down a store to create a members-only WooCommerce site.
WooCommerce, with the addition of a small number of plugins, is a robust and reliable B2B sales platform, capable of growing as your business grows and adapting to its changing needs.