The new era of B2B e-commerce: Why digital-first is the only option

83% of the B2B buying process now happens without a seller present, a shift reflected in buyer behavior research that shows most evaluation and comparison takes place before any sales conversation begins. Your buyers rely on digital channels to form expectations, compare options, and move decisions forward long before sales get involved.

Buyer behavior at this level changes what B2B e-commerce needs to deliver for you. Digital touchpoints now carry responsibility for helping buyers understand products, validate fit, and reach internal alignment on their own. By comparison, B2B e-commerce functions as the buying environment itself, not simply the place where orders are processed.

B2B e-commerce carries complexity that consumer commerce does not account for, since business purchases involve account-specific pricing, negotiated terms, bulk volumes, and detailed specifications that multiple stakeholders review at different stages. Insights from LinkedIn’s Rethink, the B2B buyer journey, explain why these decisions stretch across longer, non-linear paths, while the differences between B2B and B2C models become clear in day-to-day execution. Your digital experience needs to support buyers who require certainty, consistency, and enough information to validate decisions across teams, without pushing them back into B2B sales conversations too early.

Many organizations feel the strain at the system level once buyers depend on digital channels for evaluation. ERP platforms handle transactions well; however, they were designed for processing orders and pricing logic rather than supporting digital evaluation at scale. This article walks through how a modern B2B e-commerce strategy comes together, how enabling solutions fit into your stack, and why product information quality and operational execution determine whether digital-first sales works for you.

What does a modern B2B e-commerce strategy actually look like?

Millennial-led buying behavior continues to push B2B purchasing toward faster, more transparent, and more self-directed digital experiences. Digital Commerce 360 shows how B2B buyers navigate digital journeys highlight why strategy now needs to account for evaluation, comparison, and decision-making that happens well before sales engagement.

A modern B2B e-commerce strategy acts as an operational roadmap rather than a launch checklist. The focus shifts to moving customers from offline ordering into digital workflows that reduce cost-to-serve while supporting how buyers actually prefer to work. Research into self-directed B2B buying behavior shows many buyers rely on digital tools for research and validation long before they speak to a representative, which raises the bar for execution.

Three pillars tend to shape effective strategies into practice:

1. Self-service buyers can rely on

Buyers expect to find answers, specifications, and availability without waiting on sales. Self-service works when product information, stock status, and ordering rules are accessible and reliable.

2. Personalize experiences around real accounts

Account-based pricing, assortments, and permissions need to reflect commercial agreements. Buyers log in expecting the catalog and pricing they are entitled to see, not a generic view. Salesforce data shows that 65% of business buyers are likely to switch if their company isn’t treated as a unique organization, indicating that buyers expect digital channels to recognize who they are and what their business needs.

3. Provide product content that supports evaluation

SKU and price alone no longer carry decisions. Documentation, manuals, and sustainability information increasingly influence confidence. A structured content strategy for e-commerce websites helps ensure product content answers questions instead of sending buyers back into offline conversations.

The data foundation that makes digital buying work

Digital-first B2B e-commerce only works when buyers trust what they see online. Once product details, pricing, or availability appear uncertain, buyers hesitate to complete orders online and revert to calling or emailing a sales rep, which undermines your goal of shifting volume online.

Evidence from the Sana Commerce B2B Buyer Report 2025 shows where those breakdowns happen. Buyers were asked what limits how often they place orders online, and the most common barriers all pointed to missing or inaccurate information:

• Delivery timelines that are not accurate or up to date (29%)
• Unclear or inaccurate stock availability (28%)
• Missing or incomplete product information (27%)
• Pricing data that does not reflect agreed terms (25%)

Additionally, the same study highlights how quickly confidence erodes during the ordering process. Buyers identified their top frustrations with online purchasing as:

• Lack of accurate stock, pricing, and delivery information (40%)
• Difficulty finding products, often tied to incomplete or unclear product data (36%)
• Order errors caused by web store inaccuracies (33%)

On the other hand, buyers continue to favor digital channels when the experience feels dependable. The report shows that 73% of B2B buyers prefer ordering online, largely because they associate online buying with reliability, efficiency, and speed. However, that preference depends on whether the information supporting the experience reflects reality. Once accuracy slips, confidence drops just as quickly.

Consequently, the commercial risk becomes hard to ignore. The report states that 75% of B2B buyers would switch to a supplier offering a better online buying experience, and it links dissatisfaction primarily to information gaps rather than missing features or lack of support.

For your digital strategy to hold, accurate product data needs to do the heavy lifting. Stock levels, pricing, delivery timelines, and detailed product information must stay consistent across systems and channels. Without that foundation, buyers second-guess what they see online, and digital channels struggle to replace the manual processes you’re trying to move away from.

As buyers rely less on sales reps and more on digital channels, product information does the selling. See how to evaluate PIM platforms built for B2B complexity.

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Essential B2B e-commerce solutions for your tech stack

B2B e-commerce solutions are increasingly shifting from monolithic platforms to composable architectures, where each system focuses on what it does best. That shift reflects the reality of B2B complexity. No single platform consistently handles transactions, product relationships, content depth, and omnichannel consistency at scale.

In this model, the e-commerce platform manages transactions, not complexity. Checkout, carts, and order capture sit where they belong. Product complexity needs a different system. That’s where Product Information Management (PIM) comes in. 

A PIM, like Inriver, handles structured product data, relationships, and enrichment upstream, so downstream channels stay fast, reliable, and consistent. In a composable setup, PIM becomes non-negotiable because it removes complexity before products ever reach the storefront. A robust PIM foundation for e-commerce keeps digital channels reliable as catalogs, contracts, and markets expand.

How responsibilities are split in a modern B2B stack

Operational B2B e-commerce best practices

Once buyers begin relying on your digital channels for real purchasing decisions, operational gaps become hard to ignore. You need to start shaping whether buyers stay online or revert to manual processes that increase cost-to-serve with B2B e-commerce best practices.

1. Govern product data from ERP to storefront

Product, pricing, and availability data flow constantly between systems, and issues typically surface downstream. The Sana Commerce B2B Buyer Report 2025 finds that inaccurate delivery timelines, stock availability, product details, and pricing are among the top reasons buyers struggle to place online orders. Those issues rarely originate on the website itself.

Keeping data clean requires clear ownership as information moves from ERP into digital channels. Defined validation rules, approvals, and update processes help prevent small changes upstream from creating inconsistencies that buyers notice immediately.

2. Align every channel around the same product truth

Most buyers move between multiple touchpoints as they evaluate products, compare options, and involve other stakeholders. Product information often appears in sales conversations, PDF catalogs, quotes, and on your website, sometimes all at once.

LinkedIn’s Rethink the B2B Buyer Journey shows buyers repeatedly return to product information and share it internally during decision-making. When those sources don’t match, confidence drops. Aligning every channel around the same specifications, configurations, and availability reduces second-guessing and keeps decisions moving forward.

3. Launch new products digitally without slowing buyers down

Launching quickly only works when execution is ready. McKinsey research shows that more than 50% of product and service launches fail to meet their targets, largely due to execution gaps rather than weak ideas. 

However, those gaps often come from poor coordination, late changes, and inconsistent information across teams. Consequently, speed improves when you structure product data early and align teams around a single source of truth, enabling you to launch digitally without delays or buyer confusion.

Real-world B2B e-commerce case studies

Looking at B2B e-commerce case studies helps you move beyond theory and see how digital commerce works under real-world operational pressure. Across manufacturers and distributors with complex catalogs, the same pattern shows up repeatedly: progress accelerates when product data is treated as a shared business asset, not a last-mile task for the website.

W.B. Mason: Speed comes from structured product data

W.B. Mason manages a large and diverse catalog sourced from hundreds of vendors, where manual processes once slowed digital publishing and introduced inconsistencies. Moving away from spreadsheet-driven workflows allowed teams to standardize, enrich, and publish product information far more efficiently.

Rust-Oleum: Scaling operations without adding complexity

Rust-Oleum operates thousands of SKUs across multiple channels, where fragmented workflows previously made even routine updates time-consuming. Centralizing product information reduced repetitive work and helped teams focus on improving consistency across digital touchpoints.

“Processes that used to take us 10, 20, or 30 hours are now cut not only in half but sometimes down to 30 minutes or an hour.”

– Jon Ahn

Account Manager, E-commerce at Rust-Oleum

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These examples show why brands that have mastered selling online invest early in product data foundations. Technology choices matter, but durable progress comes from removing manual effort, improving accuracy, and making product information easier to scale across every channel buyers rely on.

Future-proofing your B2B digital sales 

Long-term digital performance depends on how well your product information holds up as scale and complexity increase. If your data stays accurate, structured, and usable across channels, your strategy has room to evolve. Weak spots at that level tend to cap progress early, no matter how strong the front-end experience looks.

As your practical next step, assess your current level of product information maturity. Check whether your setup can handle complex relationships, large catalogs, and consistent specifications without constant manual fixes. Those answers give you a clear view of how far your B2B strategy can realistically go.

When you see what mature product data management looks like in practice, you can plan your next move. Schedule a demo to see how Inriver manages complex B2B data models and supports digital sales designed to scale.