B2B eCommerce website development can be a challenge for someone new to the industry, but it’s not impossible like everything else.

Before we start our guide, we need to understand what separates B2B from B2C businesses. These differences will define your store and make it more appealing to your target audience.

What is the difference between B2B and B2C businesses?

While B2C or D2C businesses are more focused on selling directly to individual consumers, B2B businesses provide services and products to other businesses.

Here are some of the most common differences between the two:

The table shows the core differences between B2B and B2C; however, many things make them different from each other.

According to the research, In 2023, an estimated 17 percent of B2B sales are expected to be generated digitally. In 2019, this share was 13 percent. Overall, U.S. B2B online sales are projected to reach 1.8 trillion U.S. dollars in 2023.

What does it take to build a B2B business online?

Although numerous B2B website development companies can build the site you desire, starting from scratch isn’t difficult, especially in today’s day and age when we have WooCommerce B2B plugins like Wholesale for WooCommerce.

If you’re someone who is looking for a DIY strategy, then you’re in luck. This blog will demonstrate how you can build an online wholesale B2B store using the WooCommerce B2B plugin.

This guide will use WooCommerce as our eCommerce platform since it offers tons of helpful features, like order tracking, customer engagement, delivery status updates, inventory management, and more.

We will also use Wholesale for WooCommerce as our WooCommerce B2B extension. To know more about the plugin, read our blog below.

Wholesale for WooCommerce

Wholesale for WooCommerce is the most popular WooCommerce B2B plugin that enables you to build online wholesale stores with all the must-have features.

It is a relatively powerful entire solution for your WooCommerce store that helps you control your customers and product particulars.

This plugin is easy to use and customizable. It enables you to list unlimited products on your wholesale store and also add their variants.  Let us discuss some of its remarkable features.

Features

Custom User Roles & Role-Based Pricing

• You have the power to handle and build various wholesale user roles.
• Manage wholesale pricing for single or variable products.
• You can avail of three types of discount offers; global-based, category-based, and product-based.
• Set prices and discount offers based on the wholesale customers and their roles.
• Import and export CSV files of wholesale products.

Wholesale Registration Form

• Modern registration form builder.
• Drag and drop functionality.
• Add multiple options such as lists, autocomplete, date, checkboxes, radio buttons, and many more.
• Approve and reject registration requests automatically.
• Notify the users and admins via emails once the user gets approved or rejected.
• Custom CSS options are available to customize the forms manually.

Private Store for Wholesale Customers

• It enables the users to hide the wholesale prices and products from normal visitors and guest users.
• Set password protection for your wholesale store.
• Restrict the products’ category.
• Restrict the products’ visibility.
• Disable the coupon codes for wholesale customers.

Other Features

• Define unlimited user roles and manage them according to your requirements.
• Admin has the power to change pricing labels.
• Add minimum order quantity so that users can only make purchases once they reach the quantity.
• Add different variations of your products.
• Translate your website into different languages with WPML compatibility.
• Display percentage-based prices for the wholesale users with the discount.
• Disable/restrict payment methods from the backend settings that you do not want.

And a lot more features are listed on its official website. Now, we are moving towards its installation and configuration that will help you do it yourself without the need for any technical expertise.

We will share some of its core installation processes; rest, you can check on its comprehensive documentation by clicking here.

How to Install & Configure WooCommerce B2B Plugin for Online Wholesale Stores

First, you need to download the zip file of this plugin from your WooCommerce account. Once it is downloaded, go to your WordPress admin dashboard.

Now, click on the Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin. Select the zip file from your local drive where it is downloaded and click on the Install Now button. Then, click on the “Activate” button.

Wholesale User Roles

There are two types of wholesale user roles.

• Single Wholesale Role – enables you to build product-based prices; therefore, everyone will have the same discount value.
• Multiple Wholesale Role – enables you to build multiple user role-based wholesale pricing.

Add Wholesale User Role

In your WordPress admin dashboard, go to Wholesale → User Roles. Insert a name for your Wholesale role, slug, and the description (optional).

Wholesale Pricing

Now, there are wholesale pricing options, which include six options for setting the product pricing. All of them are listed below:

• Global Wholesale Pricing

This pricing option allows you to apply wholesale pricing throughout your products.

• Category-based Wholesale Pricing

This option allows you to set pricing for particular product categories.

• Product-based Wholesale Pricing

This option allows you to set individual product pricing, whether it is a simple or variable product.

• Bulk Wholesale Pricing

This option allows you to set pricing for the bulk of products you want to sell.

• Enable/Disable Coupon Codes

There are options available to enable or disable the coupon codes for the wholesale user roles.

• CSV Import/Export Wholesale Product and Price

Wholesale user roles can import or export the products with their prices and also update them.

To set up these options on your WooCommerce wholesale store, you can go through its official documentation.

Wholesale Product & Price Visibility

Admin has the power to display the product pricing and enable who can see the products. There are various settings; we will go through each of them.

• General Settings – Here, you will find two options: Restrict Product Visibility and Add to Cart Minimum Quantity.
• Individual Product Visibility – It enables you to set visibility of simple and variable products according to their wholesale user roles.
• Enable/Disable Product and Category Visibility – It enables the admin to enable or disable the product visibility of any particular category.
• Hide Wholesale Products – It enables you to hide the wholesale products from retail customers and visitors.
• Hide Price Labels – It enables you to hide the prices of the wholesale products from the retail customers and visitors.
• Hide Wholesale/Retail Products from Visitors – It enables you to hide the products from casual visitors and guest users that you do not want to show.

Wholesale Registration Form for WooCommerce

You can add a B2B registration form to your WooCommerce website and customize it in various ways as per your requirements. This form system helps you save time and money by shifting the manual process into the automated one.

• The forms are responsive for every device screen.
• Embed the auto-approval option.
• Customization for input and other fields.
• Advance options for building forms such as drag and drop, listing, autocomplete, and others.
• You can embed your forms anywhere in your store by placing the shortcode.

Private Store for WooCommerce

This WooCommerce B2B plugin allows you to set up a private wholesale store protected with a password. The private stores can only be accessed by the people who have the password, and they can be logged in from the my-account page.

To do so, you need to log in to your WordPress dashboard. Then, go to WooCommerce → Settings. Click on the Account & Privacy tab. Uncheck the option that says “allow customers to log in to an existing account during checkout,” and checkmark the option that says “allow customers to create an account during checkout,” “when creating an account, automatically generate an account password.”

Now, go to Wholesale → Settings and click on the Login Restriction tab. Enable the “Restrict Full Store Access” option and enter a message displayed on the shop & my-account page.

Password Setup

To set up a protected password, go to my account page and enter the password.

General Login Settings

You will have two options in general settings, but they can only be utilized for your users’ price restrictions and store access.

1. Hide Price: Only login users can see the product prices and hide them from others.
2. Login Link Label: Admins can set the labels for generated login links if the hide price option is turned on.

Besides, more settings are required to set up this WooCommerce B2B plugin, such as Tax Management, Shipping & Payment methods, Wholesale Order Filters, Customization Options, and Compatibility & Integration.

Compatibility and integrations

1. Bulk Order Form for WooCommerce

It is a solution for the WooCommerce store owners to list their products in bulk quantity. It is very easy to create a list; also, you can easily customize the products. What’s more about it?

• Display all the products under a single table.
• Simple, drag and drop feature to build tables.
• Responsive to all screen sizes.
• Easily filter and sort the products using the color, size, tags, etc.
• Display your products on different pages with the pagination option.
• Control the product data.
• Customize the columns where extra fields are added.
• Add maximum products to the cart.

2. Currency Switcher for WooCommerce

How would you feel if you go to an online store for shopping and do not find your default currency option? Wouldn’t it bother you?

Currency switcher for WooCommerce respects your emotions and allows you to add unlimited currencies to your online store for your customers’ ease. It helps you improve the shopping journey of your customers and will attract more buyers so easily.

This will be a perfect solution for your store to make it multi-currency-ready; it makes your store more professional and gives it a competitive edge.

Features

• Expand your business to other countries & regions;
• Removes the hassle of currency conversion;
• Reduce Cart Abandonment, Refunds, Chargebacks;
• Ensure pricing display consistency across your store;
• Change currency automatically using the customer’s GEOIP;
• Help customers avoid extra fee charges on their credit card statements.

Donation for WooCommerce

Donation For WooCommerce is a robust extension that enables you to build fundraising campaigns without charging transaction fees. It is a perfect way to increase funds for nonprofits, charities, NGOs, clubs, or other causes.

Features

• It displays the donation amount on the checkout and cart page.
• It allows you to filter out the donation orders by using the campaign names.
• It allows you to create multiple donations.
• Place the currency anywhere you want.
• Flexible and easy to handle.
• It automatically rounds up the prices.
• Keep track of your donation campaign statistical record.
• Collect recurring donations.

Wrapping Up

You now have a better understanding of how to build your WooCommerce B2B online store by using the WooCommerce B2B plugin mentioned above, along with all the necessary details.

Handling the e-stores is a challenging task, but managing them appropriately will give you more business.