One of the most commonly asked questions today is: What does it take to build an eCommerce store for WooCommerce? How about if I want to sell to both B2B and B2C?

Well, it depends on the purpose of your operation. If the overall outcome of your business is to increase revenue without creating two separate WooCommerce stores for your niches (B2B and B2C), then the ideal solution would be to convert your current online shop into a hybrid.
This is both simple and efficient, maybe more than you would think, and we are here to tell you why.

E-commerce Has Changed How Traditional B2B & B2C Businesses Work

For over a decade, eCommerce has proven to create quite an impact for businesses, regardless of whether we talk about sales or marketing. With time, we were able to differentiate the boundaries between wholesale and retail businesses and their requirements. The question then remains: can we eliminate these boundaries to create a hybrid?

Why Is Hybrid e-Commerce Store More Beneficial For You?

If you’re running two separate stores for your B2B and B2C business, then you must have two different websites for it, which is costing you extra investment and maintenance. You have to manage separate databases, product catalogs, and marketing strategies and have to operate two different dashboards.

Now, most online stores are trying to deal with wholesale buyers and direct consumers through a single platform/site.

What is the advantage of following a hybrid model for your e-store?

Well, A hybrid eCommerce solution for B2C and B2B enables an operator to fully communicate with businesses and individuals from a single platform or dashboard, which saves time and money.

Since in terms of customer service, B2B customers are also behaving like direct consumers and have the same demand from online stores to provide them a better brand experience and swift results.

So, why not deal with bulk buyers along with individual customers in a hybrid form of business? It also gives you better insights related to the buying behavior of your two different types of customers with a different approach to buying products and services.

A hybrid eCommerce store has an edge in applying artificial intelligence (AI) to online sales and ensuring that data is handled in a way that drives innovation for future strategy.

How To Build A Hybrid Online Store For Woocommerce

Now, let’s move to the core point of how we can create an efficient and profitable hybrid eCommerce store. If you’re using the WooCommerce platform for your online store with a one-dimensional approach of selling products/services either in a B2B or B2C manner, then installing Wholesale For Woocommerce and WooCommerce Subscription extensions will allow you to deal with wholesale and retail customers at the same time.

What Is Wholesale For Woocommerce?

Wholesale for WooCommerce is a WooCommerce extension that gives you the ability to display wholesale rates & prices that are only visible to your wholesale customers.

Simply sign-up your wholesale customers through a wholesale registration form and manage approval requests manually or automatically. Through the Multiple User Role creation feature, not only are you able to create multiple wholesale roles for your users, but you can also define different discounts for each role with support for both simple and variable products.

The Single User Role allows you to create and designate a single user role so that they see the wholesale prices as per their given role. This extension shows wholesale prices and discounts to wholesale users only, and retail prices will be shown to normal buyers.

If any retail customer wants to purchase items at special wholesale prices, then this can be achieved by setting up a wholesale subscription model. For this purpose, you can install the WooCommerce subscription extension to facilitate retail customers.

Using a subscription model, you can offer wholesale roles to your retail customers with special discounts and wholesale charges. So, by using Wholesale for WooCommerce & WooCommerce Subscription extensions, you can quickly deal with B2B, B2C, and interchangeable customers.

A Case Study For A Hybrid e-Commerce Store

Since the entire world is facing the COVID-19 pandemic, health-related safety measures are becoming a top priority for everyone. Products like masks, gloves, hand sanitizers, and anti-virus sprays are in high demand among wholesale and retail customers. Rather than creating two different online platforms for your wholesale buyers and direct consumers, you can create a hybrid eCommerce store model using Wholesale for WooCommerce to sell products either in bulk or retail quantity.

Conclusion

If you’re running two separate online stores for B2B and B2C customers, then following a hybrid model for your business is a win-win strategy. It will save you time, effort, and maintenance costs. You will get better insights into customer buying behavior and a futuristic approach to capture new market segments. Good Luck. Bye!!