by Annie Laukaitis
14/06/2025
Over the years, we've evolved into a digital-first society that favours fast and seamless online experiences. From the widespread adoption of digital wallets to the rise of mobile ordering, the shift is clear. The same holds true for B2B sales, as more businesses choose efficient online purchasing over traditional methods. In fact, seven out of 10 B2B buyers say buying online is more convenient and prefer it.
That shift fuels steady growth in the B2B ecommerce market. According to eMarketer, B2B ecommerce site sales grew 10.5% year over year in 2024, reaching £1.77 trillion.
As more buyers turn to digital channels, B2B brands have a powerful opportunity to meet evolving expectations, expand their reach, and strengthen customer loyalty. That's why we've gathered the latest trends to help your business stand out and succeed in today's competitive ecommerce landscape.
B2B ecommerce statistics
B2B ecommerce continues to gain momentum and is now considered the most effective sales channel, as reported by McKinsey & Company. According to eMarketer, ecommerce site sales will grow at an average rate of 7.8% per year through 2028, reaching £2.33 trillion. By then, B2B ecommerce will represent 27.5% of all electronic sales and 14.3% of total B2B product sales, up from 23.7% and 12% in 2024. This growth reflects how buyers increasingly favour digital purchasing, driven by convenience, automation, and the rise of AI-powered tools that simplify the procurement process.
Mobile is becoming a key touchpoint in that journey. A BCG study found that 60% of B2B buyers use smartphones and tablets to conduct product research and interact with suppliers. Businesses that fail to deliver a smooth mobile experience risk losing credibility and customers early in the funnel.
Demographic shifts are also accelerating digital adoption. Millennials now make up 73% of B2B buyers. This generation values speed, transparency, and user-friendly technology, setting a higher bar for digital experience expectations in B2B.
As buyer behaviours evolve, brands that prioritise intuitive, personalised, and mobile-first ecommerce experiences will have the edge. Now is the time to align your strategy with these expectations and turn digital engagement into lasting growth.
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Top B2B ecommerce trends for 2025
To maximise online sales and meet rising customer expectations, B2B brands must continually evolve their digital strategies. The trends below reflect insights gathered from recent industry reports, B2B buyer surveys, and expert input — offering a practical roadmap for businesses ready to compete and grow in today's ecommerce landscape.
Invest in ecommerce platform technology
Embrace composability
Personalise the online shopping experience
Prioritise product discovery and information
Sell across third-party online marketplaces
Explore social media platforms
Fulfil orders even faster
Utilise AI
Effectively manage data
Leverage mobile apps
Implement dynamic pricing and personalisation strategies
Leave behind legacy systems.
With 90% of global B2B buyers expecting a B2C-like online experience, outdated systems can quickly become a barrier to growth. Legacy platforms often limit flexibility, slow down operations, and make it harder to adopt modern tools that improve customer experience.
Instead of upgrading systems reactively, invest in a long-term digital transformation strategy that supports your broader business goals. For example, replacing siloed, manual processes with a unified ecommerce solution can streamline workflows, improve data accuracy, and create a smoother buying journey.
AHP Dental & Medical, a leading B2B supplier in Australia, moved away from its outdated, manual ecommerce platform and adopted BigCommerce to streamline operations and scale efficiently. By integrating with MYOB through BigCommerce partner MyIntegrator, the company automated key workflows, eliminated costly inefficiencies, and transformed its online experience. As a result, online orders have jumped from 25% to 75% of total transactions — driving growth while cutting operational overhead.
By moving beyond legacy technology, B2B brands can unlock new efficiencies and stay agile in an increasingly digital marketplace.
Embrace composability.
Your ecommerce platform should serve as the foundation of your digital ecosystem — not a constraint. That's why choosing the right technology is one of the most critical steps in your digital transformation journey.
Not all ecommerce platforms are created equal. Many monolithic platforms take a one-size-fits-all approach, which can limit your flexibility and slow innovation. Others claim to support B2B but only offer limited features or workarounds that fail to scale with your needs.
Modern ecommerce solutions, especially those built on MACH architecture (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless), give B2B brands the flexibility to customise and scale. Headless commerce, in particular, separates the front end from the back end, allowing you to build tailored buyer experiences without disrupting backend operations.
BigCommerce supports this modern approach with Catalyst, our composable storefront foundation built for performance, speed, and front-end freedom. Catalyst enables faster time to market while maintaining built-in security, high performance, and lower total cost of ownership — all with true B2B functionality out of the box.
Category | Composable Architecture | Monolithic Architecture |
Flexibility | High – customise each component to meet specific B2B needs | Low – limited customisation without developer-intensive work |
Scalability | Scales individual services as needed (e.g., pricing engine, checkout) | Requires scaling the entire system, which can be slower and more expensive |
Time to market | Faster for specific features or updates, but may take longer upfront to build initial setup | Quicker to launch initially, but slower to update or innovate long term |
Integration | Easily connects to ERPs, CRMs, PIMs, CPQs, and other business tools | Integrations may be limited or require complex custom development |
User experience | Enables tailored buyer experiences across channels | Often limited to pre-built templates and features |
Maintenance | Requires managing multiple vendors and services | Easier to manage as one system, but harder to customise or modernise |
Total cost of ownership (TCO) | Higher upfront investment, but potentially lower over time due to efficiency and flexibility | Lower initial cost, but higher long-term costs due to limitations and upgrade needs |
Best for | Mid-market to enterprise B2B brands needing flexibility, scale, and differentiated UX | B2B businesses with simple needs and limited development resources |
The right platform doesn't just support ecommerce — it becomes the engine that drives your growth.
Personalise the online shopping experience.
B2B buyers expect tailored digital experiences, and personalisation has become a key driver of conversion and loyalty. According to Forrester, 66% of B2B buyers expect fully or mostly personalised content when shopping online.
Advanced tactics like predictive analytics, account-based pricing, and dynamic content help brands deliver relevant messages, offers, and products based on buyer behaviour, industry, or purchase history.
Brands like GlassCraft Door Company have expanded their capabilities by empowering distributors to create user accounts for their customers and personalise quotes — streamlining the ordering process and improving the buyer experience.
Personalisation doesn't have to be custom-built. Tools like Klevu, Bloomreach, and Nosto use machine learning and real-time data to automate recommendations, search results, and content based on each shopper's journey.
When implemented effectively, personalisation helps B2B brands increase engagement, shorten sales cycles, and drive higher average order values.
Prioritise product discovery and information.
One of the biggest frustrations for B2B buyers is not being able to quickly find the right product or access accurate, up-to-date information about it. Poor product data doesn't just hurt the customer experience; it can directly impact conversion rates and customer retention. In fact, incomplete or inconsistent product content is a leading cause of cart abandonment in B2B ecommerce.
Today's buyers expect easy product discovery across every touchpoint — not just your website, but also through marketplaces, mobile apps, and even social media. That makes omnichannel product discovery essential.
To support this, many B2B businesses turn to Product Information Management (PIM) systems. A PIM centralises and enriches product data, then pushes it out across all your selling channels, ensuring consistency whether someone is shopping on your ecommerce storefront, a distributor site, or a third-party marketplace.
Integrating your ecommerce platform with back-office systems like an ERP also helps automate updates and maintain real-time inventory and pricing accuracy. This is especially helpful if you're still managing product data in spreadsheets.
Other tools like AI-powered search, filters, and chatbots can guide buyers to the right product faster or connect them directly with a sales rep when human help is needed.
By prioritising product discoverability and accuracy, B2B brands can reduce friction, improve buyer confidence, and ultimately increase conversions across every channel.
Sell across third-party online marketplaces.
Third-party marketplaces play a growing role in the B2B buyer journey. Many buyers now begin their product research on platforms like Amazon Business, Alibaba, and Faire, making marketplaces a valuable channel for discovery, acquisition, and global expansion.
Selling on these platforms allows B2B brands to reach new customers, test product demand, and tap into international markets, often without the upfront investment required to build local operations. In fact, B2B marketplace sales continue to rise, driven by buyer demand for speed, convenience, and bulk pricing options.
That said, marketplace selling comes with its own set of challenges, including channel conflict, limited pricing control, and the need to maintain consistent product data across platforms. To succeed, B2B brands must approach marketplace strategy deliberately.
Many merchants use tools like Feedonomics, BigCommerce's omnichannel feed management solution, to simplify and scale their marketplace presence. Feedonomics enables automated listing updates, inventory syncing, and pricing controls across channels. For example, the Amazon Business integration supports custom pricing and volume discounts visible only to verified B2B buyers, helping brands stay competitive without undermining direct sales channels.
To maximise results, B2B sellers should select marketplaces that align with their audience and product category, monitor channel performance closely, and use technology to maintain control while scaling efficiently.
Explore social media platforms.
Social media has become a key part of the B2B buyer journey, especially as 75% of B2B buyers use social platforms to guide purchasing decisions. With millennials now making up the majority of B2B decision-makers, mobile-first design and social media presence are critical. Platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook offer powerful opportunities to influence and engage.
Start with the platforms that align with your audience:
LinkedIn is ideal for product promotion and lead generation through Product Pages and company updates.
YouTube supports how-to content and product demos that drive education and trust.
Facebook and Instagram can build awareness and feature offerings through tools like Facebook Shops.
You don't need to activate social checkout right away. Instead, use these platforms to drive traffic to your site with product videos, testimonials, and customer success stories. Tools like LinkedIn Product Pages and Facebook Shops can help bridge discovery and purchase, making social a valuable channel across the B2B funnel.
Fulfil orders even faster.
Fast, reliable fulfilment is no longer optional, it's a competitive advantage. As B2B buyers grow accustomed to real-time updates and rapid delivery, fulfilment speed has become a key factor in supplier selection and repeat purchases.
To meet these rising expectations, B2B sellers must streamline and scale their operations. Order management software (OMS) plays a central role by consolidating orders from multiple channels, automating workflows, and improving inventory visibility across warehouses.
Many brands also turn to third-party logistics providers (3PLs) to reduce fulfilment costs and boost efficiency. 3PLs can help you scale quickly, especially during peak seasons or periods of rapid growth, by handling warehousing, shipping, and returns on your behalf.
Other best practices include:
Offering real-time shipment tracking to increase transparency and reduce support enquiries.
Mitigating supply chain risk by diversifying suppliers and distribution centres.
Setting clear expectations for delivery timelines and proactively communicating delays.
By investing in fulfilment technology and partnerships, B2B brands can increase speed, reduce friction, and deliver the seamless experiences today's buyers expect, even as demand scales.
Utilise AI.
Artificial intelligence is transforming how B2B companies operate, from streamlining operations to driving revenue. A growing number of B2B businesses are embracing the shift: 45% are experimenting with generative AI, and 32% have already integrated it into their operations.
AI can support a wide range of use cases in B2B ecommerce, including:
Demand forecasting to optimise inventory and reduce overstock.
Fraud detection to flag risky B2B transactions in real time.
Customer service automation through chatbots and virtual assistants.
Personalised product recommendations to improve conversion rates.
BigCommerce offers AI-powered tools that help automate back-office tasks and enhance the buyer experience. For example, the upcoming B2B Quotes AI Assistant generates personalised quote proposal emails to speed up the quote-to-order process. The BigAI Copywriter helps teams quickly produce SEO-friendly product descriptions in your brand's voice, saving time and improving consistency across your catalogue.
As AI adoption grows, B2B sellers who deploy it thoughtfully will be better equipped to scale, serve customers faster, and gain a competitive edge.
Effectively manage data.
Data is the backbone of modern B2B ecommerce, but without the right strategy, it can quickly become a liability. Managing complex product catalogues, customer accounts, and sensitive business information requires more than spreadsheets or siloed systems.
To stay competitive, B2B businesses must adopt strong data governance practices, ensure compliance with privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA, and break down internal silos that prevent teams from accessing the insights they need. This starts with selecting flexible, secure tools that centralise and organise data across platforms.
BigCommerce's Big Open Data Solutions empowers businesses to integrate their preferred analytics, data warehouse, or customer data tools — unlocking real-time insights across marketing, sales, inventory management, and customer behaviour. This helps teams make faster, data-backed decisions while delivering more relevant, personalised experiences.
For businesses managing large, complex product catalogues across multiple sales channels, Feedonomics, a BigCommerce company, plays a critical role by aggregating and optimising product data for syndication to marketplaces, ad channels, and more — ensuring consistency and accuracy at scale.
With the right infrastructure in place, businesses can use real-time data to spot trends, optimise performance, and scale smarter, all while staying compliant and aligned across departments.
Leverage mobile apps.
Mobile is playing an increasingly important role in B2B ecommerce. As buyer demographics shift and expectations rise, mobile transactions are growing rapidly. In fact, mobile already accounts for a significant share of B2B product research and purchasing, especially among millennial buyers who expect the same convenience they experience in B2C.
Developing a custom mobile app gives B2B brands a powerful way to meet these expectations while streamlining the path to purchase. Apps can offer tailored functionality that goes beyond responsive web design, including offline access, faster load times, and push notifications for order updates or personalised offers.
Key mobile app features that enhance the B2B experience include:
Account-based pricing and catalogues
Quick reorder tools for frequently purchased items
Barcode scanning for easy inventory replenishment
Real-time inventory and order tracking
In-app messaging to connect buyers with account reps
When planning a mobile app, consider your buyers' workflows, device preferences, and how the app integrates with your ecommerce platform and back-office systems. A successful app should feel like a natural extension of your digital ecosystem — not a standalone tool.
As mobile usage continues to grow, B2B brands that invest in mobile-first strategies will be better equipped to drive convenience, loyalty, and repeat purchases.
Implement dynamic pricing and personalisation strategies.
Dynamic pricing allows B2B sellers to adjust prices in real time based on variables like customer type, order volume, inventory levels, and market demand. This flexible approach helps businesses stay competitive, protect margins, and serve a wide range of buyer needs. When combined with personalisation data, such as purchase history, location, or account status, dynamic pricing becomes even more powerful. For example, businesses can offer exclusive discounts to repeat buyers, volume-based pricing to high-value accounts, or geo-specific promotions to drive local demand.
While dynamic pricing offers clear benefits like improved conversion rates and optimised profitability, it also requires clean data, pricing governance, and the right tools to manage complexity. B2B brands using platforms like BigCommerce can integrate with ERPs or CPQ tools to automate contract-based pricing or display personalised rates to logged-in buyers. When executed well, dynamic pricing paired with personalisation helps deliver the tailored experiences B2B buyers expect, and drives measurable business results.
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How to determine if a trend makes sense for you
Not every trend is right for every business, and adopting the wrong one too early can waste time and resources. To prioritise wisely, focus on trends that align with your goals, your customers' expectations, and your team's ability to execute. Involve key stakeholders early in your decision-making process to ensure new trends align with business objectives and buyer needs.
Use this simple framework to evaluate new trends:
Assess business fit: Does the trend solve a clear problem or unlock new value for your customers or internal teams?
Estimate ROI: Consider the potential impact on revenue, efficiency, or customer satisfaction.
Evaluate risk: Weigh the cost, complexity, and any disruption to your existing operations.
Check readiness: Do you have the tools, team, and infrastructure to support it?
Study the market: Look at how competitors or peers in your industry are adopting (or avoiding) the trend.
By approaching trends with a clear, strategic lens, you can invest in what moves the needle and avoid distractions that don't serve your business goals.
Stay up to date with industry reports and data.
Staying current with industry research is essential for spotting trends early, benchmarking performance, and making informed decisions. Credible reports often provide data-backed insights drawn from original research, expert analysis, and buyer surveys.
Look to trusted sources like Forrester, Gartner, Digital Commerce 360, and Statista — all known for providing reliable, up-to-date B2B ecommerce insights. When reviewing reports, consider the methodology, sample size, recency, and relevance to your vertical to ensure the data applies to your business.
By regularly consulting industry data, you'll better understand where the market is heading, which innovations to prioritise, and how to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving landscape.
Assess your customers' behaviours.
One of the biggest advantages of B2B ecommerce is access to rich first-party data. Use this data to understand how your customers shop — from purchase frequency and order value to preferred channels and devices.
Analytics tools like Google Analytics, Mixpanel, and BigCommerce's built-in reports can help you dig deeper with cohort analysis, customer segmentation, and buyer journey tracking. These tools reveal patterns in behaviour over time, helping you pinpoint which strategies drive engagement, repeat purchases, or churn.
You can also create feedback loops by gathering direct input through post-purchase surveys or account manager conversations. Combine this qualitative data with behavioural insights to fine-tune everything from product recommendations to content strategy.
By actively monitoring and interpreting customer behaviour, you can surface the most relevant trends for your business — and use them to improve retention, personalise the experience, and drive long-term growth.
Evaluate what your competitors are doing.
Keeping an eye on your competitors can help you gauge which trends are gaining traction and how they're being implemented. If a competitor successfully adopted a new technology or strategy, it could signal an opportunity worth exploring, or offer lessons in what to avoid.
Use ethical competitive intelligence tools like Similarweb, Semrush, BuiltWith, or Wappalyzer to uncover insights about their traffic sources, tech stack, and marketing strategies. Monitor their websites, product launches, content, and customer reviews to spot patterns in their approach.
Benchmarking against industry leaders can also help you assess your own positioning. Identify gaps or differentiators in areas like product experience, pricing strategy, or omnichannel presence, and use those insights to guide your next move. While you don't need to follow your competition, understanding their direction helps you make more informed, proactive decisions.
How BigCommerce helps B2B brands
BigCommerce is a leading B2B ecommerce platform built to meet the evolving needs of modern businesses. It has been recognised for its flexibility, ease of use, and enterprise-grade capabilities in the 2024 Paradigm B2B Combine for Mid-Market and Enterprise, the IDC MarketScape Worldwide B2B Digital Commerce Applications for Midmarket Digital Commerce, and G2's Best Commerce Software Products of 2025.
What sets BigCommerce apart is its open architecture, which gives B2B merchants the freedom to scale and customise without the high costs or limitations of legacy platforms. Unlike Shopify Plus, which offers limited native B2B features and lacks multi-storefront support, BigCommerce delivers functionality like custom pricing, shared catalogues, quote management, and sales rep masquerading — out of the box.
Compared to platforms like SAP Commerce Cloud and Adobe Commerce, which demand heavy developer resources and costly implementations, BigCommerce offers fast time to value, lower total cost of ownership, and seamless upgrades with no disruption.
"When we learned about BigCommerce, we were immediately swayed to migrate from Shopify. BigCommerce's B2B wholesale functionality for customer groups allows us to dictate customer-specific pricing at a macro level while still offering B2B customers a B2C experience while shopping online," shared Brendan McCarthy, Managing Director at Designerie.
Whether you're launching a global B2B storefront, transitioning from a legacy platform, or scaling quickly, BigCommerce gives you the tools to modernise, compete, and grow — all with the speed and agility today's digital commerce demands.
Native enterprise functionality.
BigCommerce offers a robust suite of native B2B features designed to simplify complex workflows and improve the buyer experience. Tools like price lists and customer groups allow you to display SKU-level pricing, offer volume discounts, and create targeted promotions — all without relying on third-party apps. This helps eliminate manual pricing updates and ensures your buyers always see the correct rates.
For businesses managing multiple brands or customer segments, multi-storefront support lets you run several distinct storefronts from a single backend, reducing operational overhead while maintaining customised experiences. Open APIs make it easy to connect with ERP, CRM, and PIM systems, streamlining data flow and minimising time-consuming rework.
With B2B Edition, BigCommerce takes things even further. For example:
The Open-Source Buyer Portal gives your customers a branded, self-service interface for reordering, tracking, and managing account activity — reducing customer support requests.
Payment method visibility control ensures that buyers only see the payment options approved for their account, helping you streamline compliance and avoid errors.
The invoice portal simplifies billing by letting customers view and pay invoices online using flexible payment methods.
Customer-requested quotes let buyers build a cart and request pricing with a single click, speeding up the quote-to-order process and improving sales team efficiency.
These features help B2B companies solve real challenges, like manual quote handling, inconsistent pricing, or fragmented ordering experiences, and ultimately drive faster sales cycles, higher retention, and operational efficiency.
Trusted technology.
BigCommerce is built on a modern, secure, and highly scalable infrastructure trusted by thousands of global brands. With certifications including PCI DSS 4.1 Level 1, ISO/IEC 27001:2022, ISO/IEC 27701:2019, and DDoS protection, the platform helps safeguard your data, operations, and customer trust against growing cyber threats.
Beyond security, BigCommerce is engineered for enterprise-level scalability. With 99.99% uptime, the platform is designed to support high-volume traffic, large product catalogues, and rapid transaction throughput — even during peak demand periods like seasonal sales or product launches. Brands can scale seamlessly without worrying about infrastructure limitations, performance slowdowns, or downtime.
Whether you're expanding to new markets, launching multiple storefronts, or onboarding high-volume buyers, BigCommerce ensures that your ecommerce foundation can grow with your business — securely, reliably, and without interruption.
Modern buyer experience.
Today's B2B buyers expect the same convenience, speed, and personalisation they get in B2C, and BigCommerce helps you deliver on those expectations. The platform combines native functionality, seamless integrations, and flexible customisation tools to create a user experience that's intuitive and conversion-driven.
Features like mobile-optimised storefronts, personalised product recommendations, and streamlined reordering empower buyers to find what they need quickly, whether they're on desktop or mobile. Tools like customer-requested quotes and account-based pricing give buyers more control and visibility throughout the purchasing process.
BigCommerce merchants have reported measurable improvements after optimising their buyer experience — including higher conversion rates, increased repeat purchases, and stronger customer satisfaction scores (CSAT). With full design flexibility via APIs, headless builds, or drag-and-drop editors, brands can deliver customised experiences tailored to specific buyer segments, regions, or workflows.
By removing friction at every step of the journey, BigCommerce enables B2B companies to not only meet buyer expectations but exceed them, turning transactions into long-term relationships.
Partner-supported functionality.
BigCommerce gives B2B merchants access to a powerful ecosystem of agency and technology partners, helping you extend platform capabilities and accelerate time to value. Whether you need help with design, development, marketing, or backend systems, our curated network offers the tools and expertise to meet your unique business goals.
Popular technology partners include:
Feedonomics: Optimises product data and automates syndication across marketplaces and ad channels.
Klevu: Delivers AI-powered search, product recommendations, and merchandising for personalised shopping experiences.
Avalara: Automates tax calculations and compliance, including sales tax, VAT, and duties across global regions.
Salesforce and HubSpot: Enable advanced CRM and marketing automation workflows.
Recent partner integrations include enhanced Amazon Business functionality via Feedonomics, expanded ERP connectors, and new tools supporting AI personalisation, subscription billing, and cross-border logistics.
With this broad network of trusted partners, BigCommerce enables B2B brands to build tailored solutions, streamline operations, and scale with confidence — all without the burden of heavy custom development.
Maintenance, updates, and more.
BigCommerce takes the hassle out of maintaining your ecommerce site by managing security patches, platform updates, and performance optimisations behind the scenes, all with zero downtime. These managed updates ensure your storefront stays fast, secure, and compliant, without pulling resources away from your team.
With 99.99% uptime, service level agreements (SLAs) that support business continuity, and access to 24/7 support across multiple tiers, BigCommerce gives you the reliability and peace of mind needed to focus on growth. Automatic updates mean you're always running on the latest version of the platform, with new features and improvements rolled out seamlessly — no manual intervention required.
This proactive approach to maintenance reduces operational risk, eliminates unexpected disruptions, and gives your business the stability it needs to scale confidently.
The final word
B2B ecommerce is no longer optional — it's the standard. To stay competitive, you need a flexible, future-ready platform that delivers the seamless experience your buyers expect.
BigCommerce gives you the tools to lead: powerful native features, scalable architecture, and a trusted partner ecosystem designed for growth.
Ready to take the next step? Explore our B2B page or connect with a BigCommerce expert to see how we can help you transform your ecommerce strategy.
FAQ about B2B ecommerce trends

Annie Laukaitis
Annie is a Content Marketing Writer at BigCommerce, where she uses her writing and research experience to create compelling content that educates ecommerce retailers. Before joining BigCommerce, Annie developed her skills in marketing and communications by working with clients across various industries, ranging from government to staffing and recruiting. When she’s not working, you can find Annie on a yoga mat, with a paintbrush in her hand, or trying out a new local restaurant.