If you’re a distributor, your B2B ecommerce website is no longer a side project—it’s now the primary way modern buyers place orders. 

Phone calls and outdated portals can’t keep up with buyers who expect consumer-grade speed and clarity. Distributors who modernize their B2B ecommerce experience win more accounts, while those who don’t risk losing out to competitors with frictionless, self-serve experiences.

This guide to B2B ecommerce website development walks you through every decision that matters, from navigating technological shifts to understanding how today’s buyers want to evaluate options and place orders.

What modern B2B buyers expect in 2026

The bar for B2B ecommerce has risen—and buyers, not competitors, are setting it. Understanding how B2B buyers shop today informs every decision you’ll make about your storefront, user experience (UX), pricing, and integrations.

The generational shift

B2B buying groups are now dominated by younger, digital-native decision-makers. According to Forrester, 71% of today’s B2B buyers are millennials or Gen Z—bringing expectations shaped by the ease of consumer shopping.

These buyers:

• Compare options across tabs
• Expect instant search results and accurate inventory
• Abandon sites with friction, unclear pricing, or slow UX

For distributors, this translates into certain non-negotiables:

• Rich product data and clean categorization
• Real-time or near-real-time availability, ideally via enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform integration
• Frictionless reorder experiences, not browse-first journeys

The gap between what buyers expect and what most distributor portals deliver is where revenue evaporates. Close that gap, and you win accounts that churn elsewhere. Commerce platforms like Shopify B2B help usher in this change by enabling a more streamlined buying experience and reducing operational costs. 

Omnichannel and self-serve as table stakes 

Modern buyers don’t choose a channel—they use all of them. McKinsey reports buyers now rely on 10 or more channels throughout the B2B purchasing journey, shifting fluidly between email, reps, self-serve portals, and marketplaces.

Two shifts matter most for distributors:

• Buyers now place large orders digitally. McKinsey’s 2024 B2B Pulse survey showed buyers are increasingly comfortable placing $500,000+ orders through remote or self-serve channels. That means manual quoting and rep-only workflows tend to slow deals rather than protect them.
• The industry’s growth is digital. The U.S. International Trade Administration projects the global B2B ecommerce market will reach $36 trillion in 2026, representing a 14.5% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Every year, more B2B spend migrates online.

To capture that growth, distributors must deliver the B2B website features buyers now consider table stakes: instant account-level pricing, quick-order tools, mobile-ready UX, and clean buyer-approval workflows.

Choose your storefront approach

The first step in developing a new ecommerce website is understanding the foundation of your business model. Your ecommerce model directly informs your technical requirements, helping you make more strategic decisions throughout the build.

Pros and cons of Shopify builds

Start by choosing between a blended storefront and a dedicated store.

What is a blended store?

A blended storefront is a single ecommerce website and administrative back end that supports all of your customers, whether they are direct consumers or businesses. This unified approach provides a cohesive, efficient way to manage every customer type and order. Blended stores allow B2B retailers to streamline their workflows from a single backend, while still being able to differentiate between B2B and DTC orders and customers.

Even with a unified back end, you can still customize the experience for B2B and DTC customers with a blended store. You can show each type of customer unique store content, products, and pricing, as well as different payment and delivery options. 

The trade-offs center on flexibility. A blended store runs on a single theme, which limits how radically different you can make the B2B and DTC brand experiences. If your wholesale and retail product ranges diverge significantly, navigation can get complicated. And without careful UX planning, buyers may be unsure whether they’re seeing wholesale or retail pricing.

What is a dedicated store?

A dedicated store is a B2B-only ecommerce website that caters exclusively to your B2B customers. This allows you to create a fully curated and tailored experience for your B2B buyers, because the entire site and admin are focused solely on B2B operations.

This approach makes sense when your B2B and DTC businesses operate almost as separate entities. You get full control over B2B-specific design and workflows, clean separation of inventory allocations if wholesale and retail stock are managed independently, and the ability to let different teams own their respective channels without stepping on each other.

The cost is duplication. You’re maintaining two admin back ends, two sets of apps, two content calendars, and two SEO strategies. Analytics become more complex when customer journeys span both properties. For distributors with the resources to manage this complexity—or whose B2B and DTC operations truly require separation—dedicated stores deliver maximum flexibility.

Decision checklist: When to pick each

It’s important to note that there is no right answer—just the one that makes the most sense for your business. However, it is a choice that should be carefully considered, because if you eventually have to move from blended to dedicated, or vice versa, you will duplicate work and spend valuable time and resources rebuilding functions you already created. 

It’s generally recommended to go with a blended approach for the efficiency gains it offers. However, there are some cases in where a dedicated approach may be best:

• Your B2B and DTC customers need to have fully distinct store branding and design. A blended store can only have one theme. 
• Your B2B and DTC inventory is allocated separately. Inventory is shared across B2B and DTC in a blended store.
• If you have entirely separate teams that manage either side of your business, it can often be easier to have each team work with separate admins and their own respective websites.

Most other parts of the shopping experience can be fully customized for B2B and DTC users with a blended store, without needing to maintain two administrative back ends.

Core features for B2B ecommerce website development 

Once you’ve selected your storefront model, your next step is implementing the B2B website features that power real-world wholesale workflows.

Accounts, companies, roles, and approvals 

B2B buyers rarely purchase as individuals—they buy on behalf of organizations with layers of responsibility, spending authority, and department-level workflows. That means your ecommerce site must support structured account management, not just usernames and passwords. This structure should support:

• Company-level accounts rather than individual shoppers
• Multiple locations tied to the same parent organization
• Buyer roles and permissions that reflect real purchasing authority
• Approval workflows for requestor/approver scenarios

Most modern B2B platforms—including Shopify B2B—use a company or account hierarchy model to represent these structures. In Shopify, companies include locations and contacts, and each contact can be assigned specific permissions. This aligns with how distributors actually sell: store managers build carts; regional buyers approve; procurement submits final orders.

Custom catalogs, price lists, and payment terms 

Wholesale buyers expect more than a single “wholesale price.” They expect contract pricing, curated assortments, negotiated discounts, and payment flexibility. Your B2B ecommerce website development approach should allow you to reflect these differences without duplicating products or maintaining parallel stores unnecessarily. Look for:

• Account-specific catalogs (what each buyer can purchase)
• Account-level pricing/terms (what each buyer should pay)
• Tiered discounts for volume or program-based customers
• Flexible payment terms, including invoicing and purchase orders (POs)

You can find these features in Shopify B2B price lists/catalogs and per-company payment terms, including support for net terms and purchase order entry at checkout. Other platforms use contract pricing modules, customer groups, or rule engines—the concept is the same.

Australian fragrance label WHO IS ELIJAH used this approach across eight expansion stores. Once each region had its own catalog and price matrix, international wholesale revenue climbed 50% year over year.

Quick order and reorder 

B2B buyers don’t “shop” in the consumer sense—they replenish. They already know which SKUs they need, and efficiency is everything. This is why quick-order and CSV tools are among the most important B2B website features for distributors. Your site should support:

• SKU or part-number search
• Variant-level quantity entry
• Bulk add-to-cart interfaces
• CSV upload for large or system-generated orders
• Saved lists
• One-click reorder

Shopify B2B supports this with its Quick order list and reorder tools, but the underlying principle applies across platforms: design around replenishment, not browsing.

For many distributors, repeat orders represent the majority of revenue. Reducing friction here increases order frequency, reduces offline ordering, and aligns with how B2B purchases actually occur inside retail, food service, facilities, or manufacturing businesses.

Quotes, draft orders, and rep-assisted buying 

Not all B2B transactions fit cleanly into a self-serve flow. Custom configurations, negotiated pricing, bundled shipments, and contract-based deals still require human involvement. Your ecommerce system should support:

• Rep-generated quotes
• Editable draft orders
• Custom line items (such as freight, kitting, installation, etc.)
• Shareable quote links buyers can review internally

Shopify B2B enables reps to create draft orders and share them for review, but approval logic still comes from the buyer’s company roles—not automated routing. Other platforms may offer similar quote tools, but the important part is enabling hybrid workflows where reps and buyers collaborate digitally rather than via spreadsheets and email threads.

This keeps negotiated deals inside your ecommerce system rather than scattered across files, emails, or manual processes.

Invoicing, tax/VAT exemptions, and B2B-friendly checkout 

B2B checkout differs fundamentally from consumer checkout. It must understand buyer context: negotiated terms, tax status, PO requirements, and billing processes.

Your B2B ecommerce checkout flow should support:

• Invoicing and PO checkout (orders placed now, paid on terms)
• Tax/VAT exemptions tied to company profiles
• Saved company details, addresses, and cost centers
• Consistent checkout UX, even when pricing and terms differ

In Shopify B2B, this includes invoice-style checkout, PO fields, and the ability to store tax exemption certificates at the company level (note: Shopify stores but does not validate documentation). Many B2B platforms require customizations or apps for this functionality, but the requirement remains universal.

Wholesale buyers expect the checkout experience to match the way their business actually pays—and deviations create friction that sends orders back to reps or email.

PunchOut/OCI and EDI integrations 

As distributors move upmarket, procurement complexity increases. Enterprise buyers often require purchasing inside their own systems—not yours. Some common requirements include:

• PunchOut/OCI, which allows buyers to:
• Start in their procurement system (e.g., Coupa, SAP Ariba)
• “Punch out” to your ecommerce site
• Build a cart
• Send that cart back as a requisition
• Electronic data interchange (EDI), which supports document exchange for:
• 850 (Purchase orders)
• 810 (Invoices)
• 856 (Advance ship notices)

Shopify does not offer native PunchOut but supports it through partner integrations. This is typical across ecommerce platforms. It also handles EDI through apps or middleware—similar to other software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms.

PunchOut/OCI and EDI aren’t necessary for every distributor, but for those selling into big-box or enterprise environments, these capabilities often become prerequisites for doing business.

Technical implementation guide 

With your feature set defined, it’s time to align with your dev team on the technical decisions that shape your build. The choices here—architecture, integrations, performance standards, and accessibility—determine whether your site scales smoothly or creates headaches as order volume grows.

Architecture choices: Theme vs. headless 

The architecture you choose shapes your development workflow, customization limits, long-term maintenance requirements, and total cost of ownership. For most distributors, there are two options: a theme-based architecture or headless commerce using APIs.

Theme-based architecture

A theme-based build uses the platform’s native storefront framework. In Shopify’s case, this means building on Online Store 2.0 and using Liquid-based themes. Themes integrate directly with the core B2B website features we covered earlier.

Because the storefront and B2B logic live in the same environment, development and testing are straightforward. This approach typically works well for distributors whose requirements align with standard B2B ecommerce web design patterns and who prefer shorter implementation cycles and simpler long-term maintenance.

Headless architecture

A headless build separates the front end and back end. The B2B logic, products, orders, and customer data live in Shopify, while the front end is built with a framework such as Next.js, Remix, or another modern JavaScript stack via the Storefront API and Hydrogen tooling.

Headless architecture makes sense when:

• You need highly tailored B2B user interfaces that go beyond what themes allow
• You manage multiple brands or storefront experiences from a single back end
• You require a custom application layer that merges ecommerce with operational workflows
• You have a development team prepared to maintain the added complexity of independent frontend infrastructure

The trade-off is that headless projects introduce additional hosting, monitoring, and integration layers. Before pursuing headless, teams should validate that their UX and operational needs genuinely exceed what a theme-based approach can deliver.

Did you know? A headless build with Hydrogen enables smoother, more flexible integrations with the essential systems that power B2B operations, such as ERPs (for inventory and pricing), customer relationship management tools (CRMs) for customer data, and product information management tools (PIMs) for product information.

Key APIs and integration points 

Integrations are often the most challenging part of B2B ecommerce website development. Accurate data flow—especially around pricing, inventory, orders, and buyer permissions—determines whether customers can trust your site enough to adopt it for self-serve ordering.

ERP integration

Most distributor workflows depend on an ERP as the system of record for:

• Multilocation inventory
• Account-level pricing and terms
• Order management and fulfillment
• Purchase order processing

In Shopify, developers use the Admin API and webhooks to push and pull data between systems. The goal is to eliminate manual entry and ensure buyers always see up-to-date availability and contract pricing.

Outdoor gear supplier DARCHE moved from OroCommerce to Shopify, connected their ERP, and launched Shopify B2B features like company profiles, custom catalogs, and personalized price lists. The shift enabled wholesale buyers to place self‑serve orders through tailored catalogs, helping DARCHE project a threefold year‑over‑year increase in B2B sales while cutting manual phone and email orders.

CRM integration

CRM platforms store institutional knowledge about each customer account, including contacts, communication history, sales notes, and lifecycle data. Connecting Shopify B2B with your CRM keeps buyer roles and permissions, company-level notes, and order history aligned across teams.

Typical integrations should be able to:

• Create and update company records when accounts change
• Sync orders to CRM for pipeline visibility
• Sync contacts and roles so sales teams know who has buying authority

This prevents discrepancies between what sales reps expect and what the ecommerce system allows.

Tip: Shopify integrates with apps like NetSuite, Acumatica, and Brightpearl. Eliminating manual entry—and therefore, improving data accuracy—is easier through native integrations that pull data in real time, placing your most important metrics in a single dashboard.

Authentication and SSO

Some larger buyers require login via their organization’s identity provider rather than maintaining separate credentials. Shopify supports single sign-on (SSO) through Shopify Plus, using OAuth-based or SAML/OIDC integrations, usually implemented through apps or custom middleware.

Before building SSO, confirm whether your buyers truly require it. Many distributors overestimate the demand, and SSO can introduce complexity that smaller customers simply don’t need.

Custom middleware vs. app-based integrations

Lastly, you’ll need to decide between these two options:

• Shopify App Store integrations, which reduce development time and suit common B2B workflows
• Custom middleware, which provides full control over transformations, error handling, and sync timing

Distributors with unusual ERP schemas, complex pricing structures, or strict compliance requirements often choose custom middleware. Others prefer apps for faster implementation and lower ongoing engineering cost. There is no universally correct option—only what fits your operational needs.

Performance budget and Google Core Web Vitals 

Performance is a core part of B2B ecommerce development, not an afterthought. Buyers expect fast-loading interfaces regardless of device or network conditions, and Google uses Core Web Vitals as ranking signals. Setting a performance budget early prevents issues later.

Target these Google Analytics 4 (GA4) metrics:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Under 2.5 seconds
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP): Under 200 milliseconds
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Below 0.1

These thresholds apply across consumer and B2B sites, but certain B2B templates require special attention:

• Quick order pages with many SKU inputs
• Account dashboards with multiple data sources
• Product detail pages (PDPs) with deep variant logic
• Large catalog or search-result pages

To maintain or improve site performance, try these steps:

1. Minimize blocking scripts, especially on B2B-specific templates.
2. Optimize images and use CDN delivery.
3. Defer nonessential JavaScript.
4. Audit performance regularly using Lighthouse and real-user monitoring tools.

Performance degradation usually occurs gradually as teams install apps or add custom scripts. Ongoing review ensures that growth doesn’t erode user experience.

Accessibility and internationalization 

Accessibility is not optional for modern B2B sites. Many procurement departments now evaluate vendors based on compliance with WCAG 2.2 AA standards, and accessibility gaps can cost you enterprise accounts.

Accessibility requirements for B2B

Because B2B sites often include dense data tables, complex forms, and multi-step ordering workflows, accessibility must be incorporated from the start. Key priorities include:

• Keyboard navigation and logical tab order
• Clear focus states
• High-contrast color palettes
• Accurate form labels and ARIA attributes
• Proper table markup for quick order grids
• Screen reader support on product pages and checkout

Testing with real assistive technologies—rather than relying solely on automated tools—reveals issues early so you can fix them quickly.

Internationalization

Even if your current business is US-centric, your architecture should accommodate:

• Multiple languages
• Localized content
• Currency formatting
• Region-specific tax calculations
• Duty and compliance requirements

Shopify Managed Markets and partner solutions can support multi-region expansion, but planning for internationalization early on helps prevent architectural constraints later.

Tax/VAT considerations

For US distributors, considerations include:

• State-by-state tax rules
• Resale certificates
• Tax exemptions at the company or location level

Selling cross-border introduces VAT, duties, and additional documentation. Shopify B2B can store exemption certificates and apply appropriate configurations, but merchants are still ultimately responsible for validation and compliance.

12 B2B ecommerce website development best practices 

With your strategic and technical decisions aligned, these 12 best practices will keep your build on track.

1. Define your business goals and objectives

Start with what success looks like for your B2B ecommerce website—not features, but outcomes. They could include improving engagement with better user experiences, increasing online sales, or strengthening customer loyalty and repeat business.

Make sure you’ve defined a target audience for each goal so you can add precision to your website strategy. For example, if you want to improve loyalty in a certain type of business buyer, you would develop features, content, and experiences that appeal to that audience. Consider ways your website can highlight the unique values your business brings to your customers so you stand out from competitors.

2. Conduct market research and target audience analysis

Once you have your goals established and your audiences identified, it’s time to get to know them better. Not every type of website experience appeals to every type of buyer—and you need to know which aspects of your business you should highlight first.

Take some time to conduct market research on your audience, identifying their challenges, preferences, and needs. Research trends in your industry to ensure your new website is equipped to adapt as your industry and buyers evolve.

Finally, create individual user personas based on your audiences, and consider bringing them to life by giving each a name. Imagine them interacting with your new website and what they would want to do easily, and what type of design strategy and user experience would draw them in.

3. Incorporate responsive design and prioritize a great user experience

B2B transactions increasingly happen on mobile devices—not because buyers prefer phones, but because they’re ordering between other tasks. Forward-thinking B2B retailers adopt a mobile-first strategy to ensure they avoid losing potential customers due to clunky, outdated buying experiences. 

That’s why it’s critical to build your user experience and design from the ground up to function seamlessly on all devices, from the smallest phone screen to widescreen desktop monitors. With various phones and tablets coming in a wide range of sizes, it may take some time to optimize your design for every size—you may need to implement different page designs based on device type, and create a dedicated mobile-friendly navigation and search experience.

Mobile devices don’t have the same screen capacity as desktops and laptops, so make sure you provide clear, concise product descriptions, images, and pricing. This helps your buyers browse more easily no matter what device they use.

4. Optimize for easy, efficient search and navigation

Design search and navigation for buyers who already know what they need. B2B catalog searches are often by SKU, part number, or exact product name—not browsing behavior. Your search needs to handle these queries gracefully, returning exact matches first and offering helpful suggestions for near misses.

To provide an optimal search and browsing experience, start by organizing your products into clear, logical categories and subcategories. Make sure your customers can filter and sort to refine their searches easily. Finally, optimize your products for search engines, including meta tags and descriptions, to increase visibility in web searches.

5. Integrate your customer relationship management system

A foundational part of creating a robust customer experience is a seamless integration between your CRM system and your website. This allows customers to have a consistent experience with your business, whether they are interacting with your website or directly with a sales associate. This integration can provide your customers with personalized recommendations and promotions, relevant content, simplified checkout with prefilled fields, and a unified support experience.

When you implement real-time data synchronization between your CRM and website, you can automate tasks like order tracking and customer notifications. You can also analyze your customers’ behavior to inform your overall marketing strategies and drive revenue and engagement.

6. Integrate your enterprise resource planning systems

If you are a larger B2B retailer, your website will need a seamless integration with your ERP systems. This gives your customers real-time inventory visibility, accurate pricing, and unified order processing. Customers also have greater self-service opportunities when they can view their account details and order history directly through your website. 

Integrating your B2B ERP helps you manage your business processes, such as managing your inventory and supply chain. You can also set up automations for order fulfillment, notifications, and shipping. Depending on the ERP and platform provider, these integrations can be complex to implement, so be sure to keep any large-scale integrations in mind as you plan your development strategy.

7. Implement secure payment processing and ensure compliance

Implementing rigorous security and compliance controls significantly shapes your website development strategy. To securely process transactions, implement secure payment processing with SSL encryption and secure payment gateways. 

You also need to identify which compliance regulations you need to adhere to based on your industry. PCI-DSS applies to any business that accepts, handles, stores, or transmits cardholder data, and GDPR comes into play if you have a global customer base. Prioritize security in your website development strategy, and take active steps to protect sensitive customer data, including credit card information and personal details.

8. Optimize your site for search engines 

Before you go live, it’s important to plan how you will optimize your website for search engines. Incorporating search engine optimization (SEO) best practices in your development process gives you much greater visibility in the marketplace without requiring as much spend on advertising. 

Research the keywords your customers are using to find the type of products you sell. B2B customers are often very specific in their searches, such as “wholesale silver glass beads,” so it can be easier to rank for them. A lot can be involved in creating a comprehensive SEO strategy for new B2B ecommerce website development, so we recommend you check out our guide on B2B ecommerce SEO for more details and next steps.

9. Develop a content marketing strategy 

B2B ecommerce content marketing can work hand in hand with your SEO strategy to drive organic traffic to your site on an ongoing basis. Using specialized knowledge about your products and industry, you can publish helpful blogs, product guides, and “how-to” articles. This creates the foundation of a content marketing strategy that educates potential new customers and establishes your expertise and trustworthiness as a vendor.

Once created, use your content to drive email campaigns and boost your social media presence. You can link to content throughout your site, in emails, and on social profiles, and encourage others to link to your articles as well. Over time, you can analyze which content performs best so you know where to focus your efforts.

10. Thoroughly test your site before launch 

Include time for thorough testing beyond basic functionality checks. B2B sites have workflows that consumer checkouts don’t—and those workflows need validation under realistic conditions.

Consider gathering a group of customers to beta test a staging site and provide feedback about the new functionality and overall site usability—their insights often reveal issues you didn’t anticipate. You also want to be 100% sure you have tested payment processing and order fulfillment to ensure you don’t lose any sales to technical problems once you launch. 

11. Analyze performance and optimize regularly 

Launch is the beginning, not the end. Establish regular cadences for reviewing site performance: traffic patterns, conversion rates, search behavior, feature usage. Understand how buyers actually use your site versus how you expected them to.

Customer preferences, search engine algorithms, and markets evolve over time, so you need to plan for continual optimization, updates, and improvements. This helps keep your brand visibility and user engagement rates high over time.

12. Plan for scale and growth

Build with tomorrow’s order volume in mind, not just today’s. If your B2B ecommerce strategy works, you’ll handle more traffic, more accounts, and more complex buyer organizations over time. Infrastructure that buckles under growth creates crises at the worst moments.

You also want to stay up to date on trends in your industry and your customers’ buying preferences so you can add new features and functionality to your website as you grow. Never “set and forget” your website, or you’ll lose sales to competitors that offer a better buying experience. You can browse our guide to creating a successful ecommerce strategy for more details.

What are the current challenges in B2B ecommerce website development? 

Even with the right features and best practices, certain challenges can stall B2B builds. Anticipating these obstacles lets you plan around them rather than discovering them mid-project.

Changing buyer expectations

The buyer expectations we covered earlier aren’t static—they continue rising. Self-serve ordering went from innovative to expected in a few years; quick-order and one-click reorder are following the same path.

The challenge is building flexibly enough to evolve. Distributors on rigid platforms struggle to implement account-level pricing, quick-order interfaces, or PunchOut integrations when buyers start asking for them. Those requests don’t wait for your next major platform initiative. Choosing an architecture that supports iteration—adding capabilities without rebuilding foundations—protects you from falling behind as expectations shift.

Legacy B2B ecommerce platforms that are highly customized

Many distributors run on B2B ecommerce platforms that were state-of-the-art a decade ago and have accumulated years of customization since. These systems often handle transactions reliably but are difficult to change. Adding a new feature means navigating brittle code. Updating the interface risks breaking integrations. The platform works—until you need it to do something new.

Migration feels risky, but stagnation has its own risks. Legacy platforms with outdated interfaces and limited self-serve capabilities push buyers toward competitors with better digital experiences. The cost of maintaining aging systems often exceeds the cost of modernizing. It’s often worth the time and effort to migrate to a new platform like Shopify which is continually upgraded and optimized for modern B2B ecommerce.

Tech stack sprawl and manual processes

Distributors serving both B2B and DTC often end up with sprawling tech stacks assembled through ad hoc omnichannel efforts: 

• Different customer types and channels on different platforms 
• Integrations built piecemeal without overall architecture 
• Manual processes bridging gaps between systems that don’t talk to each other

The resulting environment is fragile and labor-intensive: 

• Orders come in through phone, fax, email, and various portals, requiring staff to rekey data. 
• Inventory updates lag because syncs run overnight instead of in real time. 
• Pricing discrepancies between systems cause errors and customer frustration. 

With the right ecommerce website strategy, you can integrate different channels into your website and streamline your efforts. You can encourage self-service with a simplified, easy-to-use UI and automations that update customers throughout the purchase process. Consolidating onto a unified commerce platform—or at least establishing clear integration architecture—reduces the manual work and failure points.

Limited developer resources

Skilled developers are expensive and in demand. If your team spends most of their time maintaining legacy systems and fighting fires, there’s no capacity left for building the features your business needs. Custom development timelines stretch. Strategic projects stall.

The answer isn’t always hiring more developers—it’s choosing platforms and approaches that maximize what your current team can accomplish. Out-of-the-box functionality reduces custom development needs. App ecosystems provide prebuilt solutions for common requirements. Clear architecture makes changes easier to implement and test. Optimizing for developer efficiency can deliver more than expanding headcount.

Getting your B2B ecommerce website strategy right 

With the evolution of buyer preferences and the proliferation of new technologies, there has never been a better time to build and launch a new B2B ecommerce website. Upgrading your customers’ buying experience helps you to capture new customers and reach further into growing markets.

While there are many elements to consider when developing a new ecommerce website, one of the most important is the platform that will power your new site. Legacy platforms are more costly than ever, holding retailers back with added costs and slow development times.

With Shopify, B2B retailers get everything they need to run both wholesale and direct-to-consumer businesses on a single platform. Out of the box, Shopify helps many B2B retailers deliver a modern, intuitive experience for every customer with curated catalogs, custom pricing, personalized storefronts, flexible payment terms, and a robust self-serve portal.

This article originally appeared on Shopify and is available here for further discovery.