Love B2B eCommerce
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B2B eCommerce is one of the most powerful ways to drive predictable, long-term revenue - but only if customers keep coming back. In wholesale, repeat orders don’t happen by accident. They happen when buying is easy, fast, and familiar.
Many B2B (Business-to-Business) brands put the majority of their focus on the acquisition of new accounts. While it’s important to keep attracting new customers, scaling sustainably requires existing customers to place repeat orders.
The next level? The ultimate goal is to have repeat orders coming through without buyers needing reminders, sales calls, or manual intervention.
Encouraging customers to become self-sufficient and giving them the ability and confidence to navigate your B2B eCommerce website themselves is the key to unlocking ongoing growth.
At the heart of this is frictionless, autonomous buying.
In this guide, we’ll explore why friction is one of the biggest threats to B2B customer retention, how it impacts repeat purchase behaviour, and what wholesale brands can do to remove it…
Why friction prevents repeat orders in B2B eCommerce
B2B buying is relatively straightforward, but wholesale brands need to begin by understanding their buyers.
Customers are often ordering under pressure, considering multiple suppliers, managing internal approval processes, and tied to tight deadlines.
Unlike B2C (Business-to-Consumer), B2B purchasing is rarely about impulse or inspiration. It’s about restocking, replenishment, and reliability.
When friction appears in the buying experience (like confusing logins, missing/ incorrect pricing, clunky navigation, or slow reordering), customers don’t always make this known by complaining. They simply stop ordering.
One of the biggest challenges with B2B customer retention is that churn is often quiet. Buyers may revert to ordering via reps, email, or phone, switch suppliers for a platform that’s easier to use, or slowly reduce order frequency and disappear.
All of these areas directly impact repeat orders and long-term revenue.
What prevents repeat ordering in B2B eCommerce?
Friction that leads to B2B customer churn is not always about one big thing - it’s often a combination of small issues and obstacles that build over time.
Five common friction points for customers in B2B eCommerce include:
- Having to search for the same products every time they order
- Lack of visibility or clarity around account-specific pricing (until checkout, if they make it that far!)
- Inconsistent pricing between the sales team and the online store - for example, discounts or special rates not being applied correctly
- Not having easy access to previous orders or invoices
- Limited order times/ requiring manual intervention rather than 24/7 self-service ordering
While these may seem like minor challenges in isolation, they cause frustration when they occur throughout the overall buying experience. When buying feels slow or uncertain, confidence drops - and loyalty suffers as a result.
How to drive B2B customer loyalty and repeat orders
When buyers know they can log in, see the right products at the right prices, and place an order in minutes, your platform becomes an integral part of their routine.
By removing points of friction, you’ll start to see increased order frequency and larger order values over time as repeat purchase rates increase.
You’ll quickly find that empowered, confident customers begin placing orders on their terms, in their own time - without needing additional support. This reduces reliance on your sales team, allowing them to spend time and energy on more value-adding tasks, like scaling the business.
And, most importantly, this creates stickiness. Once a buyer builds your ordering process into their workflows, switching suppliers feels risky. As soon as you simplify processes and empower buyers, you become an invaluable partner rather than a generic supplier.
This is when repeat purchase behaviour begins to compound.
How to increase repeat ordering from B2B customers
If you want to get repeat orders in B2B eCommerce, start by optimising for reordering - not first-time browsing. As we’ve established, nurturing existing customers costs less time and energy than acquiring new ones.
Here are three simple tips you can leverage to increase B2B repeat ordering:
1. Prioritise saved baskets and shopping lists
Most wholesale buyers reorder the same products again and again. Creating saved baskets and shopping lists allows customers to reorder in a few clicks, saving time on each purchase.
The less thinking required, the more likely customers are to return.
This includes ensuring that access to previous orders is simple. Order history shouldn’t just be a record - it should be a shortcut. Allow buyers to quickly view past orders, duplicate them, and make small adjustments.
This option also reduces the risk of errors, as they are simply bulk ordering based on previous orders, rather than starting from scratch each time.
These orders have already been signed off internally in the past, meaning the approval process will be straightforward for all future orders, too.
2. Show account-specific pricing upfront
Few things damage B2B customer retention faster than pricing confusion.
Wholesale buyers want clarity and consistency. If prices only appear at checkout, or at any point differ from what their sales rep has quoted, trust will rapidly dissipate.
Account-specific pricing shown clearly throughout the buying journey builds confidence and encourages repeat purchases. This is especially important for newer customers who are still building faith in your ordering platform.
Use a feature like SparkLayer’s Customer Groups to build out bespoke price lists. This ensures each segment of customers sees the pricing most relevant to them, from logging in to checking out.
You can use this tool to build out specific incentives or promotions, as well as relationship-based pricing. For example, you may offer some customers a lower price as a thank you for ordering with you multiple times.
3. Support bulk ordering and order rules
Another great way to use the Customer Groups tool is by building out order rules for each segment of buyers.
This can include establishing minimum order quantities to encourage bigger purchases, tiered pricing to incentivise orders, and pack sizing for operational efficiency.
By introducing these parameters, you ensure customers can order in a way that matches how they actually buy. When ordering aligns with real-world purchasing behaviour, friction disappears.
Frictionless buying is a retention strategy
B2B customer retention strategies don’t always need loyalty schemes or incentives. Often, the most effective way to increase repeat orders is simply to make buying from you easier than anywhere else.
When your eCommerce experience saves customers time, reduces errors, and removes uncertainty, retention follows.