The B2B Customer Journey Needs to Change: How to Reach Modern Ecommerce Buyers

If you’re excited about business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce, you’ve got good reasons. It’s a scalable, cost-efficient route to increasing profits and boosting your brand’s profile. B2B has boomed in recent years, and studies forecast the surge to continue into the 2030s.

It’s no surprise business-to-consumer (B2C) companies want in on the B2B ecommerce action. For many, it’s a promising—and rewarding—endeavor. But ecommerce leaders can’t simply take B2C best practices, apply them to B2B, and expect profits to roll in. 

Understanding the customer journey is crucial.

You need to deeply understand your prospects’ decision-making process—the path they take to becoming customers. And just as importantly: repeat customers. 

Even if you’ve enjoyed success in B2C, it’s time to reshape your customer journey for B2B.

How B2B customer journeys are evolving

The days of B2B sales happening primarily over phone lines and in IRL meetings are on the decline. McKinsey’s 2024 B2B Pulse survey found that ecommerce is rising as a key B2B sales channel. Online ordering accounts for 34% of total B2B revenue at companies that offer ecommerce, overtaking in-person sales for the first time.

Over 70% of B2B buyers are millennials. Millennials grew up online—they led generational shifts from CDs to music-streaming and from Blockbuster to Netflix. As B2B buyers, they expect fast and seamless experiences.

They also expect the personal relevance of B2C shopping: Attention-grabbing calls to action (CTAs) and immersive visuals are great. Features that remember and respond to their business’s unique needs are even better. 

B2B vs. B2C customer journey: Key differences

The B2B and B2C journeys differ significantly. B2C companies target a broad consumer market, while B2B companies focus on a smaller, industry-specific audience. 

In B2B ecommerce, the sales funnel is typically longer and more complex—decisions are made by multiple stakeholders instead of one person making an impulsive purchase. The decision is influenced by risk management and return on investment (ROI) calculations. 

B2C journeys move far faster. Often, a single shopper decides in minutes or days, motivated primarily by emotion or impulse. Average order value (AOV) is significantly lower, which lowers perceived risk and makes the checkout short.

Lastly, the relationship timeline is different. A B2C transaction often ends at delivery, though some customers join a loyalty program or email list. In contrast, a B2B contract is only the beginning of an evolving relationship, involving onboarding, renewals, and expansion over the years.

With today’s B2B ecommerce platforms, brands can operate their DTC and B2B websites from one admin. You can centralize inventory, pricing, and customer data, keeping every sales channel in sync. At the same time, you deliver contract-specific catalogs and self-serve ordering for wholesale buyers alongside your consumer storefront.

B2B Storefront Contextualization for Blended Stores

Reshape your B2B sales process with customer journey mapping

Customer journey maps can help you better understand today’s B2B decision-makers. Similar to how a product roadmap outlines a product’s development, this form of mapping guides you through every stage of the customer cycle.

What is customer journey mapping?

Customer journey mapping breaks down a customer’s path as they interact with a business and expresses it visually. It helps businesses better understand the journey a prospect takes during the B2B buying process, including the key steps toward becoming a customer. 

Benefits of creating a customer journey map

• A customer journey map helps businesses identify pain points and opportunities to improve the customer experience. 
• It provides a clear understanding of the customer’s needs, behaviors, and motivations.
• It can help businesses optimize their marketing strategies, improve customer retention, and increase customer satisfaction.

How to create a customer journey map

1. Build data-driven buyer personas

Create detailed buyer personas to understand who your ideal buyer is and what they experience when seeking your product or service. Start by identifying recent buyers who’ve signed a contract. 

Conduct short interviews with questions like:

• What business challenge or opportunity prompted the search for a new solution?
• How did your team research and discover potential solutions?
• What key criteria guided your team’s purchase decision?
• Which other vendors or solutions did you formally evaluate during the process?
• Ultimately, why did your team choose our solution over the alternatives?
• What was the experience like for your team during the onboarding and implementation process?
• What is one thing we could improve in our product or the overall process?

Focus first on your most valuable accounts. Leverage your customer relationship management (CRM) data and sales feedback to map their decision-making process. Understanding the buyers' challenges at each step helps speed up the sales cycle and drive revenue.

2. Understand how buyers interact with your business

Knowing how people navigate your B2B storefront is key to creating a psychologically driven sales flow. If you see plenty of page views but few quote requests, the capability is there, but visitors simply aren’t motivated or ready to advance. 

You can uncover these journeys by:

• Using Google Analytics funnel exploration reports to choose a specific path to explore 
• Reviewing a path exploration report to look into the browser’s journey 
• Installing a heatmap tool like Session Recording & Replays to record and analyze visitor sessions 

Search for patterns that indicate friction in the buying journey. For instance, are multiple stakeholders from the same company viewing your solutions but failing to convert on a demo request form? 

Discover which assets, like white papers or webinars, are the most common first step for new accounts. This confirms that the initial awareness stage in B2B is about providing potential buyers with the information they need to build a case internally. 

3. Support the customer journey with data 

One of the most important aspects in B2B is the strength of your relationship with each account. Analyzing first-party data reveals what those buyers value most, so you can deliver the content, B2B products, and offers that match their priorities. 

If a prospect isn’t ready, they won’t move, and even highly motivated stakeholders can stall when friction appears. Leverage your existing account data, web analytics, CRM fields, and purchase history to adapt the storefront each time a logged-in buyer returns. 

Practical ways to apply that data include:

• Self-service tools for order tracking, invoice downloads, and return merchandise authorizations (RMAs)
• Saved requisition lists or wish lists for recurring orders
• Account-specific product recommendations and contract pricing
• Persistent, multi-user shopping carts for teams to build orders collaboratively
• Custom collection pages keyed to each buyer’s industry or project phase

For instance, an industrial supplier could promote safety equipment bundles to construction accounts while showing maintenance supply assortments to facility management buyers.

Validate with controlled tests. After mapping the journey, test one variable at a time:

• Compare a narrative welcome email vs. a pricing update email for new account signups.
• A/B test remarketing ads that point to thought leadership content versus direct quote requests.
• Alternate weekly storytelling newsletters with more transactional CTAs to see which drives higher reorder frequency.

Platforms like Klaviyo can run these experiments, and personalization engines (e.g., Nosto) plug into Shopify to scale one-to-one experiences without juggling sparse data.

Advanced journey mapping strategies for 2025

B2B journeys are not linear funnels. They’re data-rich and dynamic, and involve too many moving parts for basic mapping. Effective mapping starts with a disciplined approach, where each persona’s priorities, objections, and preferred touchpoints become part of your journey model.

Multi-stakeholder mapping

B2B deals typically involve about 13 stakeholders across multiple departments, according to Forrester. Those voices need to align, or the deal will stall—which is the case for 86% of B2B purchases.

To keep these committees moving forward:

• Inventory every role early. List buyers, technical evaluators, everyday users, legal, security, and finance. Note each role’s success metric, such as ROI, uptime, user adoption, and risk.
• Align proof to priorities. Provide total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) calculators for finance, security architecture briefs for IT, and pilot sandboxes for end-users. Enabling everyone at once prevents one stakeholder from slowing down the entire group. 
• Create engagement across channels. Sequence outreach so each role receives its asset in the channel they favor. For example, white papers via email for engineers and interactive demos via a shared Teams workspace for operators.
• Track intent signals. Track who opens, forwards, or revisits assets. A spike in cross-role activity suggests buy-in, while silence signals stall points that require live support.

If you stay proactive when buyers disagree early, you can resolve friction before it becomes a no-decision outcome.

Touchpoints vs. activation points

Most teams consider every email open, ad click, or page view a touchpoint. But only some of those interactions influence buyers to make a purchase. The decision moments, known as activation points, are the actions that drive momentum. 

• Touchpoint: Any interaction, like an ad impression, webinar, support chat, or pricing-page view
• Activation point: A high-intent action like submitting technical requirements or scheduling a security review 

Define activation points for each persona and stage. Then, create those events as goals in GA4 or your customer data platform (CDP). Build a workflow with Shopify Flow that monitors these activation events, like a draft order being created. Flow can then:

• Tag the account as high-intent
• Notify the assigned rep in Slack
• Email the buyer tailored content

This allows your team to act quickly on high-intent signals and deliver a role-aware follow-up to buying teams. 

How to conduct a customer journey analysis to improve sales

Once you’ve identified key customer segments and potential action plans, the next step is data analytics. Here’s where to start:

Gather data from heat maps, Google Analytics, and other sources

• Use data-driven approaches to gain deeper insights into customer behavior and interaction patterns.
• Heat maps and Google Analytics provide valuable data on user demographics, successful lead-generation channels, and popular pages. 

Collect customer feedback through reviews, surveys, and interviews

• Analyzing client reviews is an effective way to understand the buying journey and uncover pain points or opportunities. 
• Conducting user surveys helps gather feedback on specific touchpoints.
• Conducting in-depth client interviews helps you learn their motivations, emotions, and challenges with your product or service. Perhaps your newsletter has been especially compelling for converting high-value customers lately—or perhaps customers would purchase more frequently if you introduced certain deals not currently available. 

Identify bottlenecks and pain points

Identify bottlenecks in the customer journey that are creating difficulty or pain points. You may consider transitioning to an omnichannel model for a smoother, seamless customer journey.

Look out for these common pain points in the B2B customer experience:

• Seller-free sales
• Complex buying processes
• Lack of engaging and accessible content
• Lack of trust between businesses
• Order-fulfillment and tracking woes
• Unclear product and pricing information

Measure and improve the customer journey

Now that you’ve gathered feedback and data, it’s time to put it into action. This stage is an ongoing process—here’s what to keep in mind: 

KPIs for each customer journey stage

Track specific metrics that align with your business goals at each stage of the journey. Keep in mind key performance indicators (KPIs) for B2B ecommerce:

• Awareness: Website traffic, social media reach, impressions
• Consideration: Email newsletter signups, product page views, add to carts
• Conversion: Conversion rate, AOV, cart abandonment rate
• Retention: Repeat customer rate, customer lifetime value (CLV), churn rate
• Advocacy: Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer reviews, referral rate

Case study: Improved retention through journey optimization

Snyder Performance Engineering, an automotive aftermarket parts manufacturer, hit a wall with their growth. 

The company relied on manual ordering processes that involved phone calls and emails. This created a bottleneck, and a previous attempt at an ecommerce platform was clunky and failed to integrate with their back-office systems for inventory and pricing.

Snyder moved to Shopify B2B, creating a self-serve customer portal for wholesale buyers. The platform provided B2B-specific features out of the box and integrated seamlessly with existing QuickBooks and ShipStation software, automating fulfillment and syncing real-time data.

After optimizing the order process, Snyder freed up 25% of their administrative time and saw a 40% increase in average customer spend. The new, user-friendly system allowed customers to place orders more easily, leading to higher sales, and enabled the company to focus on growth over operational issues. 

👉Read Snyder Performance Engineering’s story.

The right B2B ecommerce software improves customer journeys

Choosing the right B2B ecommerce platform can be tricky. Remember: Today’s ecommerce buyers prioritize ease of use and familiarity. As you evaluate options, consider these factors: 

Tailor wholesale buying 

Your buyers likely come from all over the world and have a wide range of needs: different markets, channels, and expectations. Shopify helps each one feel right at home—and presents the pricing, currency, payment, and shipping options that are best for them.

Our customized dashboards make it easy to manage accounts, track orders, and reorder with one tap. You also get access to unlimited catalogs to tailor pricing and product availability through our intuitive admin interface or APIs.

Personalize storefronts

Whether your business is a B2B-B2C hybrid or fully B2B, Shopify gives you the tools to build storefront experiences that keep your customers coming back. We help you synthesize your customer data into bespoke marketing and sales strategies, including promotional messaging and section blocks. 

Offer self-serve purchasing

Buyers want to handle their own purchasing experience—but this doesn’t mean you have to distance yourself from them. Self-serve options can even strengthen your customer relationships. 

For example, enable Shopify’s B2B customer accounts to display negotiated pricing, saved requisition lists, and quick reorder buttons the moment a buyer logs in.

When Carrier migrated to Shopify, they developed closer relationships with customers via extensive workshops with business units to better understand their target audience. Shopify then helped design a roadmapping process to put those insights into action.

Shopify’s AI support tech facilitates instant customer connection. Out of the box, Shopify Inbox answers customer questions and converts sales in real time. For more advanced requests, our automated ticketing systems sort requests and fast-track customers to the proper support agents.

Easy customer retention

Shopify’s ease of use empowers your sales reps to strengthen relationships with buyers. We give your reps the tools to make those relationships as valuable as possible: simple reordering and up-to-date product, pricing, customer, and order data. Eliminate manual hours and strategically connect with buyers at the right moments to get deals done. 

Building loyalty and advocacy in the post-purchase stage

B2B relationships never end after the deal closes—it’s actually where they start. But just like DTC consumers, more than half of B2B decision-makers will switch suppliers if the digital experience feels disjointed or clunky. 

Here are some ways to keep B2B buyers satisfied:

• Proactive onboarding: Create resource hubs inside customer accounts. Provide implementation checklists, API docs, and role-based video tutorials. Send gentle reminders after 15 days of inactivity. 
• Contract-aware pricing: Let buyers replenish stock with one click using negotiated SKUs. This cuts PO cycles and keeps you front of mind when stock runs low. 
• Community support: Create a private Slack Connect channel where partners can quickly reach you for questions. 
• Advocacy programs: Promote a referral program with an app like Genius Referrals. Incentivize advocates with extended payment terms, beta access, or credits for every qualified referral. 

Overall, you’ll want to show buyers you’re a partner in their mission. Forrester’s 2024 CX Index shows these “customer-obsessed” brands experience 51% higher retention than everyone else.

Dermalogica Canada demonstrates this with Shopify B2B. After moving their wholesale portal to Shopify and adding loyalty-tier pricing, saved cards, and one-click reorders, the brand cut the average gap between purchases from 47 days to 11. Conversion also climbed from 74% to 92%, and 75% of buyers now rate the experience 4 out of 5 or higher.

👉 Read Dermalogica Canada’s story. 

Tomorrow’s sales today 

B2B commerce has changed significantly over the past few years, but the customer-sales team relationship remains vital. Customers want to self-serve, and the best sales reps need to be multiple steps ahead, ready for the next restock or the next new product that will resonate with their clients.

Shopify is the only platform that can deliver these intuitive buying experiences. We’re flexible, easy to use, and ready to launch your customer journey plans into action.