Ecommerce is all about conversion rates. So is B2B ecommerce. You want your website to attract visitors, and to convert visitors into customers. Now, to attract visitors there are many tools such as SEO, Adwords, social media and many more. Tools that help you to get people to visit your website.
But once they are on your website, you want to convert them into customers, people (or companies) that actually buy your products. That's where Cart2Quote comes in.
We help you to improve your conversion rates.

Conversion rates for B2B ecommerce

First, when we talk about conversion rates, this is what we mean: the percentage of visitors on your website that actually buy something. So, if out of 100 visitors 2 people become your customer, your website's conversion rate would be 2%.
Now, it's hard to say whether your website is performing well, compared with 'the industry' or your competitors. For to make a fair comparison, you should be able to compare 'apples with apples', which for online B2B websites is a hard thing to do. Really the only one you can compare with is yourself, your own website. That is why it is really important to (continually) run tests on your website, always looking for ways to improve your conversion rates. What color button works best, what call-to-action text works best, what helps you to be more successful turning visitors into customers?

4 Unique ways to submit quotes in the front-end

Add Quote functionality to lower the threshold

One of the proven ways to improve conversion rates for B2B e-commerce is to add a "quotation functionality" to your website. For most websites that means that, besides the famous 'add to cart' button, you add an 'add to quote' button. So, instead of leaving your visitor with only two options (to buy or not to buy) you now simply add a third option, with a much lower threshold; ask for a custom price. Your visitors can now enter into a conversation without having to buy directly. The Cart2Quote extension for Magento adds CRM functionality with this, so you can actually communicate with your future customer, all from your existing website backend.

Quick Quote Form improvements

The Cart2Quote module is always being improved. Our team is always figuring out how to serve you better and how we can help you to improve your conversion rates. Something that we have been working on lately is the 'Quick Quote Form'. When your customer is on the product page and he chooses a product that he wants a quote for, he now sees a beautifully designed pop-up form with the product image, the title, any chosen options and quantities. We really made an effort to work on the design here because we do believe it's true that 'better design leads to better conversion'. We have made sure that this works for all Magento product types; simple, configurable, bundle, group, virtual and downloadable.
This functionality works great for the Default and RWD related themes and can simply be enabled in the backend (Cart2Quote > Advanced > Enable Quick Quote) to your liking.

When you enable Quick Quote, your customer instantly sees a well-designed pop-up with all specs, and a quote form he can simply fill out to receive a custom price within minutes! Here's how that looks:

Choose: Quick Quote, ajax or none.

One of the things we find important at Cart2Quote is that you should always be in control of your own website. So, you decide what you show. You can either show the Quick Quote pop-up, including the form, or not. You can also choose to simply show your customer only an 'ajax pop-up' (see image below), showing just the product and specs, but not a form. Or, another option, after your customer clicked the 'add to quote' button, send him directly to the Quote page. Again, you test, you choose, you decide when leads to higher conversion rates.

Need your Magento platform customized? We help!

Add Quotation Functionality and improve your conversion rates

Try Cart2Quote for yourself and discover how it helps you to lower the threshold for your visitors and start converting quote request into orders, all from your existing Magento backend.

To use the newly designed quote forms, please update your Cart2Quote software to version 5.3.0. or later and note that the Quick Quote functionality is available for the Business edition of Cart2Quote or higher.

Click here to start your free trial or See the form in action.

When many different customers ask the same question, you know you have got to change something. And that is what we did.

As we already mentioned in our release notes, it is now possible to work with so-called "fake products". Another way of putting this is 'creating Magento products on-the-fly'.
Many customers were waiting for a solution that would save them time, and we're pleased to announce we have created just the thing that was needed!

Why create a product on the fly?

Most B2B e-commerce companies have a large number of products on their websites. For Magento there are different type of products to choose from: simple, grouped, configurable, bundle, you name it. Of course, most things customers will want are directly available on the website.

However, sometimes customers would need something special. A product that is very similar to what you have but maybe in a different colour, different size or with a few other specs. Something you can still supply but it is not a standard or even an existing product, let alone an available SKU on your site!

Let's start with a simple example to show why you could possibly need to create Magento products on-the-fly.

Here's a simple request your customer might do: you sell 16GB memory cards but your customer requires 32GB memory cards:

What is a fake product in Magento?

Sticking with this example, when your customer has sent the quote request, it's your turn to send him a quote! But what if the 32GB memory card is not something you have as a standard product? You can supply it, for sure, but it would not make sense to create a whole new Magento product just to send a quote, right? Well, here's where 'fake products' come in handy!

A fake product is a new standard option within Cart2Quote (versions 1.7+) you can use to quickly create a new product for quotation. No need to type in all the data you might never use again. No need to make a whole new product for your database. The fake product allows you to make a product 'on-the-fly', quick and easy', all from within your quotation process.
Simply click 'Add Custom Product' on top of the products section and add only the necessary information.

Want to get started?

Try out a demo for free

So, how does it work?

It is really a quite simple process. Typically, it would look something ike this:

• Your customer requests a non-standard product (either through your website, via email or phone)
• You initiate a new quote
• In the product section, click "add custom product"
• Add information such as Name, Description, SKU, price and, when needed, an image.
• Send the quote to your customer, from your existing Magento / Cart2Quote backend
• Your customer receives the quote, is happy and wants to buy.
• He clicks "proceed to checkout" and finalizes the order
• You receive the order and add any details and process it
• You ship the products, send the invoice and receive the payment.

Make Magento a perfect fit for your business? Start here!

What's in it for you?

This new 'fake products' solution was built to make the quotation process even easier. The main thing you save is time. There is now no need to create a quote in, let's say' Word or so, neither do you need to create a brand new product. Creating this product on-the-fly does the trick. You save minutes per quote, or maybe even hours per day!

Need your Magento platform customized? We help!

Requirements

To use this new feature, Cart2Quote 1.7 or newer is required.

Want to find out what our Cart2Quote’s module for Magento 2 is capable of?

Try out a demo for free

Rather schedule a 30 minutes walkthrough instead?

Schedule a free 30 minutes walkthrough

What can we expect for B2B ecommerce in 2016?

Every year, Forrester presents numerous reports about sales, marketing and ecommere. Below are four predictions for 2016 we think are important for B2B ecommerce companies. What changes do you need to embrace and incorporate to be on top of the game in the 'age of the customer'?

1 - Time to invest in B2B e-commerce

Though up till now B2B has held on to other, more traditional sales channels than online, Forrester analysts say that manufacturers and wholesalers will have a combined 30% of spending on e-commerce platforms and solution, compared with a 28% share by B2C online retailers. Business-to-business companies are seen to start investing more money in online solutions such as e-commerce platforms, content management systems, order and product management systems
Of course, it is important to make a choice: does your new e-commerce platform have to fit seamlessly into your existing business processes or is e-commerce a game-changer and do you need to redesign your business operations?

What we have seen is that most B2B companies choose the former: a new e-commerce platform should be robust yet adaptable to existing operations. Exactly that is the main reason for many to choose to invest in a Magento e-commerce platform. And while a new e-commerce platform always requires an initial investment, Magento is a very affordable and flexible platform to use. Being a complete open source e-commerce platform, Magento also offers many external extensions to make it work even better for business-to-business. For example, Cart2Quote adds a quotation workaround to your web shop, making Magento a whole lot more B2B proof!

Make Magento a perfect fit for your business? Start here!

2 - B2B e-commerce going mobile

A couple of interesting numbers: According to Shopify, mobile traffic volume is now 50.3%, even more than computer traffic! Also, Forresters says 52% of B2B buyers do research on their phone. So, whether they buy online with their phones or not, that is still a huge number to deal with!

Naturally, this begs a few questions: Is your e-commerce website mobile proof? How is the customer experience? Does it look good, work good, does it offer what your visitors expect?
To be able to serve your customers well you will, at least, need an e-commerce platform that can handle 'mobile' well. An important keyword nowadays is 'responsive'. This simply means that your web shop continues to look good and work well, no matter what type of screen you use. So, whether you are on a 27" computer, a phone, a tablet or another device, your website needs to be able to resize automatically and offer a perfect user experience.

Magento, as an e-commerce platform, is fully responsive. Depending on the theme you use, your web shop will be looking and working great, no matter what device is used to visit it. As said before, Magento is often complemented by some external modules to make it a perfect fit for businesses. Cart2Quote, as the preferred quotation module for Magento, is also fully scalable and responsive.
Your B2B visitors can enjoy a great user experience when you use Magento and Cart2Quote combined!

Want to get started? Try Cart2Quote for free!

3 - Multichannel is the key

So, having your great eCommerce website is a must. However, is it enough? No. Buyers seldom visit just one website, or even multiple websites, to make their choice. Big online marketplaces, such as Amazon, are becoming a vital place when it comes to the online presence for B2B sellers. In a recent survey, 60% of B2B companies reported that their customers spend more overall with an omnichannel sales strategy. That is huge! So, besides having your responsive and great working e-commerce platform, we recommend you would also invest time and money in your (online) presence elsewhere!

Check our Cart2Quote’s Supplier Bidding Tool here

Also, surveys say that customers who buy from you both offline and online are more likely to try your new products and become your repeat customers over the long term.
Following a study by the Aberdeen Group called “Steps to Success In B2B eCommerce,” companies should integrate their B2B eCommerce platforms with their existing back office systems. Doing so would help companies to include data like inventory levels, customer-specific pricing, and order history on their websites. B2B buyers need this kind of information to make purchase decisions. According to Aberdeen, having this information synced will see visitor-to-buyer conversion rates of over 20% and an 8.3% reduction in shopping cart abandonment. Not only that, but research also shows more annual revenue, cross-sell and upsell revenue, and return on marketing investments. Plenty of reasons to integrate your eCommerce platform with your back office systems.

Need your Magento platform customized? We help!

4 - Content is critical

B2B buyers need information, details, backgrounds, and choices! Use your eCommerce platform not only as a sales channel, but use the opportunity to inform and educate your visitors. Show them you are the specialist, that your company is reliable and able to answer any questions they might have.
Have you thought about adding a blog to your website? A blog is a perfect tool to educate and explain more about your products, your company, your uniqueness. And what about company video's? Short clips about who you are, what you sell, your USP's? Not only do blogs and video's help your visitors to make a choice, they also help you with your SEO, making you score better in Google.

Exactly because customers, and especially B2B buyers, need information, Cart2Quote has been updated with even more CRM (customer relationship management) functionalities. When visitors request a quote there is plenty of space to add questions and remarks, opening up a conversation, all within your existing Magento backend.

Cart2Quote helps you to be 2016 proof

Cart2Quote was birthed out of a desire to help B2B companies to 'do online business well'. Adding a quotation functionality is a 'must' for your B2B eCommerce platform, but we can help you to achieve even more!
Please contact us when you want us to customize your Magento website.

Magento 2 B2B Modules

Wednesday 17 November 2015 Magento 2.0 was launched as 'the next generation open source digital commerce platform'.

Since the official launch in 2008, Magento has been a leading e-commerce platform for B2C and B2B companies worldwide. From their 1.0 version until the latest 1.9 updates, Magento has been developed and improved continually. Now with this new 2.0 launch, things really drastically change. All for the better.

Get Cart2Quote 2

Or

Get Not2Order 2

Cart2Quote for Magento 2

We're happy, and a tad proud, to say that we're the only Quotation Module featured in the Connect Store for Magento 2.

Of course, with the launch of a whole new platform, we had to adjust our Quote Module as well. We left a few features out and added some new features based on your input. Here's a list of the main features for the new Magento 2 Cart2Quote module:

• Create Quotes - via the Magento backend and Front-end
• Add to Quote Buttons - on product pages and category pages
• Product types - Works for all Magento product types, except for bundled products.
• Custom options - Handles Magento custom options seamless
• Convert quote to order - From your existing Magento backend
• Customer dashboard - Give your customers their own overview
• Transactional emails - Standard or customized quotation emails
• Initiate from backend - Create and send proposals from your Magento backend
• Shipping prices - Include shipping prices in your proposal
• Add and modify quote requests - via Magento native product selector box
• Easier theme integration - (active & passive rendering)
• Reminder and Expiry Quote E-mails - Manually adjustable email templates
• Full support for Magento price rules - Shopping cart & Catalog
• Quote Versioning - Edit proposal and keep track of the changes
• SOAP & REST API support - Anything is possible
• CRM system - Discuss quotes and negotiate proposals online with customers

One thing that, compared to the Cart2Quote Starter Edition for the Magento 1.x series, is lacking, is a PDF quote creator. However, in the near future, we will launch a Free Version, as well as the Business, Enterprise and Corporate Version for the Cart2Quote Quotation Module for Magento 2

If you have any questions about the Starter Edition for Magento 2, then please contact our support team or order Cart2Quote for Magento 2 here.

Get Cart2Quote 2

Not2Order for Magento 2

Many of our customers also use the Not2Order extension to either hide order buttons, hide prices or hide both. With the launch of Magento 2, we also launched a new version of Not2Order.

We decided to make things easier so we:

• Added Groups as a standard function, making it possible to work with Magento's grouped products;
• Added 'Hide Order References', so you can choose to make the whole cart and all sales options invisible (and thus have a 'catalog-only mode';
• Made it possible to enable Not2Order for the whole shop, though you can still enable/disable it per product.

Not2Order for Magento works seamless with both Cart2Quote and Magento 2, making it an ideal combination for B2B e-commerce.

Read more about the new features of Magento 2.0 in this blogpost. Here, we focus on the new Cart2Quote products for Magento 2

Would you like to know more or start straight away? 

Get Not2Order 2

Magento Supplier Bidding Tool

Cart2Quote is the world’s leading Magento Quotation Module. In our sales pitch, we obviously stress the fact that you add a whole new sales channel to your website, resulting in more sales. Not only that, Cart2Quote enables communicating and even negotiating with your customers. We feel, and the response we get underlines that, that using Cart2Quote for your Magento B2B webshop, really results in win-win situations for both you as the seller as for your customers.
But what about your suppliers? Can make Cart2Quote getting a price from them easier too? That would make the circle round!

Learn more about the new supplier bidding tool for Magento and how that enables you to get prices from your (multiple) suppliers before you send out quotes.

Magento and your suppliers

First, let's clarify something. There are already quite a few modules for Magento out there that enable online auctioning. This is not what we are looking at here. We take a thorough look at the buying and selling process from a B2B company's perspective.
"Before we sell, we send a proposal. But before we can send a proposal we need to know what prices our suppliers will charge us."

Quotes, Proposals and Orders are easy

Cart2Quote is mainly known for the powerful way it enables web shop owners to handle quote requests.
Next to the "add to cart" button customers will now find an "add to quote" button. That way prospects can simply ask for a quote from you, the web shop owner. You can handle these quote requests from your existing Magento backend;

Early Adopter Offer

The Supplier Bidding Tool is a new and extra add-on for Cart2Quote. Early adopters of this add-on can purchase this module for a reduced price of € 175*. A minimum of Cart2Quote Business Edition is required. More information on the Magento Supplier Bidding tool can be found here: Magento Supplier Bidding

*This offer is valid until December 31th 2015

Magento Request Quote Notification - Saving Your Sales Reps Time

At Cart2Quote, we’re always looking to improve our products so how we can enable our customers to “save time and create better price proposals”. Our focus is always twofold; you and your customer.
When we keep your customers in mind, we know it is important to enable them to request a quote fast and simple. Second, we want it to be easy for you as shop-owner to respond with a proposal. In an earlier blog we have explained how we worked hard on how we bring Magento, quotations and CRM together. In this blog we focus more on the first thing you might face: how do you know your customer requested a quote?

In our latest release (5.2.0) we have added the following features to our Magento module:

Email notifications

You can now choose who will receive what kind of notification when a customer sends a quote request. From your backend you can choose to receive the same email (template) your customer receives: “thank you for your request, we will get back to you soon”. Very similar to the standard way Magento handles order notifications. However, you would still need to go to your backend and find the request before you could start working on a proposal.
In the new release, we have added the option to “send quote e-mail notification” to your sales rep.

When you choose this option you will receive this email in your inbox:

Simply clicking on the link will bring you straight to your backend, directly into the quote.
Talking about saving you time!
This way you can start making the proposal within seconds after you received the e-mail notification. Why not surprise your customer and send a proposal within a few minutes!

Sales Representatives Roles and Assignments

In Cart2Quote you have been able to assign roles to people, to assign a sales rep that will 'stick' to a customer and auto-assign quote requests to people with certain roles. In the example image below that would be the "administrators".
Now, when you look at the image below you see "Rolf van der Kaaden" added to the list "Select available Sales Representatives". So, in this example Rolf is not an administrator for we do not want him to have access in the backend to certain data. However, we do want Rolf to be able to handle quote requests.

This option gives more flexibility to your organization: you are sure to only give people access to data that you want to be available.
To make sure you are indeed in full control, within your assigning of roles section (system - permission - roles) you can now (un)check options within the Cart2Quote functionalities for certain roles.
That can be seen in this last image here:

This functionality will make it easier for you as shopowner keep control over "who has access to what" and to auto-assign quotes, making sure that sales reps can get straight to work when a request comes in. Again, a great time saver!

Read more about this release here.

The B2B market is waking up to Quote to Cash solutions. Only recently Steelbrick, built on the Salesforce App Cloud, was in the news when they announced a $48 million Series C round. Apptus, a similar company, snared $108 million in September.

Huge numbers, confirming that the part of the sales cycle that handles quotes is indeed crucial to B2B companies. Do quotation well and thrive.

Online Quote to Cash Solutions?

The companies named above have some beautiful solutions. SteelBrick is built 100% on Salesforce and helps companies by automating quoting, contracting, and billing processes with their Quote-to-Cash product suite. This helps both cutting costs and winning time, two of the most important things for B2B companies! Also, Apptus combines big data with predictive analysis and real-time decisioning,ideal for your eCommerce platform. It personalizes product assortments across all screen real-estate and marketing campaigns, delivering great customer experiences.

Now, more specifically, what about B2B companies that have embraced Magento as their online platform? Are there any standard quote to cash solutions? Any Magento modules that are affordable yet robust enough to indeed convert quotes into cash?

Let’s have a look at some of the features that we think are needed for a Magento Quote To Cash solution to really make B2B webshops work better.

Want to get started? Try Cart2Quote for free!

Standard Quote To Cash Cycle

The normal lifecycle of converting quotes to orders looks like this:
Price - Proposal - Negotiation and Approval - Order handling - Invoicing - Payment

Let’s take these steps and see how this would work in an online environment, more specifically a Magento webshop.

Step 1 - Price

Most Magento webshops do this well. However, we do see a difference between B2C and B2B webshops. Most B2C webshops would be very upfront with their prices, they want to sell to anyone who pays. On the other hand, many B2B webshops have different pricing policies. Some would use extensions such as Not2Order to hide prices for non-registered users. Some would be great with tier pricing. Yet others would rather not be upfront with any price and only give custom price proposals. This, of course, is the starting point for the quote to cash cycle.

This is also where problems arise. Magento webshops offer a great workaround when it comes to buying. “Add to cart - finish your order - pay here - receive the product”. All good and fine, but not when you have a B2B company, not when you want to offer the option of custom quotation.
Separate Magento extensions such as Cart2Quote are the solution for this. Besides the “add to cart” button, the option of “add to quote” is given. Choosing this option enables your customers to ask for a custom quote. It also enables you to answer with, step two, a sharp proposal.

Step 2 - Proposal

Step 3 - Negotiation and Approval

To have a successful Quote to Cash lifecycle the negotiation and approval part is key. Doing business online, this means that the CRM has to be in order. Customer Relationship Management. The Cart2Quote extension for Magento webshops makes two-way communication possible. Per customer a communication thread is made online, enabling you and your customer to finalize the negotiation.
All through this process much communication is done through extended transactional emails; fast, clear and customizable.
When your customer is happy with the proposal it’s merely one click to indeed convert the quote into an order. Again, all within the standard Magento back-end.
So, after your proposal is approved step number four, the order handling, can start.

Step 4 - Order Handling

Normally this step is more of an offline process. Of course, you might need to order goods from your supplier, or assemble parts to create 1 final product. What we mean is that this is not normally part of your Magento webshop process, though it might be linked with an API to your stock or buying process. Magento offers multiple professional extensions that enable you to link your software to your webshop.
However, it’s important to still keep your customer up to date; send out emails regularly, telling him about the status of his order. Again, this can be done through Magento’s standard transactional emails.

Step 5 - Invoicing

Depending on your policy, the invoice is either sent before the order is taken into production or after the product has been sent. Magento handles invoicing nice enough, yet many B2B companies choose to use other (cloud based) solutions for their books. Either way, it’s crucial to have your invoice say the same as your proposal! Cart2Quotes makes sure the prices on the final invoice are the ones that are used in the approved proposal. If you don’t do this well, step 6, receiving the payment, might end up being difficult.

Step 6 - Payment

Similar to step 5, this is often done outside of the Magento back-end. All we want to add here is that aftersales is powerful, also for B2B online business. Send an email after a few days, asking if everything went to your customer’s satisfaction. Use Magento’s transactional emails for this, easy but so good!

Why Cart2Quote is great for your Quote To Cash Cycle

We have already mentioned it before. Cart2Quote is a Magento extension that adds robust quotation functionality to your webshop. Here’s a quick overview of how Cart2Quote enables you to take the six ‘quote-to-cash-steps’:

Step 1: Price. Either hide or show the prices, hide or show the “add to cart” and/or “add to quote” button. You are in control; show or hide whatever you prefer, per product or customer group!

Step 2: Proposal. Send out either standard proposals through automated transactional emails or personalized proposals with just a few clicks.

Step 3: Negotiation and Approval. Enable your customer to respond; he can either accept or reject your proposal and communicate through your Magento platform. Once accepted, convert your proposal into a standard Magento order!

Step 4: Order Handling. Magento has a standard process with different order statuses, enabling you to keep track of what’s happening once the product is being shipped. Use the transactional emails well!

Step 5: Invoicing. Cart2Quote makes sure that your approved price is on the invoice as well.

Step 6: Payment. Awesome, your quote is converted to cash, time to make sure the money comes in!

Let’s close this blog with some bullet points that make clear why you could really use C2Q to convert quotes into cash through your webshop:

Start today!

Learn more about hiding prices in Magento or try the Magento Quotation Module for free

Hide prices in Magento

In your webshop you want to decide who to show prices. You want to decide who can order products.
You might want to show all prices, all the time to every visitor. Or not.
Maybe you want to be very specific about who sees which prices and who orders which products..

Learn how Not2Order helps you to be in control over the price policy of your Magento webshop.

Introduction

Not2Order is a Magento module, specifically designed to let you be in control of the visibility of prices and orderability of your catalog items. Developed by Cart2Quote (more about that later) it can be used in combination with a request for quote functionality or as a standalone extension in Magento shops.

Hide Prices, Hide Order Buttons?

Different websites have different price policies. That’s obvious. Most business-to-consumer (B2C) webshops that sell consumer goods would show all their product prices. They are all about selling as much as they can as fast they can, to whomever they can. However, most business-to-business (B2B) websites would have a completely different way of doing business. Many B2B companies have a certain amount of customers and even different customer groups. Depending on who they are talking to they communicate different prices. Not only that, sometimes it’s impossible to show a price simply because the price is not known yet. The product might need to be specifically configured and the actual price depends on some external factors. Not2Order can hide prices and hide order buttons per product, empowering you to manage orderability and price visibility, either per single product or for the whole catalogue.

Based on Not2Order’s functionalities, we will give you the four most used options for showing product prices and order buttons on webshops:

Want to get started? Try Cart2Quote for free!

Option 1 - Product is orderable and price is visible.

This first option is indeed used the most when it comes to regular webshops. You need no special extensions, any standard Magento webshop handles this just fine. You would use this option when you sell goods that are open for the general public. Anyone with money can buy, you don’t have specific customer groups and whoever pays will receive the products.

The order button (add to cart) is visible, the price is visible, you’re ready to sell!

Option 2 - Product is orderable but price is not visible.

This option is one that is used less than the first, but there might just be a very good reason for doing this. The key thing to remember is that once the product is added to the cart the price will be visible. That means that you’re one step closer to converting this to an actual sale! This option can also be enabled for non-registered users. In other words; you will only see the prices directly when you’re logged in. When you communicate this properly that might be an incentive for your website visitors to create an account and login. This would then lower the threshold to place orders since they have already taken the time to enter into some sort of a relationship with your webshop. Another reason to use this option goes with business policies on Minimum Advertised Prices. Read more on this in our blogpost on MAP’s.

The order button is clearly visible, the price however is not visible directly, only after adding the product to the cart.

Option 3 - Product is not orderable but the price is visible.

Using this option will require a good deal of clarity in your website communication. Why can’t I order this? I like the product, I like the price, now I want to buy! This option is actually interesting for a number of B2B webshops that deal with selected customer groups. Not everyone can order, there needs to be some kind of agreement before business can be done. Showing the price is then some kind of teaser to enter into this relationship. For instance, if you want to order you would need to create an account first. And with creating an account you both agree on certain terms that include prices, discounts, payment, delivery et cetera. Clearly something that most B2B companies care about when business is done offline, and with this functionality the same policy is now taken online.

The price is visible but the order button is not. What’s your call to action?

Option 4 - Product is not orderable and price is not visible.

Using this option means that your products and descriptions are visible, but that’s about it! Your visitors cannot see the price nor place an order. This is quite common when it comes to B2B offline policies and works great when you want to have the same line of thought in your online sales channel. You can now only do business when you have agreed the rules beforehand. Create an account in the webshop and thus agree on the rules by which the game is played. Once you’re logged in you can see prices and order products. This is a great tool for B2B webshops that want to be sure the ‘normal public’ cannot and will not order their goods online. This helps them to protect their customers and the market.

The order button is not visible, neither is the price. Restricted for safety.

These four options all come with Not2Order out of the box. However, there are more options when you combine this with other Magento Modules!

Not2order Groups

This extra add-on helps you to manage price-visibility and order-button-visibility per customer group. Say, your B2B webshop has different types of customers; you might sell to end-users and wholesale customers. With Not2order Groups you can make sure that, e.g. only logged in customers that are classified as ‘resellers’ can see your product prices and order online.

Cart2Quote and the extra options

Not2Order is a Magento extension, developed by Cart2Quote (C2Q). C2Q itself is a top-ranking Magento extension, being the most robust and complete customer quotation module for Magento. For over 6 years C2Q has gained much experience in handling prices and managing orderability in Magento.
In short, C2Q adds a complete Request-for-Quote (RFQ) functionality to B2B webshops. Besides the “add to cart” button, C2Q adds an “add to quote” button. The customer can now ask for a quote, while the webshop owner can manage the RFQ process completely from within the Magento back-end.

Combining Cart2Quote with Not2Order gives you some more interesting options:

Option 5 - Price is not visible, product is not orderable but customer can request a quote.

This helps you to trigger your prospects to take a next step, to engage a bit more before they get prices. So, even though your customer cannot see the price of the product, with a few clicks he can have the price in his mailbox!
The Cart2Quote module enables you to communicate with your customer. All online, all through your Magento back-end. This empowers you to convert your quote proposals into orders.

You protect your market and can still engage prospects to become customers

Option 6 - Price is visible, product is not orderable but customer can request a quote.

This helps you to get a bit more engagement from your potential customers before they can actually buy. Maybe they need to register first? Maybe you need to always customize a price, depending on your stock or your own suppliers? The great thing about this option is that there is still a clear call to action, kickstarting your relationship with a new customer.

You are in control over who becomes your customer

Option 7 - Price is invisible, product is orderable and customer can request a quote.

Perhaps the least used, but still, depending on your (or your supplier’s) Minimum Advertized Price Policy, this might be an interesting option.
The strong thing about Cart2Quote is that a quote request is easily converted to an order. No need to do any extra manual work; simply a mouse-click converts the request into a regular Magento order.

Conclusion

Not2Order is an ideal Magento module to have more options with regards to price visibility and product orderability in Magento webshops. You are enabled to manage this on a product-per-product basis, or, with the Groups extension, to manage this per customer group.

When Not2Order is combined with Cart2Quote there are (at least) 7 good options to engage your prospects, whilst you’re still in charge over who sees what and who can order in your shop. Besides managing visibility and orderability, Cart2Quote adds a “add to quote” button (if you wish). With a complete RFQ functionality you can receive quote requests, make custom proposals and convert these into orders. All from within your existing magento back-end.

Not2Order and Cart2Quote make your Magento webshop more B2B proof.

Want to find out what our Cart2Quote’s module for Magento 2 is capable of?

Try out a demo for free

Rather schedule a 30 minutes walkthrough instead?

Schedule a free 30 minutes walkthrough

Convert online requests into orders

Converting customer quotation requests to orders, our software is facilitating just that. Encouraging visitors to become prospects to become clients. We created a Magento B2B Extension that adds a whole new sales channel to your webshop. A RFQ (request for quote) functionality that enables your visitors to ask for a custom quote before they decide to buy.
In this article we focus on a big conversion driver. The Expiration Date..

How can you use this standard Cart2Quote feature better and make it convert prospects into clients? Here are three reasons for using expiration dates, and three tips on how to do it well.

Want to get started? Try Cart2Quote for free!

Reason 1 - FOMO

You probably heard of the expression many times before. Fomo, fear of missing out. A typical thing for us humans. Now, your customers are human too. That means fomo can be used to convert not-yet-customers to customers! Why? People don’t like to miss out, don’t want to feel they should have something that they now can’t have any longer. Any Marketing Professional will tell you that ‘fear’ is a big sales driver. And adding an expiration date to your offer adds just a little touch of ‘you better decide before Friday otherwise you will miss this opportunity’. Our natural inclination to procrastinate can’t handle that! We don’t want to miss so we’re driven to take action. Voila, your proposal will be converted into an order. Just what you wanted.

Reason 2 - Clarity

The second reason is as simple as that. If you don’t add a ‘valid until’ date, that would automatically mean it’s valid forever, right? Most B2B internet retailers are very aware that their website has to follow the already existing business processes, and that means that prices and price lists are reviewed regularly. They change because suppliers’ prices change, circumstances change. And that means, of course, that your prices and offers (and online proposals) change and are time limited. Be clear about it, and stick to it. One day too late or one year too late, time is time. Clarity helps.

Reason 3 - The numbers teach us

The last reason we give here actually speaks for itself. Adding a clear expiration date can make your proposals convert considerably better (for this guy even up to 332%)! It’s simple, but a huge opportunity to skyrocket sales! Nothing more to say about that one.

And now for some tips. How to use and communicate the expiration date effectively?

Tip 1 - Repetition

Cart2Quote has “expiration dates” as a standard functionality. Use it. Simply choose a standard expiration time (say, 14 days) and use that for all your proposals. Alternatively set specific dates per specific proposal, whatever works best for your business or products. Doing that will automatically have the expiration date on the proposal, whether that’s sent per email or generated PDF. Well done, you have given clarity and an incentive to your prospect. Now, let’s say that the expiration date is indeed 14 days. Use Cart2Quote send an email to your prospect, automatically, after 12 days. That email contains the clear message “your offer will expire in 2 days”. From something that might have been in the back of your prospect’s mind, your proposal has now become an urgent matter. Just what you wanted!

Tip 2 - Make it personal

Within Cart2Quote there’s always a place where you can add a message to your prospect. A price proposal can be turned into a personal note when you add some text to it. You can either clarify your prices, explain the products and (we suggest) add some details about the expiration date for your proposal. Explain it, name it, don’t make it too big but be upfront about it. Of course the transactional emails that come with Cart2Quote can be altered and can be made as personal as you like. Why not make it sound something like “Hi Joe, as I already mentioned in my proposal on May 4th, the offer will end in 2 days time. Can you please let us know whether you would like to proceed and order the products? Many thanks!”. Sounds friendly but still has the ‘urge’ to accept and order the goods!

Tip 3 - Stick with it

A simple rule in life (and in doing business) is “say what you do and do what you say”. Of course that goes for expiration dates as well! Make a habit of creating a new proposal once your customer wants to order after the expiration date. Take yourself, your company and your promises serious!

Learn more about all the Cart2Quote features here.

Continual improvement, because we want to stay on top

As the leading Magento Quotation Extension we know what it is to be at the top. It has taken us years to develop and finetune our RFQ extension and we’re really pleased with the fact that Cart2Quote is now the trusted quotation module for over 7500 Magento users.

However, we also know what it takes to stay at the top, and besides having the right people that have the right skills, it’s simply a whole lot of work! Good thing we love what we do.

One of the most used words in our offices is ‘advancement’. We continually ask ourselves how we can advance Cart2Quote, improve it, make our Magento B2B extension better, finetune, meet expectations better, answer questions better? A key to this is obviously ‘listening’. We love to listen to our customers. And of course to people who decide not to be our customer. However sad this may make us, that too is how we learn! Asking for feedback, input, good ideas, expectations and needs.

Improved CRM functionality please?

We learned that many Magento B2B users want to improve the standard CRM functionality. So the last couple of months we have been working hard to put all these ideas into strong new code for our extension. Our main focus this time was Customer Relationship Management, CRM. As can be read in one of our former blogposts we have already implemented “quote status history”, “multiple files upload” and “two way communication” some time ago. Now it was time to, again, make some new big improvements.

Below you read more about some of the added functionalities in Cart2Quote 5.1.2-stable.

Want to get started? Try Cart2Quote for free!

Add file attachments with CRM messages

First, the basics about our extension. Cart2Quote adds a Request-for-Quote (RFQ) functionality to your Magento webshop. Through your website your customers can ask for a quote before they decide they want to buy. A typical and much needed feature to make Magento websites B2B proof! The whole process (asking for a quote - sending a price-proposal - accepting the price - placing the order - handling and shipping the order) works seamless with the standard Magento backend. 

One of the major improvements we have implemented recently is that it’s now possible, for both store-owner and customer, to add attachments to the messages sent through the Magento backend in the quotation process. Simply upload pictures with explanations, PDF’s with T&C’s, photo’s of what you’re looking for etc. All from the Cart2Quote backend that merges perfectly with the regular Magento backend, no need to get used to a whole new backend or program.

We all know that often a picture says more than words, and to be able to add and upload pictures to your messages is a real added value to our quotation extension. We’re sure that it will help you to convert more quotes into orders!

Extra quote statuses to indicate new CRM messages

One of the things that make Magento great is the different order statuses that can be assigned. Pending, accepted, sent, invoice sent, you name it. With a simple selection it’s very easy for you as the store-owner to have an overview of which actions you should take.

We have now also made this possible for your quotes overview. Depending on where you and your customer are in the process, you can now label all quotes and take action accordingly.

For example, your customer has requested a quote though your website. Automatically this will pop up in the quotations grid view with the status “Processing - Action for Store Owner”. When you have sent your proposal you can simply change the status to “Processing - Action for Customer”. We have created several other statuses, such as “Proposal created, not sent”, “Proposal sent”, “Proposal rejected”, “Proposal accepted”, “Ordered”, et cetera. Again, from your gridview you can now see or select and keep track of all the quotes that are not yet ordered. This make life easier as the grid view gives you a great indication of each quote’s status!

Follow-up button now also filters on CRM action status

Taking the “grid view, selection and action” a step further, we have added a clear “follow-up” button on top of the quotes overview. Want to know which customers are waiting for your action? Simply click the button and the grid will show only those quotes where your action is required! Whether you still need to reply to a request, or need to review a price or answer a question, all your actions are there in one overview!

All these new features help Cart2Quote to stay on top of the game, to stay the most complete quotation manager for Magento B2B webshops.

Fixes and improvements

Besides adding new features we always aim to fix and improve existing issues. The full list of fixes and improvements can be read in our release notes.

Cart2Quote Magento Customizations - made to meet your needs

With all our efforts to continually improve our quotation extension we trust that we really bridge a gap that exists in Magento when it comes to B2B functionality. However, we know that every business is different and has different needs when it comes to making a website compatible with the (existing or offline) sales process. That’s why we often make customizations for our customers. Unique solutions and features that help your website to actually do what you need it to when it comes to quotations and functionalities.

In the customization section on our website we show a couple of examples of Magento customizations we have created for some of our B2B customers. From fully automated multi-page PDF proposals to an online food ordering system, we know what it takes to make Magento work for you!

Want to know more? Send us a message and we’ll get back to you.

Why we think Magento is the preferred B2B e-commerce platform?

Here’s a scene you’ll see in our offices every day. Around 9am our team of developers grab a cup of coffee and gather around for a short ‘stand up’. We never do our meetings sitting down. We like to keep things short and to the point. If it does not lead to concrete actions we´d rather skip it.

One after the other tells simply what they have been doing yesterday and what they will be doing today. Are there any specific challenges? We’ll tackle them together.

Daily, we’re mainly focussed on three things:

• what would make our customers happy?
• what doesn’t work in our module and should be fixed?
• what works “ok” in our module and should be improved? 

These three questions keep us sharp and help us to work towards our unchanged goal; to be the best Magento Request For Quote (RFQ) Module on the planet.
We love Magento and would recommend it highly to any B2B company that wants to go and sell online. But we also know what’s needed to make Magento truly B2B proof!

We’ve been working hard on some new functionalities and improvements in our release of Cart2Quote 5.1.0 - stable. Click here to see the concise release notes. In this blogpost we’ll go through some of the main new and updated Quotation Functionalities for Magento.

Want to get started? Try Cart2Quote for free!

Requirements

To be able to benefit from this latest Cart2Quote version we require Magento CE 1.7+, Magento EE 1.12+ and PHP 5.3+

Big on CRM

Cart2Quote was born to make Magento perform better in Customer Relationship Management. Our module helps you as a B2B webshop owner to converse with your customers about products and prices, so that it may lead to converted price proposals.

Converse better, convert better.

So, we added some awesome new features to the Cart2Quote CRM. You’ll love them:

- Quote Status History. From the first quote request to the final invoice, you can now track and check the complete history of communication between you (or your sales reps) and your customers. The information this will give you is invaluable! Learn from the questions your clients ask and change your way of working accordingly. Why do some sales reps sell more than others? How can you help them to improve their contact with your customers?

- Two Way Communication. Customers can now comment on a quote in the frontend (their customer dashboard) and your sales reps can respond in the backend. Easy, fast and all visible in the quote status history as conversation threading. No need to pick up the phone or send separate emails, all is handled now from your own Magento backend.

- Multiple Files Upload. Sometimes you want to send some extra files, pictures or PDF’s to your customers. We made it possible for you to do that from within your C2Q backend. Send your best quotes with several pictures to ensure your client that this is indeed what he needs.

- Hide Quote From Sales Reps. Sometimes you want your sales reps just to mind their own business. Literally. So we made it possible for you (or the super-admin) to assign specific roles to specific sales reps. If you don’t want Chris to read John’s quotes and proposals, you can manage that. Now this is also great if you have third parties work on your site. They don’t need to know all the details on your customers, prices and quotes, so just hide it from them. Easy and safe!

Is Your Magento B2B eCommerce Website Making Money?

At the end of the day you’re in (online) business to make money. A key thing then is to know the margin between cost price and sales price. Here’s some options we have improved for you:

- Overwrite Cost Price Per Quote. Let’s work with an example. Say, you sell printed umbrella’s and your supplier normally charges you $2 per piece. That $2 is standard in your product’s cost price section. So if you sell 1.000 umbrella’s for $4 per piece Magento automatically shows you made a profit of $2.000. Well done. Now, we have made it possible for you to edit the cost price PER QUOTE.

Say, now you have an enquiry for 10.000 umbrella’s. You ask your supplier for a cheaper price for this special, large enquiry. He’s willing to drop his price to $1.50 for this quantity. You can now, in your Cart2Quote backend, edit the cost price so you can still track what profit it would give you if you would sell these products.

- Enter Tier Cost Prices. Let’s stick to this example. Ask your supplier for tier prices so you don’t have to ask him every time you want a special deal. Simply enter these tier prices in your backend and keep track of your profit, whether you sell 1 or 10.000 umbrella’s!

Making Magento Work Better For B2B Companies

We reckon CRM and Money are high on any B2B company’s agenda. But there’s more to Cart2Quote that makes B2B work better online:

- New Manuals. We learn continually and change our website and manuals on a daily basis. Though we would recommend only Magento specialists to really dive deep into the backend code, we still want to serve our customers with clear guides. So we have put some new manuals online for you to use.

- German Translations. Aber natürlich! Our B2B extension is used worldwide and is now available in numerous languages. We love our German customers and want to serve them better with a proper “de_de language file”! Email Designs. We have made sure that all your quote-email design templates are now loaded from the frontend design.

- And More. We have listed a whole lot of fixes and improvements in our release notes overview. Thank you for pointing things out and helping us to keep on improving.

Helping You To Make B2B eCommerce Great

We’re always looking to serve our customers better. And we know that we don’t offer a ‘one size fits all’ solution. We do sell different versions that indeed fit different sizes and types of B2B companies. But often it requires customization to meet specific needs. We do this too. In fact, we’re great at tackling difficult projects and diving into tricky material. Need help with making your Magento e-commerce website communicate better with your customers? We’re glad to help. Please fill out the form below and we’ll get back to you!

Even more flexibility and automation in your price proposals via Cart2Quote

Pass on expensive payment provider fees to customers in an easy and transparent way, without increasing your product pricing.

Alternatively, encourage customers to use cost effective payment options by offering a discount for these payment methods.

Cart2Quote 5.1.0 is now compatible out of the box with Fooman Surcharge 3.1.8 and storeowners with both modules enabled can now enjoy the benefits of both extensions: enable you customers to request a quote from your front-end or create one yourself for the customer via the Magento admin panel and include the flexible surcharge options of Fooman.

With Fooman a store owner can surcharge according to a range of flexible criteria including payment method, customer type, product, country or region of order, and even shipping method.

Charge a small order fee or enforce a minimum order amount. Apply surcharges only to orders below or above a specified value.

The surcharges are nicely integrated into the total blocks of Cart2Quote, which give both the storeowners and their customers a quick indication of the additional costs when viewing a price proposal.

Cart2Quote 5.1.0 works out-of-the-box together with Fooman Surcharge 3.1.8. You do not need to configure anything!

For more information on the Fooman Surcharge extension, visit the Fooman's Surcharge extension product page.

To order Cart2Quote go to our product comparison page for more information.

Why do we think you should choose Magento as your B2B e-commerce platform?

When it comes to e-commerce, all kinds of abbreviations come flying around; B2B, B2C, P2P, CRM, RFQ and what have you…Most readers will be familiar with B2C (being business-to-consumer) and B2B (business-to-business). In this blog we want to explain why we think B2B e-commerce platforms are (or at least should be) different from B2C webshops. After summing up some of the major differences we’ll give you a few recommendations of how to use Magento as your B2B e-commerce platform.

1. Repeated Purchases

If you do your job well, a B2B customer will come back for more. Where a B2C customer is mainly interested in one-off deals, a B2B buyer is interested in more than that. He wants a supplier he can rely on, that he can get back to for repeated purchases. And preferably, a supplier that enables him to do that online (see our post on ‘death of a salesman’) and without going through the whole process again.

Yet, most of all, a B2B buyer needs to able to trust this supplier. Will he deliver the goods? And not just once, but also next month and next year? Yes, ease is important, the price is important, but trust is the big issue. Once that is established, repeated purchases will be done, you can be sure about it.

Want to get started?

Try out a demo for free

2. Multiple Contact Persons

Other than with B2C buyers, it’s not ‘just a person’ that will be a customer. It’s a whole company. And within that company there are multiple people that will be involved in the buying process. Whilst for most B2C e-commerce platforms it will be enough to have one name, one email address and one delivery address, a B2B platform will need to be able to handle several of these. All within the same company. There’s the guy that actually makes the ‘buy-decision’, there’s the finances department that will handle the invoice, there’s the warehouse that will receive the goods. And not only that. What do you think about multiple shipping addresses? One address to send a sample to, a different address to actually ship the goods to (yep, even multiple, worldwide) and an address to send the invoice to… Well, you get the point, a decent B2B e-commerce platform should be able to handle all these well, not just from your perspective, also from the customer’s perspective!

3. Custom Products

B2C e-commerce is mainly about ‘product-price-buy’ (see the famous Amazon 1-click-ordering process). B2B is more about custom products. It may be that your customer needs a different colour, a different number of products in the box, a custom logo, a specific way to pack it, or of course a different price. A B2B webshop should be able to handle all the different possible configurations. In ‘death of a salesman’ we already described how B2B buyers prefer to buy online instead of through a salesrep. It’s crucial that your webshop enables your customers to do the whole process online. From question, to quote, to buying, the whole online sales process.

4. High-level Service

Give your B2B customer a good reason to trust you before he buys. Why should he? How do you communicate your service, your warranty? Where in B2C ‘price’ is often leading, in B2B e-commerce there’s so much more. Because even for the B2B buyers, there’s more at stake. It’s not just his money, it’s his company’s money, it’s not just his wife he has to justify his purchase to, it’s his boss. If this goes wrong, it could cost him his job! So, again, before he has to hit the ‘buy here’ button, give him a good reason to trust you.

5. Company Conditions

It’s not just your ‘terms and conditions’ that count. Though these are indeed leading for most B2C companies, in the B2B world there’s more to it. B2B companies have their own conditions before they buy from you. You have to be willing and able to serve your customers in the way they need it. Packaging, tier-prices, delivery, you name it. Again, it’s about building trust, showing you’re actually willing to help and not just make money of your customer.

6. Buying Process

You have probably bought stuff online as a consumer yourself. Books, clothes, dvd’s, whatever. You have probably noticed that the way to check-out on any webshop is something like; choose your product, pay for it, get it delivered. Very logical. When it’s B2C that is.
For B2B e-commerce however, a different order is needed. And that is something your e-commerce platform should be able to adjust to! Payments, for example, are often done only after the products have been delivered. Now, if your webshop is not able to facilitate that you’re in trouble. Same thing goes for invoices. Your B2B clients need specific data on the invoice; addresses, PO numbers, product codes, tax, etc.
You would be wise to investigate what different processes you should be able to handle and make a real effort to smoothen your online channel to do it well!

Your B2B e-commerce platform. We recommend:

We want you to do well. And we know that for your B2B e-commerce, you have to choose wisely. That’s why we want to give you some advice on the topics we mentioned above. Do these well and you’ll have a good chance your B2B e-commerce channel will lead to success!

• Repeated Purchases: CRM is a big thing. Customer Relationship Management. We think you should look at the platform that will enable you to streamline this; your backend, your office and your webshop should work seamless if you want to do this well. This will obviously enable you to have all information in one place; order history, customer addresses and names, etc. If you use Magento as your B2B e-commerce platform, you can choose from many great CRM systems. These will not only help you but also enable your customers to have access to all the (order) data they need. That way it will be extremely easy for your customers to repeat orders or make small amendments to previous orders. And that’s a big thing; make ordering easy for yourself and your clients.

• Multiple Contact Persons: Other than with B2C, where you deal with mainly 1 customer per address, in B2B you have to enable your clients to add multiple contacts per company. Purchase department, warehouse, finances, they all need to be able to access data. Again, with your Magento B2B e-commerce platform you are able to add extensions that will enable your customers, and yourself, to handle multiple contacts well.

• Custom Products: Can your e-commerce platform handle custom options per product? It should! This is, again, a big thing for B2B customers. They need this specific product BUT with this logo, colour, packaging, you name it. Now, what is specific for B2B customers, is that they normally want a quote before they actually ‘buy now’. Cart2Quote is the perfect extension for B2B webshops to enable your customers to get a custom price. WIthin seconds your customers can get a price with all the details the need. And for you as the webshop owner, it’s easy as well. All from your site’s backend, you can manage, change, send and process the quotes. A big time-saver and lead generator!

• High-level Service: Trust is key. Look for ways to communicate that your main purpose is to serve your clients. And live up to it, obviously. It’s really important that all your information is accessible, clear and meeting your clients’ needs. Is your website, your tone-of-voice, aimed at selling or serving? We recommend, make service leading. That is, if you want your customers to come back and buy again. One of the main things is then that you are open, clear, transparent about your prices. Give a quote before they have to buy. Send invoices afterwards. Simple things if it’s B2B, but not always standard procedures when it comes to ecommerce platforms.

• Company Conditions: We recommend that if you’re going to use a ecommerce platform, do it well. Not ‘just for sales’ or ‘just to show what we have’. Add RFQ functionality, let your customers define what they buy, empower them to play their part in the process. We think Magento can help you with just that!

• Buying Process. Even though we love Magento, we know it takes some extra extensions to make it work like a charm as a B2B e-commerce platform. On Magento Connect you’ll find many extensions that will make doing online business easier and better. We have, of course, pointed out the RFQ extensions from Cart2Quote. This will help you and your customers to negotiate a price and conditions all from your Magento backend. But there are loads more that will help you to do B2B well online!

So. Magento it is?

Well yes. If you are considering to bring your B2B company online, use Magento as your B2B ecommerce platform. But look for extensions that will help you to go from B2C to B2B functionalities. Think about quotes, processes, invoices, contacts et cetera. Better to spend some time and money now than pay more afterwards!

Want to find out what our Cart2Quote’s module for Magento 2 is capable of?

Try out a demo for free

Rather schedule a 30 minutes walkthrough instead?

Schedule a free 30 minutes walkthrough

Release notes; always improving our extension for B2B retailers

At Cart2Quote we are keen to keep on improving our products and services. Our goal was, and still is, to provide the best Magento B2B extension to create custom proposals online. We remember the days of our first release, now almost 5 years ago. We were happy and proud. But to be honest, we’re happy that we have improved our products since! Our team of developers works hard to resolve bugs, fix issues, implement customizations, answer questions and improve Cart2Quote as a product and brand.

In this article we update you on a few of the improvements we have made with the release of Cart2quote 5.0. Have a look at the actual release notes here.

Latest Magento Releases

We exist to be the best Magento business-to-business RFQ extension. That’s why we will always support the latest releases of Magento. In our latest release notes we will keep you updated on the versions we support. As we write this blogpost we support up to Magento CE 1.9.1.0 and EE 1.14.1.0

Making Configurations Easier

We created our B2B module for Magento so our customers could make custom proposals online. We did all the coding and research so that you would be able to get started straight away. However, some customers told us they struggled to set Cart2Quote up themselves, and the way we configured our module didn’t really help them. So, thanks to some of our customers’ feedback, we decided to completely revise the configuration page of our Magento Extension.

Our aim was to make it look and work easier, more intuitive and faster. And we think we succeeded really well! Not only did we revise and redesign the whole configuration page, we also worked hard on all the ‘tips’, the little popup balloons. They now contain better and clearer information on how to set C2Q up so it suits your needs.

Want to get started? Try Cart2Quote for free!

Fixed, Added and Improved Features

Every month we release an improved version of Cart2Quote. Our developers continuously fix bugs, add fixtures and improve the quality of our already high-standard Magento extension.

The last couple of weeks for example, we added ‘support for related products’ to Cart2Quote. This means that when your customer is on a product page, he can now select not only that specific product, but also the specified ‘related products’ to his “quote request”. A huge help in terms of ‘upselling’! Because that is basically what we are all about; enabling you to sell more!

We also worked hard on some of the available translations. Some of our British customers told us that they would really prefer ‘British English’ instead of Magento’s standard ‘American’. We understand! Using the right words, with the right tone of voice, makes a big difference, also online! That’s why we improved the British language files. And while we were working on it, we also improved our Dutch language files. Graag gedaan!

ionCube Issues

Since a few Cart2Quote files are encrypted with ionCube, some of our customers encountered the familiar blank pages of Magento after the installation of Cart2Quote. We wanted to improve our service here as well so we changed some of the files, making it easier to setup and install Cart2Quote.

And whilst we were in the area of encrypted files, we changed some of the workarounds, so that customizations take less time to complete.

Customizing Your Magento Extension

Apart from continuously improving our extensions, we regularly help our clients with customizing our product for their website. We believe our standard products are really good, but sometimes you might need a special feature, a change in the code so that serving your customers online goes even better. We can help you with that.

If you would need more information about customizations, please leave a message here or in the comment section below and we’ll get back to you ASAP.

Is your online channel ready to banish your salesman?

The times, they are a-changing. And this is still the case, 50 years after Dylan gave us this song. And indeed, many things have changed since then. Shopping, for instance, has changed dramatically! Where once there was a man in a white coat behind a counter we now have giant supermarkets where you serve yourself. That said, we obviously mean “offline” shopping. When it comes to buying online, most B2B companies, surprisingly, still have a 1950’s mentality. Their salesman is still the person you need to see when you want to buy from them! Now this too, according to a Forrester’s report, is going to change soon!

From “are you being served” to “please help yourself”

In the report it is stated that 93% of the buyers prefer to help themselves. Even B2B buyers would rather buy through a website than through a sales rep. Very understandable of course! When you are a professional buyer, you have done your homework. You know what you need, you know what you want to pay for it, you know where to get it from. Now, if only the deal could be closed online you’d be a happy buyer.
But how frustrating it is when the selling company doesn’t allow you to buy it online! Why all the hassle of picking up the phone, having another visit of their salesman, talking things through that are already clear?! This clearly is trying to offer a 1950’s service to people that prefer a 2015 speed!
Please hear us, we’re not saying service doesn’t matter. It does, big time. But it can and should be done better, and preferably online.

There are two sides to this coin. And when flipped well, two sides will win!

The buyer wants ease, speed and a no-nonsense approach to doing business. So, give him a webshop that enables him to buy.
The seller wants margins, a smooth sales process and happy customers. So, use a webshop that can help you have that!

Want to get started? Try Cart2Quote for free!

Is the B2B salesman here to stay?

B2C companies, and their websites, are very much geared towards selling online. Webshops are created to serve customers’ needs, and it seems to be going great! Most of the time customers will not even speak to, or have email correspondence with, a salesman. B2C companies have found out that this saves much time and money. Time and money that is invested in online services, smoother processes, better quality of products and services and, not unimportant, better margins. The buyer wins, the seller wins.

Now what about B2B? Because that is a whole different world indeed. Most B2B companies have a smooth looking website and some even might have webshops. Yet the majority of sales is still done by their sales reps! There may be different reasons for that.
Customers might, by default, still pick up the phone and tell the salesman what they want to buy. Or, yes they still exist, send a fax. Salesmen that function in these types of roles are called “order takers” in the forenamed report. Their main role is to indeed take orders and process them into the system. Forrester’s report states that before 2020 a large portion of these order takers will be made redundant, simply because there are smarter ways to work. Ways that serve the customer better and that save the seller’s company money.
Then, there are the so called “explainers”. Salesmen that go one step further and talk the customer through the whole process and explain why their products meet their needs. They obviously have a part to play but this group too will lose ground to smarter webshops and better sales processes.
The “navigators” then go further and not just explain but are part of the whole process. From question to decision they will be there, next to the customer, helping him with the decisions and making sure that all goes well. Even though the human aspect of the navigation-process is unmissable, many things can, should and will be replaced by online processes.
Lastly, Forrester in their report use the term “consultants”. This group will probably suffer least from the growth of online processes and better webshops.

Yet, the conclusion stands; many B2B salesmen will be replaced by better online sales processes and B2B webshops.

Out with the old, in with the new

Before B2B companies are ready to move forward, they will have to make a conscious decision to indeed be willing to let go of the old. And in many cases, ‘the new’ is a better webshop, and ‘the old’ is the (function of) the salesman. Holding on to the past might cost more than what investing in the new would cost.

But before running into the future unprepared, B2B companies should be very aware that merely having a webshop will not do the trick. Even a worldclass platform like Magento is mainly for B2C businesses. When you want to do B2B well through an online channel, extra extensions are needed. An obvious need that B2B sellers have is a good RFQ functionality. This would allow customers to ask for a quote though the website, instead of sending emails or using the phone. Extensions like Cart2Quote help you with just that. This Magento module adds RFQ functionality that B2B companies cannot do without!

The final word

Your customers want to order online. Will you let them? Will you empower your customers to use your website as a self-service way of ordering your products online? It would be a wise decision to start preparing for this, because in a few years time a huge percentage of sales reps will not be needed or even wanted anymore. Have a read through Forrester’s report and discover the future (they would call it death) of a B2B salesman.
So, start giving your customers what they want; a smooth way to order online, complete with RFQ functionality. If you use Magento for your e-commerce, you might want to look into Cart2Quote to add this B2B extension.

Discover here why Cart2Quote is the perfect Magento RFQ solution!

Want to increase your B2B sales online? Then you probably need to add a CPQ functionality to easily Configure, Price and Quote. Here's how Cart2Quote helps.

Magento webshops, one of your sales channels?

For many companies a website, or more specifically a Magento webshop, is part of their sales channels. It’s not the only way they sell, but it’s part of the mix.

Now we all know and understand that selling through websites has an enormous potential, for B2C and B2B companies alike, but especially when it comes to business-to-business, a lot of improvement needs to be done to make online sales more efficient.
Most Magento webshops work great for straight forward online sales: a customer comes, sees, buys, pays and receives the goods. All good, all working properly. But sometimes a wannabe customer needs a custom quote.

“I would like this product but then with these tweaks, and please give me tier prices for 10, 20 and 30 pieces”. Oh, and “no quote, no sales”.

As a webshop owner, you want to serve your customer well, but you want to do it efficiently. You want to send a custom quote, fast, easy, safe and online.

Configure, price, quote (CPQ) in Magento

That is exactly the reason why we created Cart2Quote. This Magento B2B module gives you the tools to configure according to your customers needs, propose a price that is interesting and send the quote through your Magento backend. All online from your own system, you generate a detailed price proposal effortless. Your customer receives the quote, approves it and you're back in the straight forward sales process. All in a mouseclick, all online. Very efficient!

Want to find out what our Cart2Quote’s module for Magento 2 is capable of?

Try out a demo for free

Rather schedule a 30 minutes walkthrough instead?

Schedule a free 30 minutes walkthrough

Magento Extensions that sell!

Most eCommerce research is about why people don't buy. So obviously there are a lot of very good Magento extensions out there that help you counteract those reasons.

But what about the potential customers that check out your site and simply forget about your store? It often happens when visitors are rooming the web and gathering price information and are planning to come back later at a later stage of their procurement process? B2B buyers in general buy bigger quantities and greater amounts, it is therefore common sense that they also do more product and price research then regular customers.

Online Procurement Process

Remember the offline procurement processes? For sure most of the buyers need to defend and explain their decision when they select a vendor. So, it is important that a B2B visitor who is researching product and prices establishes a relationship with you in the early stages of his search. The Magento Cart2Quote B2B extension makes is very easy for your researching visitor to leave something behind - a lead. This lead is a clear Request for Information from your visitor. With all his details in your back-office it is a matter of seconds to answer him with product and price information. Your speed and professionalism will have impact on your customer.

Skyrocketing your sales with RFQ

Customer Quotations for Magento, easy, complete and skyrocketing your sales. Add powerful RFQ management to your webshop.

Want to find out what our Cart2Quote’s module for Magento 2 is capable of?

Try out a demo for free

Rather schedule a 30 minutes walkthrough instead?

Schedule a free 30 minutes walkthrough

Price Proposal Software

When you have a B2B company that uses a Magento webshop, your customers might not click ‘buy now’ straight away. But they DO want to receive a price proposal, and THEN they might buy. This creates a problem for regular Magento webshops. Our Magento Module gives you the solution to this problem.

A very common issue for B2B webshop owners is that it seems difficult to actually do business through the website. Visitors check out the webshop and are interested in the products, but they often don’t want to, or even are allowed to, buy online. Simply because their company tells them to get several quotes first. Now, to get a quote, customers often bypass the website. They call. Or send an email. This is where the extra work for your B2B company comes in.

Try Cart2Quote for free!

Reduce extra work for your staff

Here's what often happens: A customer calls to tell about his interest in a certain product that he has seen on your website. His company is looking for exactly that product, but his company policy tells him he can't order online. He needs a quote, with several quantity tiers. He asks if you can please send a PDF per email so he can show the prices to his boss. When his company is ready to order he will reply to the email with the quantities they need.

So, your staff starts to make a custom-made document with all the details the client has asked for: Product, Image, SKU, Description, Tier Prices, and a separate document with your company's T&C's. He sends this per email to the potential client. Of course your staff are told to save the quote and make a note to contact the client again in some time, to see how the prices are and if business can be done. Note: all this happens outside of your webshop while that is actually the tool you want to use to sell!

To make a long story short, hopefully, the quote that was sent has been approved, you sold the product! Good news! Now, your staff searches for the PDF proposal and goes to the back-end of your Magento webshop to manually add the company details of your new customer. After that, he enters the product and agreed price and the system is up to date again. Finally. Now, surely, there has to be a better, quicker way to use a Magento webshop for B2B?

Magento B2B Quotation Module: less effort, more chance to score

With the Cart2Quote Quotation Module all of the above can be done better. And faster. An online quote in seconds, all automated, with all the right prices.

Here's what can happen: A customer visits your website and sees he can either 'buy now' or 'receive a quote'. He knows that this is the product his company needs but he is not allowed to buy straight away; he needs to show his boss a quote first. So he clicks the special 'receive a quote' button that is now implemented on your Magento Webshop. Your staff receive a notification from the website, see that the quantity tiers he asks for can be prefilled with a mouseclick, and sends out the custom-made PDF with T&C's. All within a minute. All through the webshop. All with Cart2Quote.

When the potential customer receives the proposal he can either accept, edit or disapprove your quote. Again, all online, in your website's system. When the customer agrees, it's a matter of a mouse-click to convert the quote in to an order. Dead simple. Using this Magento B2B module is saving you time, saving you money.

Want to find out what our Cart2Quote’s module for Magento 2 is capable of?

Try out a demo for free

Rather schedule a 30 minutes walkthrough instead?

Schedule a free 30 minutes walkthrough

Tips for B2B retailers

In the article on cbronline.com, some of Lars Schnicker's predictions regarding e-commerce are listed. We made a selection that we think you as a B2B retailer will find useful.

Any opportunities for B2B retailers?

B2B commerce is growing rapidly, and the online giant Amazon knows this all too well. It is only a matter of time before they will roll out their amazonsupply website in Europe. Yet, instead of feeling threatened and afraid, B2B retailers should seize the opportunity and make their website and services stand out with functionalities others do not offer.
Birthed out of a B2C mindset, Amazon is not really geared towards B2B demands. The way they present the products, the no-nonsense 'click to buy' works great indeed for end-users. However, custom-made B2B websites really can go the extra mile to serve their customers better. The battle with Amazon might not be won on price, but adding extra value and unique services will help retailers to win customer's loyalty.

One of the things B2B retailers need to use is a Request for Price functionality. This helps them to stand out from the B2C mentality; besides offering a 'click to buy' choice, it also offers a 'click for a quote' button, just what B2B clients need!

Want to get started? Try Cart2Quote for free!

Other ecommerce trends

An ongoing challenge for retailers will be omnichannel commerce. Obviously websites, and webshops, are big these days, also for B2B retailers. However, to serve customers well retailers need to offer a more seamless journey across online and offline points of sales. Huge challenges but also possibillities in terms of product catalogues, customer and order data cetera.

Then, there's a range of devices customers work on and buy from. Computers, tablets, smartphones for work and personal use... B2B retailers need to be able to offer a working solutions for users on any of those devices. Does your website look great and is the workflow clear for a user on a smartphone? Again, B2B webshops need to think this one through. Not just in terms of design and usablity, though this plays a major part, also in terms of payment! Can users pay from any device, in any kind of way? B2B retailers need to stand in the shoes of their customers and find out what serves their customers best.

And then there is data. B2B ecommerce is able to offer you insights that was never seen before; from sales funnels to visit duration, you name it. But is that data used well? And is it converted into a better way of doing business online? Again, many opportunities to be seized there!

To read more about Lars' predictions, click here to read the full article.

Click here to read more about B2B Request-for-Price solutions.

Is Magento suitable for B2B companies?

Magento is the eCommerce software and platform trusted by the world's leading brands. But is it really suitable for B2B companies as well?

Ecommerce is, in many cases, a driving marketing force in terms of sales and brand awareness for many companies, B2C and B2B. And Magento, indeed as a worldwide leader in the ecommerce field, offers some really great features in the standard webshop configuration. However, we found that to link properly with companies that are geared towards B2B, there are a number of features that need to be added to the Magento workflow.

B2B features for Magento

Over the years, many different modules have been created to help Magento connect with a proper B2B workflow. ERP connections, smart marketing tools and financial modules. The last couple of years we have been working on a missing feature that is essential for B2B companies; a Request For Quote functionality.
We wanted to have an 'Add to Quote' button that works seamlessly with the famous 'Add to Cart' button.
So, that's exactly what Cart2Quote is nowadays. Our feature offers B2B companies a Magento-based interface, frontend and backend, that enables both clients and companies to work with tier prices and quotes, all within the regular Magento workflow, but enabling B2B companies to offer their clients what they might expect.

Are you looking at Magento but not sure whether it answers to the needs of your B2B company? Our Cart2Quote feature will be of great help to you!

Discover here why Cart2Quote is the perfect Magento B2B feature!

Online B2B needs go beyond B2C

It’s a well-known and often heard statement: b2b online sellers need features for their webshops that go beyond the typical (b2c) online experience.

Though Ebay’s Magento platform does indeed offer some handy features, like tier-pricing and customer-buying-groups, there are still areas of the online b2b process that need some input from technology developers that specialize in extensions for b2b Magento shops.

B2B Internetretailer examples

In their online article, www.internetretailer.com give the example of how a special ‘Request an Item’ box pops up at the store’s checkout page, giving customers the option to enter information about a product they would need but could not find in the shop. The shopowner is automatically informed and is thus able to try and provide the customer with the wanted product. A great b2b feature, we think!

Online negotiation process

In the same article it is explained how the cart2quote extension, on a Magento b2b site, gives a buyer the option to request a pricing quote for a particular product, to negotiate a final price and only click to buy when both buyer and seller agree on terms.

Click here to read the full article. Want to learn more about the Cart2Quote b2b extension? Click here for plans and pricing.

Handle MAP better

A growing number of webshop owners have been confronted with strict Minimum Advertised Prices Policies from their suppliers. In short, these Minimum Advertised Prices (from here on “MAP”) are a suppliers’ tool to make sure all their resellers show the same prices. But there’s more to it. In fact, many webshop owners (resellers) would call it a huge problem.

Now what's the problem with MAP?

There is a big gap between the two sides: suppliers and resellers. They are meant to work together in ‘selling the goods’ but yet seem to be opposed. For the supplier the MAP feels like a safety net, for the reseller it feels like a cage. Both parties do want to move forward but both have different priorities. If that happens in a marriage, or any other relationship, we all know; it’s guaranteed to fail… But that’s not all. There is actually a third party that is involved. The customer. He’s not a part of the problem but obviously suffers from it

Let’s look at how this problem comes to the surface, even in 2015.

Want to get started? Try Cart2Quote for free!

Your example; MAP's and resellers.

Let’s say, you own a webshop and sell mainly to B2B customers, companies that sell these goods either in brick and mortar stores and/or online. Obviously you want to serve your customers with clarity, good service, great products and fair prices.
John is your potential customer. He is a retailer with a sports shop. John wants to buy 1.000 baseball caps from a certain brand that you sell. He goes online and visits your webshop. He wants to know your best possible price. Not just for 1 cap, but for the actual 1.000 caps.

Now, your supplier has told you, as their reseller, to stick to the MAP. This leaves you with basically three options for showing prices on your website:

• Option 1: you only show the price for “1 baseball cap”. If John wants to know the price for 1.000 caps he has to pick up the phone or send you an email to ask for a special quote. We all know, this is a threshold for customers.
• Option 2: you show no price at all. John has to add the baseball cap to his cart before your webshop shows a price; the price for 1 cap. Same story here. If John wants to get your proposal he has to phone or email you. Not good.
• Option 3: you show actual tier prices. Good for a start, however, because you’re still bound by the MAP your lowest price is still too high for this B2B customer. Not good either.

Why does John have to look so hard to buy your products? Both your supplier and you as a reseller want to sell the products, right?

Who is to blame for this? The supplier or the reseller? Now as Phil Collins said, we always need to hear both sides of the story. So here we go.

You’re a supplier? Here’s your side of the story.

“If we would not use Minimum Advertised Prices I am sure that my resellers would advertise their lowest possible prices online. There are three problems with that:

• low prices disrupt the market
• low prices devalue my brand and products
• low prices mean low margins, making it impossible for resellers to deliver service and guarantees


So to protect the investment of our high-quality dealers, and our brand reputation, we have to stick to the MAP. We tell our resellers the bottom price they can advertise and they have to stick to that. If not, they’re out. It’s law.”


Quite frankly, this is understandable rhetoric. It makes sense for a supplier to value the market, their brand and their end-customers. Now, of course resellers are still free to make special one-on-one prices for their customers. But this has to be done through quotes via email, by phone or on paper. It may not be through advertised webshop prices or tiers.

This leaves the resellers with a problem.

You’re a reseller? Here’s your side of the story.

“We sell products online to B2B customers. We want to be able to serve them with great service, fast deliveries and of course great prices. Yet, our supplier does not allow us to show our best prices online. We have to stick with their so-called Minimum Advertised Prices. In a way we understand, but it’s also annoying. How can we compete on a price level? That is what our customers look for. And of course, we can still offer better prices, but the supplier won’t allow us to do that through our website. This means we have to send emails, answer phones, create and send custom proposals. After we have done that, we have to manually enter the customer’s order in the backend of our website. In effect, it’s much more work for less money. We really want to sell our supplier’s products. We would just need a way to make it easier to stick to the MAP yet serve our customers with competetive prices.”

Again, understandable rhetoric. When you’re a reseller you need tools to sell. Custom prices (other than MAP) are undoubtedly a major tool to sell, also for webshops. But that seems impossible when suppliers want you to stick to MAP’s. Or is it?

The better way. An online quotation extension for webshops.

It looks like a gap that can’t be bridged. A supplier demanding MAP’s, a reseller wanting to offer special (cheaper) prices. Luckily, there is a way resellers are now helped. Extensions like Cart2Quote enable webshop owners to:

• stick to the supplier’s MAP
• offer customers a ‘quote’ option in their webshop
• send custom quotes within seconds, through the webshop

Let’s go back to the example of John and your webshop. How could you help him, and yourself, better?

• Option 4: Your webshop shows the normal price for 1 cap. But next to the ‘add to cart’ button there is an ‘add to quote’ button. John wants a quote indeed, so he clicks the button. In your checkout he reads that he will receive a specified quote within minutes, all online. John fills out his details and the number of baseball caps he would like a quote for.

After John has clicked the ‘send’ button, you receive his request via email. In your webshop’s backend you find John’s quote request. Within seconds you fill out the correct prices and send John his quote. John receives your proposal via email. He’s happy with the delivery time and price and clicks the ‘order this’ button in the email. Automatically he is redirected to your website. In the checkout page he finds his details, the correct quantity and quoted price, all pre-filled. All he has to do now is click ‘confirm’ and he is done. One happy customer.

But not only John is happy. Your supplier is too, because the Minimum Advertised Price was shown. And you are happy too because the quotation extension helped you to send a quote in minutes. All from the webshop platform. And you sold the products! Mission accomplished.

Conclusion

MAP’s are here to stay. Suppliers need to protect the market, their brand and the end-users. Yet resellers, with the help of smart (Magento) webshop-extensions like Cart2Quote can still serve their customers with custom prices. That’s a win for suppliers, a win for resellers and a win for the end-customer.