Your best customers are not individuals buying one item. They are shops, clinics, contractors and offices that reorder the same products every few weeks, by phone, WhatsApp or a spreadsheet emailed to your sales person. You would like them to order online, but a normal consumer store does not fit how they buy. They want their own prices, they order by the carton, and half of them pay on credit.
That gap is what b2b ecommerce website features are meant to close. A wholesale online store has the same bones as any shop (catalogue, cart, checkout), but the rules around pricing, access and payment are different. This post sets out those differences, which features matter most, and how to decide what to build first.
How a business buyer differs from a retail shopper
| Retail shopper | Business buyer | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Same for everyone | Agreed per customer or per tier |
| Quantity | One or two units | Cartons, packs, minimums |
| How they find items | Browsing, photos | Searching by code, reordering |
| Payment | Pay now | Often on credit or against invoice |
| Paperwork | A receipt | A tax invoice with their business details |
| Who orders | One person | Several staff, sometimes with approval |
Every feature below comes from one of those rows.
B2B ecommerce website features that decide whether buyers use it
Customer-specific or tiered pricing
This is the core of almost every wholesale store. Options include a price list per customer group (distributor, retailer, trade), discounts by quantity, or a fixed price agreed with one account. Retail visitors may see public prices, or none at all. Whatever you choose, it must match what your sales team has already agreed, or buyers will stop trusting the site after the first wrong total.
Login-only access and approval
Many wholesale stores hide prices, or the whole catalogue, until a buyer logs in. New accounts are approved by you before they can order, often after checking a business registration. WordPress has a built-in system of user roles that wholesale plugins often build their customer groups on; our explainer on how WordPress user roles control access shows what sits underneath.
Minimums and pack sizes
A minimum order value, a minimum quantity per product, or quantities that must be multiples of a pack size. Without these, you get orders that cost more to pack than they earn.
Fast reordering
Business buyers rarely browse. Useful features here include:
- A quick order form: a table of products where the buyer types quantities and adds everything at once.
- Order by SKU or product code.
- “Order again” from past orders.
- Saved lists for regular orders.
- Upload a CSV of codes and quantities.
Request a quote
For large or custom orders, buyers want to send a cart as a request instead of paying straight away. You review it, adjust prices or delivery, and send it back to be accepted. This keeps negotiation inside the system rather than in a separate email thread.
Payment on account
Trusted customers may order now and pay later. The store needs a payment method that places the order without taking money, available only to approved accounts, with a record of what is owed. Many stores keep the credit control itself in their accounting software and use the website just to capture the order. Others take advance payment by bank transfer or gateway for new accounts and allow credit once a relationship exists. For smaller trade buyers, cash on delivery for the store can sit alongside these as one more option.
Tax details on the order
Business buyers in India will usually want to enter their GSTIN at checkout and receive a proper tax invoice in their business name, because they may claim input tax credit on it. That needs a checkout field, the number stored on the order and printed on the invoice. Our post on GST invoices for an online store covers what to check there. Prices may also need to show without tax for trade customers, since that is how they compare suppliers.
Features that are useful but can wait
- Multiple users per company, with one person approving orders that others place.
- Company-specific catalogues, where a customer sees only the products agreed with them.
- Account statements showing open invoices and balances.
- Integration with accounting or billing software, so orders, customers and stock do not have to be typed twice.
- Delivery scheduling for buyers who want stock on particular days.
Each of these is valuable for the right customer base. None of them should hold up a first launch unless your buyers will not use the site without it.
One store for both retail and wholesale?
It is often possible, and it can be the cheaper route: one catalogue, one stock count, two sets of prices. WooCommerce can do this with a wholesale or B2B plugin that adds customer groups, separate prices and rules. The trade-offs are complexity and testing. Every coupon, shipping rule and tax setting has to behave correctly for both kinds of customer, and a mistake can show trade prices to the public.
A separate wholesale store makes sense when the two audiences need very different catalogues, branding or checkout flows. It costs more to build and maintain, but each store stays simpler. There is no universal right answer; it depends how much the two sides overlap.
How to choose what to build first
- Look at your current orders. What do buyers actually order, how often, and how do they send it to you today?
- Ask three or four regular buyers. Would they order online? What would stop them?
- List your price rules. Write down every pricing arrangement you have. If it does not fit on a page, simplify it before you automate it.
- Decide payment terms per type of customer. Who pays upfront, who gets credit, and who approves credit.
- Pick the smallest set of features those buyers need. Usually: login, their prices, quick ordering, the right invoice.
- Launch with a few friendly accounts first. Fix what confuses them, then open it up.
The build cost follows these choices. If you want a sense of how the base price of a store works before you add B2B rules on top, see our breakdown of WooCommerce development cost for Indian businesses.
An example: a distributor moving phone orders online
Picture a distributor of cleaning supplies serving a few hundred local shops and offices. Today, orders arrive by phone and WhatsApp, a staff member types them into billing software, and prices are negotiated account by account. Here is how that might map to a wholesale online store, as an illustration rather than a template:
- Access: the catalogue is visible to everyone so it can be found in search, but prices appear only after login. Existing customers are sent an invitation; new ones apply and are approved by the sales team.
- Pricing: three customer groups matching the price lists the business already uses, with a handful of key accounts on their own agreed prices.
- Ordering: a quick order form listing products by code, plus “order again” for repeat customers. Quantities are set in cartons.
- Payment: established accounts order on credit; new accounts pay in advance by gateway or bank transfer.
- Paperwork: GSTIN captured once on the customer account, printed on every invoice.
- Back office: at first, orders are exported daily to the billing software; a direct sync comes later if volumes justify it.
Notice what is missing: reviews, wishlists, pop-ups, a blog. These b2b ecommerce website features are chosen from how the buyers already work, and nothing is added just because a consumer store would have it.
Mistakes that put buyers off
- Prices on the site that differ from the price list. One wrong total and the buyer goes back to phoning.
- Making trade buyers browse like consumers. Large photos and long product pages slow down someone who knows exactly what they want.
- A long approval wait for new accounts. Tell applicants what happens next and when.
- Invoices without their business details. For many buyers this alone rules the site out.
- No help for the first order. A short guide or a call from your sales person turns a trial into a habit.
What to prepare before talking to a developer
- Your product list with codes, pack sizes and stock units.
- Every price list or discount rule, and which customers each applies to.
- Minimum order rules.
- Payment terms per customer type.
- What your accountant needs on the invoice.
- Any software the store must talk to, such as billing or inventory systems.
With that on paper, a developer can tell you which features are standard plugin settings and which need custom work, and the quote will reflect the difference.
If you are planning a trade or wholesale store on WooCommerce, our ecommerce website development page explains what a store build covers. Start with the people who already order from you; their habits are the best specification you will get.
Next in this series: Ecommerce Website Requirements Checklist for a New Store
