As we step into 2025, it’s time to set new goals and strategies for your business. For wholesale distributors, enhancing or implementing eCommerce solutions is likely a top priority. Whether launching your first online storefront or upgrading your existing eCommerce platform, your website must deliver value and engagement to meet customer and business expectations.

A successful B2B eCommerce site needs regular evaluation and improvement to ensure it provides customers with seamless access to information, purchasing options, and business engagement. High-performing sites—what we call “self-service machines”—include these key features:

• Intuitive search tools to find products quickly
• Seamless ERP integration for real-time pricing and availability
• B2B-specific tools like RFQ systems, product configurators, and mobile apps
• Personalized product recommendations based on buying behavior
• Flexible purchasing options, including punchout capabilities
• Account management portals for order tracking, invoice payments, and more

These functionalities represent the minimum standard for B2B eCommerce in today’s market. In our Strategy Guide to Maximize Digital Commerce Success, we characterize this type of eCommerce site as a Level 3 offering on the Digital Commerce Maturity Model – an eCommerce roadmap that helps you assess where your current site stands relative to others in your market and, more importantly, show you what’s possible to achieve in the B2B marketplace.

2025 eCommerce Trends Every Distributor Should Embrace

Staying ahead of eCommerce trends is essential for distributors to remain competitive. Below are the top five trends shaping the B2B eCommerce landscape in 2025:

1. AI-Driven Personalization

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to transform the B2B buying experience. With generative AI (GenAI), businesses can deliver hyper-personalized shopping experiences by analyzing user behavior and creating custom content at scale. GenAI tools like ChatGPT or Claude optimize product descriptions, enhance visuals, and boost SEO rankings to attract more buyers.

These tools also automate tasks, freeing up your team to focus on customer interactions that require a human touch. Check out our recent webinar, Strategies, Insights, and AI Tools to Optimize Your Product Content for eCommerce Success, that demonstrates different tactics and AI tools you can use to optimize your product content.

2. Self-Service eCommerce

B2B customers aren’t looking to replace distributor salespeople but want the ability to handle more research, price comparisons, and standard purchases independently. The solution? Self-service eCommerce. With a growing demand for hybrid shopping, companies now offer self-service features alongside easy access to representatives when needed.

One of the most popular self-service features is a dashboard or portal that gives registered customers secure access to their order history, order status, invoices, and saved products for easy reordering.For organizations with multiple purchasers, tools for managing user access, approval workflows, and punchout capabilities are critical for better spending control.

Another self-service function customers want is instant access to product information like manuals, MSDS sheets, and user videos to see a product’s specifications, confirm its installation, and determine if it is right for their application.After hours, buyers expect virtual assistants to answer product questions. Self-service is about providing resources and ordering capabilities in one convenient place, making it a vital part of a customer-first digital model that all distributors should embrace.

Explore more in our white paper: Position Your Company as a Customer Resource.

3. Mobile-First Digital Experiences

McKinsey & Company says mobile use for B2B ordering increased 250% between 2020 and 2022 – thanks to the 2020 pandemic preventing many in-person sales. Today, mobile shopping continues to gain traction as the technology becomes more powerful and B2B buyers realize the convenience it provides while on the road or at a job site. To cater to the growing number of B2B customers who prefer mobile buying, your digital strategy should include a mobile-first approach – a concept that takes into consideration the size limits of building a superior user experience on a small mobile screen before designing your desktop or laptop experience.

If you already have an eCommerce site built, your mobile site should be designed to look and function the same as your website to create a unified experience across your digital channels. A website built with a responsive design ensures consistency and usability on a mobile device, while a native mobile app provides advanced functionality by utilizing mobile-specific features.

Discover the benefits of mobile commerce in our blog: Leverage Mobile eCommerce as Part of Your B2B Digital Strategy.

4. Subscription-Based Commerce Models

With the advent of cloud-based eCommerce platforms offered as a subscription program, small-to-medium size wholesale distributors and manufacturers can now afford to enter the digital marketplace where they can grow their brand and their revenue. Built on the premise of convenience, customization, and continuity, software-as-a-service (SaaS) eCommerce solutions provide B2B companies with a scalable and flexible eCommerce platform at a lower monthly fee than traditional open-source, on-premise eCommerce solutions. In addition to an affordable monthly subscription fee, SaaS eCommerce platforms save businesses costly hardware and maintenance expenses, as the provider hosts the platform remotely and performs all maintenance off-site, meaning minimal disruption or downtime.

For distributors who struggle to curate and maintain quality product content, there are also product content subscription programs that give companies access to enriched product content for their market vertical which they can use across their digital sales channels, including their eCommerce site. With a tier-based cost structure, distributors only pay for what they need, making the program an economical way to enhance and expand their online product catalog.

5. Integrated Product Content and Commerce

Creating seamless integration between your Commerce site, product catalog, and business systems is critical to distributor success in 2025 because it’s connectivity that fuels the effectiveness of the other four trends we just discussed. Complete system integration fosters an omnichannel experience with real-time data synchronization so your customers see consistent messaging, promotions, product information, and pricing across all touchpoints during their buying journey with you. Research by Forrester found that B2B buyers use more than 10 channels throughout their buying journey, and 65% of those buyers said if their experience across these channels isn’t seamless, they would switch vendors.

How do you implement total connectivity between your sales channels and business systems? By investing in a B2B connected product content and eCommerce platform that is specifically designed to integrate with your ERP, payment gateways, shipping carriers, buying tools, social platforms, and more.

As digital natives continue to move into B2B decision-making roles, an omnichannel business is the most effective way to meet their expectations, best serve them, and remain competitive in the marketplace. Learn how to achieve total integration in our white paper: Your Next Initiative: Building an Omnichannel Business.

Take Your B2B eCommerce to the Next Level

2025 presents endless opportunities for distributors to refine their digital strategies and deliver exceptional customer experiences. At Unilog, we empower businesses with our CX1 Platform, a suite of connected product content and commerce solutions designed to:

• Boost engagement
• Build loyalty
• Drive revenue

Request a demo today to see how Unilog can help you stay ahead of the competition.