Master Product Privacy on Your Online B2B Store with These 5 Proven Practices

Digital commerce in the post-Covid era has rapidly become the norm to complete purchases for B2B buyers.

In fact, most of them are more comfortable buying without face-to-face interaction, with 83% of B2B buyers preferring to order or pay through digital commerce, according to a Gartner survey. What's more, 70% of B2B decision-makers are open to making a remote or self-service purchase, spending $50,000 or more in one transaction.

So, how wholesalers set up their stores and present products to buyers is critical for engaging them, creating an excellent customer experience, and turning them into repeat customers.

But how can you create this seamless experience for buyers when you also need to adhere to any special commercial agreements you have with them or when you want to offer tailored deals to them? The answer is simple: nailing product privacy options on the B2B eCommerce platform.

And we know it: mastering product privacy can be tricky and requires careful planning. So, below, we present how to make the most by limiting access to your products on your online B2B store.

Why should you consider limiting access to products on your B2B store?

For several reasons, wholesalers and brands may limit access to specific products on their online B2B store. So, if you can’t decide why you should consider product privacy, you should contemplate the benefits below.

Optimize customer segmentation

Each customer has different needs and purchasing patterns. Creating privacy groups and allowing access to certain products to specific customers lets you segment your client base easily and effectively. For example, when logging into your store, customers can see certain products and tailored offerings most relevant to their preferences or order history.

Also, you can create groups for customers who share the same experience on your online B2B store. Perhaps you have a group of buyers who should all share access to an exclusive group of products. Eventually, learning how to group customers together and manage their privacy is a crucial step to ensure that this experience remains intact.

Sell products exclusively to specific customers

Some brands create a sense of exclusivity for specific customers to drive up their value perception by limiting access to particular products. At the same time, many wholesalers strike commercial deals with customers to sell certain products or brands only to them. In this respect, product privacy can help you manage these exclusive accounts easily. At the same time, it enhances customer experience when these clients order through your online B2B store.

Personalize customers’ buying experience

You can customize product suggestions for buyers based on their specific needs and preferences by toggling with product privacy. This can lead to more tailored and efficient B2B relationships with them and, ultimately, a better customer experience.

Monitor inventory levels

Limiting access to certain products or categories can help you manage your inventory more effectively. For instance, you can improve your daily operations simply by allocating limited quantities of certain products to specific customers or regions for distribution.

Supercharge product offers

Controlling product privacy allows you to elevate and implement successful and compelling offers to your clientele. For example, provide exclusive discounts to some customers or restrict their access to offers for specific product categories or individual items.

Manage compliance

Some industries have regulatory requirements or restrictions on selling certain products (e.g., in specific regions). Limited access helps ensure you fully comply with all regulations when trading these products through your online B2B store. In addition, implementing different product privacy options can enhance security by protecting sensitive information and preventing unauthorized access to individual products or entire categories that may have restricted use or distribution, such as alcohol or pharmaceutical supplements.

5 top practices to manage product privacy on your online B2B store

To help you get the hang of how you can manage product privacy, we’ve asked our top support experts to share the best practices to do so on your wholesale eCommerce platform, with each serving a different case and strategy.

1. Grant exclusive access to individual products or product categories

Sometimes, certain products or categories need the velvet rope treatment. You can control exclusivity efficiently and roll out the red carpet for top-notch customers by limiting access to specific products, product categories, or brands.

For example, let’s say you have a customer to whom you solely sell a product or a line of products. You can allow access to these items only to this customer by making them private only for them. This way, you can safeguard limited editions, keep certain products under wraps, or gatekeep certain products for handpicked clients quickly, efficiently, and with more flexibility than creating a privacy group and then assigning them to products.

2. Craft unique customer experiences with privacy groups

What happens if you need to grant access to products and categories for more than a couple of customers? You can create your own “club memberships” by establishing privacy groups so that select customers belonging to these groups can only access certain products or categories.

For example, you can grant access to a privacy group at the category level to buyers so you can better control which ones can view and purchase the products included in it.

Let’s say your business sells coffee blends and beverages, and you’re looking to introduce a new line of tantalizing low-alcohol coffee cocktails. However, due to regulatory restrictions in some countries, you cannot offer this option to your entire clientele. In this case, you can create a privacy group and include only the customers who are allowed to purchase and import this product. Then, you can make this product category visible exclusively to this privacy group.

3. Implement tiered access levels

Privacy groups are your key to mastering access control as they let you better control access to specific products and handle product management impeccably. This feature is convenient when you want specific products to be visible only to particular groups of customers, such as companies or users within these companies.

For instance, you can use tiered access levels to curate your entire product catalog based on which users should be able to access specific products through your online B2B store. In this case, you could create different tiers of access (e.g., Unlimited access, Standard access, Limited Access), populate these with users, and assign them to specific products and categories.

4. Configure customer rewards

You can create multiple tiers of access based on customer types, such as distributors, retailers, or preferred customers, to give each of them different offers. By doing so, you’ll be able to quickly and simultaneously manage access to products or entire categories for more than one user.

Let’s say you want to reward customers based on the average order value. You can create different privacy groups (e.g., Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze) and create different sets of privileges for each group, such as unique discounts or special products. Instead of treating clients with a “one-size-fits-all” approach, you can manage product privacy to offer each customer group a personalized and targeted buying experience.

5. Limit access to products and categories selectively

You can enhance product privacy by selectively blocking access to specific products or categories for certain customers or privacy groups if this restriction is unique to them. This enables precise control over what individual users or privacy groups can view, access, and order on your B2B eCommerce platform without impacting or disrupting access for other customers.

Imagine you run an online wholesale platform that sells phones and accessories to retailers. However, you have a high-end model unsuitable for a specific retailer as they sell affordable phone options. In this scenario, you can easily hide this model from the particular retailer by blocking their access to this product.

Making sure you’ve got product restrictions just right

Whether you’re curating exclusive offerings, tailoring access through privacy groups, or crafting multi-tiered access levels, nailing down product privacy is paramount for your digital storefront. Here are a couple of tips to ensure that the privacy options you’ve introduced are implemented correctly:

• Step into your customers’ shoes. Use the “impersonate customer” functionality to view your storefront as specific customers. Ultimately, you want to confirm that the customer can access products based on the access limitations you’ve applied to them, whether that’s a specific privacy group or individual product visibility.
• Harness the power of import/export functions to allow or block access to products en masse or bulk-assign customers to privacy groups. This will make your catalog and customer management less complicated and more efficient.

Final words

Limiting access to specific products or categories in a B2B online store can supercharge your product management, enhance customer experience, and even foster repeat business when executed thoughtfully and strategically.

Eventually, it’s essential to take some time to optimize your product privacy strategy and decide how to manage access on your B2B eCommerce platform best, whether that’s on an individual product or category level or at the customer level.

And if you’re looking to experiment with these privacy options, schedule a demo with B2B Wave today to check our compelling product privacy features.