From Offline to Online: Manufacturer’s Roadmap to B2B Ecommerce Website Development

You know your industry inside out. You’ve built strong relationships, fine-tuned your operations, and mastered the art of manufacturing. 

But now, customers are changing how they buy, and the pressure to go digital is real.

Shifting from offline sales to B2B ecommerce isn’t just a website upgrade. It’s a fundamental business transformation, and one misstep could throw everything off balance.

The thing is, you don’t have to figure it out alone! At Elogic, we’ve spent over a decade helping manufacturers make the transition—building ecommerce solutions for manufacturers that integrate with ERP systems, allow for bulk orders, and accommodate growth.

This B2B ecommerce guide cuts through the confusion. We’ll debunk common fears, walk you through B2B ecommerce development, and show you exactly how to build, launch, and scale your store—without disrupting your business.

5 Biggest Myths of Manufacturers Moving Online—And Why You Can’t Afford to Wait Anymore

If you’re still taking orders over the phone, juggling email chains, and flipping through paper catalogs, you’re not alone. It’s how B2B manufacturing has worked for decades. But here’s the thing—your buyers have moved on.

Millennials and Gen Z have taken the lead in decision-making positions, making up 67% of buyers overseeing B2B purchases exceeding $1 million. They are now driving B2B sales, expecting seamless, self-service ordering. Distributors are launching ecommerce stores. Competitors are automating bulk pricing and RFQs.

The longer you wait, the harder it gets to catch up.

Still not convinced? Let’s break down the biggest myths stopping manufacturers from making the shift—and why they don’t hold up anymore.

Read more: RFP for Ecommerce Website: Hunting Out the Best Vendor to Replatform 

Our customers prefer face-to-face interactions

Face-to-face interactions once dominated B2B manufacturing, that’s true, but buying behavior has shifted. 71% of B2B buyers are Millennials and Gen Z, with over half relying on external sources for research and decisions. They expect fast, frictionless transactions—not phone calls or endless email chains. In fact, 44% of millennial B2B buyers prefer no sales interaction at all!

Ecommerce for manufacturers doesn’t replace these valuable relationships. It removes friction and offers buyers the 24/7 self-service, real-time pricing, and easy reordering they seek. 

Industrial ecommerce doesn’t eliminate sales teams. It lets them focus on high-value deals, while a B2B ecommerce solution for manufacturing handles routine orders.

We have complex pricing & bulk orders—ecommerce can’t handle that

B2B pricing is rarely one-size-fits-all. You have tiered discounts, negotiated contracts, volume pricing, and RFQs (Request for Quote)—things that most B2C ecommerce platforms aren’t built to support.

But here’s the thing: manufacturing ecommerce platforms are designed for this exact complexity. Solutions like Adobe Commerce (Magento), Salesforce Commerce Cloud, BigCommerce B2B Edition, and Shopify Plus offer:

• Custom pricing for different customer groups
• Automated bulk discounts based on order volume
• RFQ functionality for negotiated pricing

Our ERP & inventory systems aren’t built for ecommerce

If you’ve spent years fine-tuning your ERP and inventory systems, the idea of ripping them apart for an online store sounds like a nightmare. The good news? You don’t have to.

Modern B2B ecommerce development allows seamless integration with your existing infrastructure. Whether you’re running SAP, NetSuite, or Microsoft Dynamics, a well-built B2B ecommerce solution for manufacturing syncs stock levels, pricing, and order history automatically. 

With no more duplicate data entry, you drastically reduce the chance of inventory mismatches or pricing errors.

And the impact is real—manufacturers that integrate ERP with ecommerce reduce order processing times by up to 30%. Faster fulfillment leads to fewer delays, smoother operations, and a buying experience that keeps customers coming back. 

Ecommerce is too expensive & complicated

Yes, B2B ecommerce website development comes with a price tag. Costs depend on platform choice, ERP integration, custom features, and ongoing maintenance. 

But here’s the real question: Can you afford not to go online? 

The answer is “no”—for two main reasons:

1. You’re losing customers who expect ecommerce. As we established earlier in the article, 75% of B2B product purchases are made online, and modern B2B manufacturing buyers want self-service. If they can’t place an order instantly, they’ll find a competitor who makes it easier.
2. Running an offline sales operation is expensive. And it’s only going to get even more expensive. Printing catalogs, paying sales reps to travel, and managing manual orders all add up. 

As for complexity? Yeah, B2B ecommerce development requires a lot of skill. 

But that’s where we come in. 
At Elogic, we’ve been building ecommerce platforms for manufacturers since 2009. Our team knows the challenges of B2B ecommerce inside out—from integrating ERPs to handling complex pricing structures.

A basic website is enough

A simple website with a contact form isn’t ecommerce for manufacturing. If your buyers still have to email or call for pricing, availability, or placing orders, you’re forcing them through unnecessary friction.

Real B2B ecommerce means:

• Secure customer logins with personalized pricing
• Self-service ordering and reordering
• Live inventory and automated fulfillment

Industrial buyers spend 70% of the buying process researching online before even talking to sales. If your competitors offer easy online purchasing and you don’t, you’re making it easy for them to win.

Looking to learn more about the benefits of B2B ecommerce for manufacturers? Check out our guide! 

Case Study – How Wexon Overcame These Same Fears & Scaled Their B2B Ecommerce

Like many manufacturers, Wexon was hesitant to embrace B2B ecommerce. The company had long relied on traditional sales methods and believed in the industry myths we discussed earlier—concerns that stalled their digital transformation for years.

Yet, Wexon took the leap. And when they finally made the move, the transition was far smoother than expected! With Elogic’s B2B ecommerce development experts, they built a robust ecommerce platform for manufacturers on Magento 2, transforming their online catalog into a fully functional B2B ecommerce site in just a few months.

With Epicor ERP and a custom PIM integration, they automated pricing, streamlined inventory management, and gave customers full visibility into their order history—whether placed online or offline. The results? Faster processing, increased efficiency, and a smoother buying experience.

Their success didn’t go unnoticed. SoloTop, Wexon’s subsidiary, followed suit. They too partnered with Elogic, launching a Magento 2-powered B2B ecommerce solution with ERP integration and a custom PIM system. The project was delivered with 125% accuracy, no overhead costs, and zero missed deadlines.

By embracing ecommerce for manufacturers, both companies overcame the B2B ecommerce challenges and set a new industry standard.

Curious how they made the leap from offline sales to a fully functional B2B manufacturing website? Up next: the exact roadmap you can follow.

How to Build a B2B Ecommerce Store for Manufacturers: A Step-by-Step Roadmap

Going digital means more than just putting products online. Your B2B ecommerce store needs to work for your customers, integrate with your existing systems, and drive real growth. And yes, it can feel overwhelming at first.

To make the transition easier, we’ve taken our years of expertise in B2B ecommerce website development and built a B2B ecommerce development roadmap that lays out every step—clear, actionable, no guesswork.

Define your ecommerce strategy before touching any tech

Jumping into B2B ecommerce development without a clear strategy is like assembling a machine without instructions—frustrating, inefficient, and bound to cause problems. Your ecommerce platform needs to fit your manufacturing workflows, not the other way around.

Here’s just a fraction of the factors shaping a manufacturing ecommerce strategy:

• Who’s buying, and how? Are you selling to distributors, wholesalers, or direct customers? Each group has different ordering habits. If most of your buyers reorder the same products frequently, your site should make that process seamless with saved order lists and quick reordering.
• How complex is your pricing? B2B ecommerce for manufacturers means handling tiered pricing, bulk discounts, and negotiated contracts. If your customers see the wrong price, they’ll pick up the phone—and you’ll lose the efficiency ecommerce is supposed to bring.
• Does it integrate with your ERP? If your ecommerce platform for manufacturers doesn’t sync with your ERP and inventory system, you’ll be stuck updating stock levels and pricing manually. That’s a B2B ecommerce challenge you don’t want.
• Is your product data clean? Messy or inconsistent product info slows down purchases. A PIM system keeps everything—descriptions, specs, SKUs—organized and up to date, so customers always find what they need.
• How does your sales team fit in? Ecommerce isn’t here to replace your reps. It should help them close more deals. Let the site handle routine orders while your sales team focuses on high-value accounts.

A well-planned B2B ecommerce website development strategy sets you up for long-term success. Nail this first step, and everything else—site design, integrations, customer experience—falls into place.

Prepare your requirements

Your B2B ecommerce strategy is the foundation for everything that follows. Once you’ve defined your customer needs, pricing structure, and sales workflows, the next step is translating that strategy into a clear list of ecommerce website requirements.

A well-defined requirements list ensures your B2B ecommerce website development aligns with business objectives and avoids costly rework. Here’s what manufacturers need to focus on:

• Third-party integrations: Your ecommerce platform for manufacturers must sync with ERP (Epicor, SAP, NetSuite), PIM systems, CRM, and CPQ tools. This ensures real-time inventory updates, automated pricing, and streamlined quote approvals for complex B2B sales. 
• Mobile-friendliness: 80% of B2B buyers use mobile at work, and over 60% say it influenced a recent purchase. Your site needs responsive design, touch-friendly navigation, and a seamless mobile checkout experience to keep up with buyer expectations.
• Product attributes: Manufacturing catalogs include technical specifications, safety data sheets, certifications, and even 3D models. A structured PIM system ensures all this information is easily searchable and up to date.
• Order and checkout flow: B2B buyers expect bulk ordering, one-click reordering, saved carts, and multiple payment options (purchase orders, credit lines, invoicing). Your checkout process must support negotiated contracts, RFQs, and tax-exempt purchases.

As well as functional requirements, there are also a few non-functional aspects that you need to account for:

• Usability: Complex products require a simple interface. Your site should have intuitive search filters, advanced faceted navigation, and a customer dashboard for order tracking and invoices.
• Security: B2B transactions involve large orders and sensitive pricing agreements. SSL encryption, role-based access controls, and fraud prevention tools keep data secure.
• Performance: Fast load times reduce cart abandonment. Optimize the performance of your site to ensure it handles large product catalogs efficiently.
• Maintainability: A scalable, modular architecture ensures future updates (new integrations, product lines, or regions) won’t require a full rebuild.
• Scalability: As your B2B sales grow, your site must handle increasing SKUs, complex pricing rules, and expanding distributor networks without performance issues.

Learn more about B2B ecommerce trends and strategies in our guide to know all about what’s in. 

Choose your B2B ecommerce platform

The success of your B2B ecommerce website development depends on choosing a platform that meets your manufacturing-specific needs. 

Without a clear strategy, you risk selecting a platform that can’t scale, lacks essential B2B features, or requires costly workarounds. 

That’s why the requirements you defined in the previous step are key—they help you shortlist the right ecommerce platform for manufacturers without wasting time or budget on the wrong fit.

Let’s look at how some of the most popular ecommerce platforms for manufacturers compare against each other:

Platform	Best for	Pros	Cons
Adobe Commerce (Magento)	Manufacturers with complex pricing and integrations	Highly customizable, ERP/PIM-friendly, B2B features	Requires development expertise, higher maintenance
BigCommerce B2B Edition	Mid-sized manufacturers wanting a scalable, SaaS-based solution	Built-in B2B tools, easy setup, lower maintenance	Less flexible for deep customization
Shopify Plus	Manufacturers selling both B2B and B2C	Fast deployment, user-friendly, good for hybrid selling	Limited B2B pricing features

Set up custom pricing, bulk orders & product catalogs

Your B2B ecommerce store should do the heavy lifting, automating complex pricing, simplifying bulk orders, and structuring product catalogs for technical buyers. Done right, it speeds up sales, improves accuracy, and keeps customers coming back.

To set up custom pricing, bulk orders and product catalogs, you need to…

1. Segment customers by pricing tiers: Offer wholesale discounts, contract-based pricing, or region-specific rates based on account type.
2. Enable RFQs for large orders: Some customers need a quote before purchasing. An RFQ system lets buyers submit inquiries and receive automated or manual price adjustments.
3. Support bulk ordering and reordering: B2B buyers rarely purchase single units. Allow quick bulk selection, pre-saved order lists, and CSV uploads to speed up repeat purchases.
4. Automate dynamic pricing rules: Set volume-based discounts, seasonal pricing, and contract-specific rates without manual updates.
5. Organize a manufacturing-focused product catalog: Unlike B2C, B2B product pages need technical specs, CAD files, compliance certificates, and compatibility details to guide buyers through complex purchases.

Setting it all up c requires advanced configuration within your ecommerce platform. Some solutions offer built-in B2B features (like Magento’s custom price lists and BigCommerce B2B Edition’s tiered pricing), while others need custom development. 

The best approach? Delegate it to experienced B2B ecommerce web developers like the team at Elogic—ensuring a store that works exactly as your buyers expect!

Integrate with ERP, PIM & other backend systems 

If your B2B ecommerce platform for manufacturers isn’t integrated, you’re adding work, not reducing it. Manual stock updates, pricing, and order tracking will slow you down.

That’s a B2B ecommerce challenge you don’t want.

The best ecommerce platforms for manufacturers offer integration with the following critical manufacturing software:

• ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning): Automates orders, inventory, and invoicing by syncing real-time data across systems (Epicor, SAP, NetSuite).
• PIM (Product Information Management):  Centralizes SKUs, descriptions, certifications, and CAD files to keep product data accurate and up to date.
• CRM (Customer Relationship Management): Tracks leads, customer interactions, and abandoned quotes to improve sales follow-ups (Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics).
• CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) systems: Automates pricing calculations and quote generation, eliminating manual back-and-forth.
• Accounting and tax software: Syncs invoices, tax calculations, and payments with QuickBooks, Avalara, TaxJar.
• Shipping and logistics: Provides real-time shipping rates, tracking, and automated fulfillment via UPS, FedEx, DHL.

To get the integration right, you need to identify which systems need to talk to each other and what data should sync automatically (e.g., pricing, inventory, customer history).

Pro tip: Choose an ecommerce platform for manufacturers with robust APIs for smooth integration.

Optimize performance, scalability & security

A B2B ecommerce platform for manufacturers must handle heavy workloads, scale with business growth, and protect sensitive transactions. You’ve already defined these as key requirements—now, here’s how to implement them.

For speed and reliability, caching is key. Use Varnish cache, Redis, or Fastly to keep load times fast, even with massive product catalogs. Optimizing database queries and enabling asynchronous processing prevents slowdowns when handling bulk orders. Compressing images and CAD files with WebP, lazy loading, and a CDN ensures that technical buyers get the information they need without waiting.

Scalability starts with the right infrastructure:

• Cloud hosting on AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure allows your site to scale automatically with demand. 
• A modular, headless architecture makes it easy to add new features—like multi-warehouse inventory or AI-driven pricing—without a complete rebuild. 
• Load balancing ensures traffic is evenly distributed.
• ERP and PIM synchronization keeps product data and stock levels updated in real time.

Security is non-negotiable. Enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) to prevent unauthorized access, and use role-based access control (RBAC) to protect sensitive pricing and order data. Firewalls and DDoS protection (Cloudflare, AWS Shield) keep your site online, while PCI-DSS-compliant payment gateways (Stripe, Adyen) safeguard transactions with encryption.

Train your sales team 

Moving from offline sales to B2B ecommerce for manufacturers is a mindset shift too. Sales reps who thrived on in-person deals and phone calls now need to adapt to digital tools, online customer interactions, and hybrid selling.

The challenge? Many sales teams see ecommerce as competition rather than an opportunity. In reality, ecommerce makes their job easier by automating routine orders, freeing them up to focus on high-value deals, custom contracts, and strategic account management.

To get your team on board, you can try the following:

• Show them the benefits: Highlight how ecommerce reduces admin work, speeds up order processing, and increases overall sales by offering self-service options for repeat buyers.
• Train them on the platform: Ensure they understand how to navigate customer accounts, assist with online orders, and leverage CRM & ERP data to personalize sales conversations.
• Use ecommerce to support hybrid selling: Encourage reps to use digital tools like live chat, video calls, and RFQ tracking to stay connected with buyers.

You can also incentivize the transition to ecommerce for manufacturers by setting up commission structures that include ecommerce sales. 

For example, if a buyer reorders online, the rep who nurtured the account should still get credit.

Launch, optimize & scale

Before launch, test everything—bulk orders, RFQs, pricing, ERP syncs, and mobile functionality. A broken checkout or missing integration can cost you sales. Train your team, get sales reps comfortable with the platform, and set up a plan to handle customer questions early on.

After launch, track buyer behavior: 

• Are they abandoning carts? 
• Do they struggle to find product specs? 

Use Google Analytics, heatmaps, and customer feedback to spot friction points. If some customers still prefer email orders, consider a punchout catalog or procurement platform integration.

Your B2B ecommerce platform for manufacturers should grow with your business. Scale with AI-driven pricing, marketplace integrations, and multi-warehouse fulfillment. As sales increase, invest in load balancing, CDN expansion, and ERP upgrades to keep operations smooth.

Afterthought

Sticking to offline sales isn’t just inefficient—it’s no longer an option. Your buyers expect digital ordering, automated bulk pricing, ERP integration, and a seamless self-service experience. Without it, you risk losing them to competitors who make purchasing easier. The question isn’t should you transition, but how to do it without disrupting your business.

Yes, the process can feel overwhelming—choosing the right platform, setting up custom pricing, integrating backend systems, optimizing for performance, and training your sales team. 

But you don’t have to go through it alone. 

At Elogic, we’ve helped manufacturers like Wexon and SoloTop tackle these exact challenges—building scalable, high-performing B2B ecommerce solutions designed for growth.