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Quick Summary: Are you planning to develop a B2B portal and looking for more information? You’ve landed in the right place. This article will give deep insights into this topic. Check out the development process, key features, tech stack, cost, and details delineated in this article.
B2B enterprises face unique challenges and complexities that require innovative solutions. Among these challenges is one which requires you to manage the intricate relationships between businesses.
The adoption of digitalization can solve these challenges.
And here comes the role of B2B portal development. A business-to-business portal connects two or more enterprises to exchange information, buy or sell services/products, and share resources. It serves as a reliable solution to receive or offer value to businesses.
However, developing a B2B portal is no easy feat. You need to build just the perfect platform that can enhance operational efficiency, minimize costs, and facilitate seamless communication between enterprises.
This article provides all the information you need to build B2B portals. It covers the benefits of such digital platforms, key features, and other crucial information. Keep reading to learn more.
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B2B portal development involves creating a custom business-to-business platform that facilitates communication and trade among businesses. A B2B portal or B2B web portal is an online platform that allows the exchange of information or products/services among enterprises. It serves as a medium for different business entities.
The use of such digital platforms among businesses is increasing. Convenient, swift, and secure services make them a prominent choice for B2B deals. As per Gartner’s report, by 2025, 80% of B2B interactions will occur through digital channels.
A good example of web portals for B2B is Alibaba. Today, it’s among the most popular B2B platforms that businesses use to sell or purchase a wide range of products. It helps businesses find the right suppliers, customers, or partners.
Developing a B2B portal solution revolutionizes the way diverse businesses connect, collaborate, and transact. It bridges the gap between them and offers a go-to platform for conducting deals. Such a platform benefits businesses in many ways.
Let’s see all the benefits of B2B Portal Development given below.
Businesses get a convenient and user-friendly interface with a B2B portal to interact with customers and suppliers. In addition, various features like order history, personalized catalog, quick ordering, and more enhance the overall experience.
A B2B portal enables businesses to reach a wider network of customers, suppliers, and partners. Consequently, it offers ample opportunities for business expansion.
Another advantage of a B2B portal is the personalized experience. It helps offer a tailored experience for every business through a customized interface and options.
Developing a business-to-business portal helps automate manual processes that lead to efficiency and reduced costs. For example, inventory management can be automated to minimize efforts and costs.
Easy scalability is another benefit of a custom B2B web portal. It allows organizations to upscale their operations without investing in additional resources.
You must consider various features to make the right business-to-business portal that resonates with its users. The following are some essential B2B portal features that you should consider for your project.
Admin Features
End User Features
Developing a business-to-business web portal is a multi-tier process with a unique set of tools, methods, and requirements. Seamless execution of each process is pivotal for a successful project. The development takes place in the following stages.
This is the first step in developing B2B portals. It is the research and development stage that includes assessing key aspects of the project, such as requirements, competition, opportunities, market, etc. It aims to provide a roadmap for subsequent stages.
Apart from this, it also includes sessions of brainstorming and a provisional plan to achieve the desired goals.
It is a concerted effort that turns abstract information into realistic designs. This means that the information collected from R&D and stakeholders is utilized to craft mockups that mimic the functionality and behavior of the portal.
Design is essential in B2B web portal development because it provides a quick overview of the product. It allows stakeholders to check the feasibility of the solution.
The next stage is development, which is the longest one in the process of developing web solutions. It involves transforming the designs into a real solution.
At this stage, coding is done iteratively, which could be 2-4 weeks long, subject to the scope of the project. Developers create components of your B2B portal, set up APIs, build user interfaces, and put other things together for a functional web portal.
Development involves two aspects:
QA or Quality Assurance is a vital post-development phase. It involves various steps and methods to evaluate web portals and verify that they do what they are supposed to. The main objective of this stage is to find bugs and improve performance. Different tests are performed, like functional, performance, feasibility, and security.
After passing a thorough testing process, the portal is deployed to make it available to the end users. The portal can be deployed to on-premises or cloud platforms based on your preferences in backend development.
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There can be different challenges when creating a B2B web portal. However, you can overcome these challenges with the right approach to development. The tips mentioned below can help to help you build a robust solution.
1. Follow Principles
There must be a standardized way to write code and build a B2B web portal to ensure the best quality. This is where software design principles play a crucial role. You must follow these principles when developing a B2B platform.
The following are the principles you must follow.
2. Usability is Key
When it comes to developing a B2B portal, you should follow a user-centered approach. For this, build a positive user experience that defines how users feel when engaging with the portal. Make sure to build a simple yet attractive user interface that offers a smooth user journey. Add features that really resonate with the end users.
3. Prioritize Security
With the rising concerns of cybersecurity risks, securing your digital solutions has become of utmost importance. As per an IBM report, the average cost of a data breach is US$4.45 million. It shows the grave consequences of security breaches. You must adopt the latest security protocols along with encryption, SSL, strong access control, multi-factor authentication, and more.
4. Make It Future-Proof
Technology is continuously evolving. Plus, new trends and standards also emerge frequently. Hence, your portal should be resilient to these transitions to make it future-proof. In this regard, you must choose a flexible architecture that easily accommodates changes, build the portal with the latest trends in mind, and choose a suitable tech stack.
Choosing the right technology stack is vital for building scalable and reliable web portals. There are different technologies each with their own merits and demerits. However, making a choice can be difficult when there are diverse web development tech stacks.
Worry not! We have mentioned a stack of the best technologies that you can use to build top-notch B2B portals.
Front-end
Backend
Databases
Cloud Platforms
The cost of creating a custom B2B portal depends on many factors, such as project complexity, team composition, delivery timeline, and more. So, there is no fixed amount for the cost. However, you can get estimates by evaluating these factors. For example, the location of the development team has a significant impact on the cost. Let’s find out how.
Here is the table with average hourly rates for different regions/countries.
Region/Country | Hourly Rates |
---|---|
USA | $120 - $150 |
UK | $80 - $100 |
Western Europe | $60 - $80 |
Australia | $90 - $120 |
India | $30 - $60 |
The below table shows the average hours spent on various phases in B2B portal development.
Phase | Time (in approx. hours) |
---|---|
UI/UX Design and Frontend | 160 |
Backend | 480 |
Integrations (like payment gateway, ERP, CRM) | 120 |
Interactive Interface (like dashboard) | 200 |
Quality Assurance | 240 |
Total | 1200 |
The cost of a custom B2B web portal depends on the hourly rates of the development team you choose, and the total hours spent on it. So, if we look at the tables above, we can find out that the cost of developing a B2B portal can be $144,000 or more in the USA. Similarly, you can find estimated costs for different regions/countries.
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To Wrap UpB2B portals have become quite popular these days due to immense business opportunities in this domain. Consequently, many entrepreneurs are eager to make investments in such platforms. However, making a B2B portal requires technical expertise, experience, and good knowledge of the industry.You can rely on a tech partner like us to develop an innovative B2B web portal. We provide top-notch development services and use cutting-edge technologies. We offer standards-compliant web portal development for B2B models while ensuring optimal performance, functionality, and scalability.Reach out to us to know more about how we can help you!
Bhadresh is a senior technocrat and works as a Project Domineer for Radixweb. He is an AWS certified solution engineer with 12 years of experience. He specializes in technologies like ReactJs, NodeJs, AngularJs and has driven successful projects with clean code architecture, PgSql database system and REST architecture for the web.
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