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Increase Sales With Advanced Sample Order Magento Extension

Mohan Natarajan
July 6, 2016 |

William Ford Gibson , an American and Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist, said ‘The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed’. B2C eCommerce business is already here and is the norm now. B2B eCommerce , many times bigger than B2C, is catching up – fast.

B2B – The Future is Happening Now

Forrester estimates that B2B eCommerce will top $1.1 trillion and account for 12.1% of all B2B sales in the US by 2020. Leading-edge B2B companies are using eCommerce platforms to transform the way they do business. The internet provides a powerful platform for conveying information, conducting transactions, delivering innovative services, and build in close customer relationships.

According to Kenneth Laudon and Carol Guercio Traver , in their book, “E-commerce – Business.Technology.Society – Eleventh Edition”, there are seven steps in eCommerce procurement process – Search, Qualify, Negotiate, Purchase Order, Invoicing, Shipping, Remittance Payment.

Providing product samples during the “Search and Qualify” process is one of the ways to make the buyer more confident.

 Benefits of providing product samples for B2B

Magento – A Pioneer in B2B

Magento, a leader in B2C digital commerce, is also a pioneer in B2B. Magento has been named the top eCommerce platform on the inaugural Internet Retailer B2B eCommerce 300 guide, with 41 merchants that list Magento as their eCommerce platform.

Magento has many in-built features that help collaborate between the buyer and the seller reducing the sales cycle. Apart from the above native features, there are extensions that help make the procurement process easier for the B2B buyers.

Extensions Born Out of Experience

For DCKAP, it has been a great learning experience implementing challenging B2B projects for customers in the US. The extensions team has ‘productized’ these experiences in the form of B2B extensions.

One of the frequent requests from B2B sellers is that – ‘Is there a way to provide buyers with product samples before they made a bulk purchase’?

DCKAP addressed this B2B specific need by developing the module ‘Sample Request for B2B’ which helps to request a sample from the seller. The buyer can request the product sample by selecting the “Request Sample” option in the product detail page and requesting the specific product with the necessary information.

The Next Step – Advanced Sample Orders Extension 

In ‘Sample Request for B2B’ the request for ‘sample’ cannot be made along with ‘regular’ orders.

But there was a need for processing ‘sample’ products along with ‘regular’ orders.

After studying the buying behavior of B2B buyers, the team came up with ‘Advanced Sample Orders’ extension that allowed buyers to order sample products prior to bulk procurement.

Here, the ‘sample’ product is treated and processed like a ‘regular’ product. This means that the buyer can add the ‘sample’ product to the cart and checkout like a ‘regular’ product. It is also possible to check out the ‘regular’ products along with the ‘sample’ products.

Sample Order Ext-Image

Advanced Sample Order Extension – A Partial List of Features
  • The administrator can restrict ordering samples to specific products / customer groups.
  • Allows the seller to configure the prices for a sample product both at the product level & general level.
  • Different prices can be given to samples in fixed price or percentage of the regular price. For e.g., 20% of original price.
  • Allows the seller to process both sample products and regular products in a single order.
  • Allows the seller to provide free sample products.
  • Order sample product option is also available on Product Listing Page.
  • Sample products can be easily identified both in the front-end and back-end.
  • Available for Single, Configurable, Grouped and Bundle Products.

For more details on ‘Advanced Sample Orders Extension’ , please visit DCKAP STORE

Interested to know about other popular B2B extensions for your Magento Store – Read the blog – https://www.dckap.com/blog/b2b-extensions-magento-2-store/

References

Mohan Natarajan

A speaker at Imagine 2017, Mohan heads the Customer Success at DCKAP. Within a span of 7 years, Mohan has acquired all four Magento Certificates and offers impeccable knowledge in the Magento platform, and has evolved as a Solution Architect, developing a handful of Magento Extensions for numerous B2B customers. In addition to being an active member of Chennai Magento Community, he leads the Chennai Magento Meetup events. He is keen and proud to serve the eCommerce Community, thanks to his boundless expertise in the ecosystem. Furthermore, he was honored as one of the top contributors in the 2017 Magento Live India event and 2018 Meet Magento India event. Being a huge fan of the Magento Community, Mohan is glued to Twitter and LinkedIn. Loves to surf and play Table Tennis, when not working in Magento projects and managing DCKAP Store.

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