A B2B website is a site through which a company sells to other companies rather than to private customers. The buying decision is not made by one person: a procurement buyer looks for a supplier, a process engineer checks the specifications, and management weighs up the terms and the supplier's reliability. That is why a manufacturer's B2B website needs a catalogue with specifications, documents, a section on your production and a simple way to request a quote.
Below we look at what such a site consists of, when it needs online ordering at wholesale prices and a dealer portal, and when it is better to hold off on them.
What a B2B website is and how it differs from an ordinary one
An ordinary online shop is designed for a quick decision by one person: see it, put it in the basket, pay. A B2B sales website works differently. The buyer compares several suppliers, forwards links to colleagues, gathers documents and only then sends a request.
The path usually goes like this. The buyer finds you through search, opens a product page and downloads the specification. The process engineer asks about tolerances, the quality department about the certificate, and management whether you can handle the volume.
If the answers are on the site, the quote request will come from a client who has almost chosen you already. If not, you will have to answer the same questions in correspondence, or the buyer will choose the supplier whose answers they found straight away.
So a B2B website has less emotion and more facts: specifications, documents and supply terms instead of discount banners. Deals are usually closed not on the site but after a quote and negotiations. The site's job is to get the buyer to that point: answer everyone involved in the decision and not get in the way of sending a request.
Another difference is that there are several audiences: procurement buyers, prospective dealers and sometimes buyers from other countries. Each needs its own way in: the catalogue, a page for dealers, a version of the site in their language. In Uzbekistan that usually means Russian and Uzbek in the Latin script, plus English for export.
Catalogue, documents and production
These sections answer the buyer's main questions: what you make, whether you can be trusted and whether you can handle the order.
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A catalogue with specifications. Every product lists its dimensions, materials, tolerances, available versions, minimum order quantity and packaging. The buyer compares suppliers against the parameters in their technical requirements, and a catalogue of photos alone won't help them. We went through the fields a product page needs in our article on the product catalogue for procurement buyers.
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Documents and certificates. Certificates, product data sheets, specifications and drawings in PDF, right on the product page. The buyer downloads them without having to email a sales manager. Keep your company details on the site as well: buyers will need them to set you up as a supplier.
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Production. Real photos of the shop floor, equipment and finished products, not stock images. A short video from the shop floor shows more than a paragraph of text. Say where your production facility is: the buyer works out delivery from that.
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Capacity. Describe it in terms a buyer understands: whether you take on series production and one-off orders, whether you work to customer drawings, and how you check quality and pack your products.
A quote request instead of a basket
The main button on a manufacturer's website is not "Buy" but "Request a quote". It belongs on every product page, on each product line page and in the site header.
Keep the form short: product, quantity, when it's needed, a drawing file and contact details. If the request is sent from a product page, the product is filled in automatically. The sales manager will clarify the rest in conversation.
Don't make people register to send a request: a buyer who is seeing you for the first time is unlikely to create an account. Put the sales manager's phone number and Telegram next to the form — some people find it easier to call or message than to fill in fields.
What happens after the request is sent matters just as much. It should go to a specific sales manager — in the CRM or in Telegram — and the buyer should see straight away that the request has been received and when to expect a reply.
Imagine a buyer sends a request on a Friday evening to a shared inbox that gets sorted on Mondays. By then they already have replies from other suppliers, and yours arrives last, even if your offer is better. Check for yourself: send a test request from the site and see who received it and when.
B2B online shop and client portal: when you need them
A quote request is enough when every order is priced individually: for a specific drawing, volume or special terms. But if your range is stable and regular customers order the same things, the back-and-forth only slows sales down. Then you need a wholesale website with online ordering — a B2B online shop. It differs from an ordinary shop in the following ways:
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Prices depend on the buyer. Once logged in, a wholesaler, a dealer and a one-off customer each see their own prices.
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Currency. Prices are shown in the currency you trade in with that buyer — soum or dollars.
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Orders come in multiples of the pack size. The site won't accept an order for single units if you ship by the box.
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Reordering is easy. A regular customer opens a previous order and sends it again.
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Prices and stock levels are up to date. They come from your accounting system, such as 1C. We explain how this works in our article on integrating 1C with a website.
A client portal on a B2B website is the next step. You need one when you have many dealers and regular customers and they keep asking the same questions: what's my price, where's my order, please send the shipping documents. In the portal they can see all of this without picking up the phone: individual prices, order history and statuses, documents and promotional materials for dealers.
It's too early for a portal if you have only a handful of dealers and a sales manager is in touch with each of them on Telegram: nobody will use it, but it will still need maintaining. There's more on this in our article on when you actually need a customer account on your site.
B2B website examples and what to look for
Looking at other companies' B2B websites is useful; copying their design is not. Judge how well each site handles the buyer's tasks.
The easiest place to start is your own suppliers' websites: you are a buyer yourself and remember where things were convenient and where you had to pick up the phone. Don't look only at your own industry: a good request form or catalogue can be borrowed from a neighbouring one too. You can usually recognise a good example by a few signs:
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The first screen makes it clear what they make and for whom. Not "a reliable partner", but specific products and industries.
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The catalogue can be filtered by parameters. Size, material, version — the same ones as in the buyer's technical requirements.
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Documents can be downloaded without registering. The specification and certificate come straight from the product page.
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Wholesalers and dealers have their own section. Partnership terms, an application form and, if needed, a portal login.
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You can see real people. The name and Telegram of the sales manager for each product line, not just a general phone number.
Write down what you liked and check whether your site has it. And if you need new wholesale customers, add pages that match what they search for — that's covered in our article on how to find wholesale buyers and dealers through your website.
Checklist
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First screen. It makes clear what you make and for whom.
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Specifications. Every product has them in the text of its page, not just in photos.
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Documents. Certificates and specifications can be downloaded without calling a sales manager.
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Production. There is a page with real photos of the shop floor and equipment.
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Quote request. The button is on every product page, and the form accepts a drawing file.
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Ownership. Each request goes to a specific person, not just to a shared inbox.
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Wholesale terms. Minimum order quantity, delivery and how you work with dealers are set out on the site.
If you want to build a B2B website, or rework an old one so that procurement buyers send you quote requests through it, we can help with the catalogue, the quote request and the dealer portal. We describe how we do this on our B2B website development page, and what we do for manufacturers in general on the "Website for a manufacturing company" page. One example of our work is the website of BOFPCB, a printed circuit board manufacturer.