The five hidden costs of choosing the wrong B2B commerce platform

How a platform built for B2C can damage your bottom line...

Every day, manufacturers and distributors face increasing pressure to provide more powerful digital customer experiences. For most companies, the way forward is a solid B2B digital commerce platform. But the needs of B2B companies can't be met with just any ecommerce solution. Complex decision-making, large transactions, diverse stakeholders, and long sales cycles put B2B commerce in a different league altogether.

In 2024, researchers cited data in one of the first peer-reviewed studies comparing the needs of B2B commerce against those of B2C organizations, stating: "Unlike B2C commerce, B2B commerce involves longer decision-making cycles, more complex procurement processes, and multi-layered organizational hierarchies, which create additional technological and strategic challenges."

Solutions that aren't purpose-built for B2B require costly customizations to meet these needs—often imperfectly, if they ever do. And the stakes continue to rise. Analysts at Gartner predict that in 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels.

Yet the allure of B2C platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce continues to grow. As innovation from major players like Adobe, SAP and Salesforce wanes, these B2C platforms are aggressively marketing B2B capabilities that aren't fully functional. If B2B organizations believe these promises, they could soon be facing hidden expenses or, even worse, lost opportunities.

Thinking about choosing Shopify, BigCommerce, or another B2C-based solution for your B2B business? Here are five hidden (and substantial) costs to consider.

1. Significantly higher Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

According to experts at the Boston Consulting Group, choosing purpose-built B2B platforms over B2C solutions can reduce costs by 20-35% for important aspects of digital commerce like order processing.

This is largely due to the enormous number of customizations required to retrofit B2C platforms for complex B2B commerce environments. Additional expenses that contribute to higher TCO for a poor-fitting B2C solution include higher administrative overhead, additional (and often manual) maintenance, and constant tweaks to ensure even basic functionality stays on track.

Implementation times can be significantly longer as well, due to the need for extensive customization. One Gartner study reported that organizations with a composable approach to their enterprise applications outpace competition by 80% in the speed of new feature implementation.

2. Lost revenue from sub-par digital self-service

Image source: Optimizely

Today's B2B customers demand seamless, intuitive self-service experiences, making a robust digital experience a critical success factor for manufacturers and distributors. In a 2024 McKinsey report, analysts reported that over 33% of B2B buyers now prefer digital self-service or remote interactions over traditional in-person sales. And that number is growing rapidly.

Unfortunately, platforms built for simpler B2C transactions can't keep up with the volume or the quality of self-service experiences essential for B2B success. At Optimizely, we see this every day: “When B2B companies try to retrofit B2C platforms, they can experience a deadly combination of substantial missed revenue opportunities and increased customer churn. Sadly, these poor digital experiences create unhappy B2B buyers.” – Trevor Pope, Optimizely Director of Solution Architecture

3. Soaring administrative costs from poor catalog management, bad pricing models

Scaling operations with a vast product catalog, intricate pricing models, and multi-region logistics is an impossible strain for B2C-retrofitted platforms. This is a lesson many B2B companies learn the hard way. Complex B2B business requirements can overwhelm B2C solutions, resulting in soaring operational overhead.

This is not a new problem. An article in the Journal of Operations Management in 2019 noted that purpose-built B2B platforms reduce order errors by 27% compared to repurposed B2C systems. As B2B buyers preferences turn to digital, these errors can have significant financial implications as they cascade through B2B business operations, directly impacting the organization’s bottom line. "Be mindful of your business model and what your digital strategy requires. Additionally, look for providers that have a vision that matches your architectural reality." -- Forrester Principal Analyst Joe Cicman, The Forrester Wave™: Commerce Solutions for B2B, Q2 2024

4. Sky-high administrative costs from limited ERP and other system integrations

Robust integration with ERP and other backend systems is the backbone of B2B commerce. Unfortunately, platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce offer only surface-level integration, which leads to complicated manual workarounds, operational bottlenecks, and unreliable data.

In 2023, researchers in the Harvard Business Review quantified the costs to business (including lost revenue) resulting from poorly integrated systems. Coining the term “Disconnection Debt,” the researchers described the immense price that organizations pay in terms of poor business outcomes and key performance indicators.

For example, in some B2B organizations included in the study, workers were spending over 60% of their time on administrative tasks associated with a lack of system integration. Other impacts included:

• 30% slower customer service responses.
• Delays of up to 20% in vendor payments.
• 15% higher order processing times.

5. Expensive customer churn from poor digital experiences

Customer satisfaction plummets when B2B buyers encounter platforms that don't support their complex B2B commerce processes. B2B commerce relies on workflows that B2C platforms struggle to support, like customized quotes, requisitions, approvals, vendor-managed inventory, and sophisticated multi-geography sales. Without these, B2B businesses are left stitching together third-party plug-ins and integrations for essential functions.

Experts also note a growing need for sophisticated AI-led personalized experiences throughout the entire B2B customer lifecycle. Yet as a Forrester VP and Principal Analyst noted in January of 2025, only half of B2B organizations offer personalization as part of customer engagement. This gap reflects the intricate requirements of B2B workflows post-sale, an important part of B2B digital experiences that B2C solutions just don’t understand.

Across the board, statistics support the fact that manufacturers and distributors suffer when non-specialized commerce platforms are used for B2B commerce. That’s why it’s important to choose a commerce solution purpose-built for B2B.

The Optimizely Configured Commerce advantage

Image source: Optimizely

At Optimizely, the needs of our B2B customers are the heart of our solution. B2B commerce is in our DNA. It’s all we do. It’s all we’ve ever done.

Optimizely Configured Commerce eliminates these hidden costs by offering purpose-built B2B capabilities, right out of the box, including:

1. Seamless native ERP and backend integrations to eliminate manual efforts and to streamline operations.
2. Comprehensive built-in B2B capabilities that reduce dependency on third-party applications.
3. Proven scalability and flexibility designed to easily handle complex catalogs, dynamic pricing, and global logistics. Our platform adapts to your changing needs.
4. Specialized enterprise-level support precisely when and where it's needed.
5. Advanced personalization and intuitive self-service to drive customer satisfaction, decrease churn, and boost revenue.

Consistently validated by analyst reports from Forrester, Gartner and IDC as well as our own customer data, Optimizely Configured Commerce effectively resolves B2B commerce challenges while minimizing total operational costs.

Take the next step

Optimizely Configured Commerce isn't just an operational decision. It's a strategic play with profound financial implications. Avoid the pitfalls of partial solutions with a B2B ecommerce platform built for the task.

See firsthand why Optimizely is the top choice for thriving B2B commerce. Schedule your demo today.