B2B e-merchants must raise their game

In the literature of innovation, 3M’s Post-it notes are regularly cited as an example of a great company making the most of a serendipitous innovation. The glue 3M’s Dr Spencer Silver found in 1968 didn’t stick things together permanently, but by 1980 the application of that faulty glue to pads of paper proved to be a market smash throughout the US.

What a pity, then, that e-commerce web sites selling office supplies – a staple, if you’ll forgive me, of B2B transactions – aren’t dignified by the 3M spirit in innovation. For although companies such as Staples, Viking, Corporate Express and Ryman have made squillions from selling desk accessories over the web, their UK sites are far from innovative.

They sell lists and tick boxes. There is no sense of today’s aural and visual IT landscape. There are no three-dimensional visualisations of products. Office Depot is the only site I can find that uses human faces to try to add some movement to the, uh, stationery.

Back in 2001, I took to the pages of IT Week to defend what were then called B2B exchanges from the attentions of state regulators. I said that emerging exchanges for metals and chemicals had plenty of potential for innovation – and for cost savings. But in 2007, B2B e-commerce, in office supplies at least, has not realised that potential. The majority approach is mostly that of the bargain basement, and never that of the savvy Web 2.0 operator.

Here’s what online retailers of faintly boring B2B products should do instead, if they want to raise margins and make a graceful exit from price wars and price cartels.

Start telling a more thematic story with your B2B media. Link your design and product rankings more to current affairs, popular moods, dates. Make a narrative of great innovations and history-making innovators around particular products.

Hire the very best writing, design and software staff. Copywriting excellence will add to margins. So will the astute use of colour.

Each web page must be an event, not a list. You need to make the news. Take a forensic approach to shopping carts, online payment and customer complaints, and make every keystroke count.

Take inspiration not just from Google, but Autonomy and other firms in enterprise search. Expect customers to want your search engines to configure themselves, automatically and very rapidly, to the way they want to search.

Stay close to the customer, but not too close. Your own ideas in presentation and transaction are the most important thing. Third-party opinions, comment, a strong editorial point of view and, above all, imagination – these will make you stand out from the B2B crowd.