Industrial ecommerce works when the catalogue, the commercial rules and the customer relationship are ready for it.
We handle industrial B2B ecommerce development for manufacturers and distributors: technical product discovery, account-specific pricing and terms, request-for-quote routes, reordering from history, and the integrations that keep prices, stock and order status accurate. Where the sales process is better served by a structured enquiry than by a checkout, we build that instead.
The difference between industrial commerce and consumer commerce sits below the surface. A trade buyer arrives knowing the part number, expects their contract price, orders in pack multiples and needs the datasheet and the certificate attached to the same record. Building for that buyer starts with the product data and the ERP, not with the storefront theme.
Industrial products need filtering by technical attribute, compatibility and accessory logic, account pricing, volume breaks, lead-time visibility and, often, a technical check before an order is accepted. We design the journey around those realities, combining catalogue, account services and quotation where the portfolio calls for it.
Search deserves particular attention. A trade buyer typically arrives with a partial or slightly wrong reference, a competitor part number or a specification rather than a product name, so industrial B2B ecommerce development has to cover tolerant search, cross-reference tables and attribute-based product finders before it covers merchandising.
Product data, customer accounts, prices, stock, orders and fulfilment information each need a clear owner. We define the integration model and the operational process before the front end makes promises the back office cannot keep, and we write down which system wins when two disagree.
In most industrial estates that means the ERP owns references, pricing, availability and credit status, the PIM owns attributes, media and document links, and the platform owns content, journeys and account preferences. Getting that boundary explicit early is what keeps the storefront from drifting into a second, unmaintained product database.
Industrial catalogues carry restrictions that have to be enforced by the platform rather than by a policy document: export-control classifications, dangerous-goods and transport limits, products approved for sale in some markets and not others, and categories that may only be supplied to a qualified trade account.
We implement those rules exactly as your compliance and commercial teams define them, applied at the data level so an order that should not be placed cannot be placed, and so the same rule governs search results, pricing display and checkout rather than being applied at only one of the three.
Code Industrial is the industrial B2B practice of Code Barcelona, an agency building corporate websites and digital platforms since 2015. The same strategy, design and engineering team works on every industrial project, from the first scoping session through to life after launch.
B2B ordering and consumer checkout share little beyond the transaction. Industrial B2B ecommerce development starts with the buyer, the account model and the product data.
What comes up before building a commerce or ordering platform.
It is right when customers can reliably discover, price and order at least part of the range online. Many manufacturers benefit from a blended model: catalogue research and specification for the engineered products, online ordering for spares, consumables and standard references, and a structured quotation route for everything that needs commercial review. Starting with the simple part of the range is usually a faster path to real usage than waiting until the whole portfolio can be transacted.
Yes. Customer-specific pricing, contract prices, discount matrices, volume breaks, payment terms, credit limits and ordering permissions normally come from the ERP or a related commercial system. We define authentication, account structure and data ownership before designing the storefront, so the buying experience reflects the commercial model rather than working around it. Multi-user accounts with approval limits, common in larger customers, are designed in at the same stage.
Through direct integration with the ERP, which should remain the single source of truth for both. Manually maintained pricing on a B2B storefront diverges from the ERP within weeks of launch, and every divergence becomes a commercial dispute with a customer who ordered at one price and was invoiced at another. Synchronising the two removes that failure point instead of managing it afterwards, and we agree refresh frequency against how quickly your prices and stock move in practice.
Yes, and for most industrial ranges that mix is the correct answer. Standard references with a published price can be ordered directly, while configured, project or high-value items are added to a quote that goes to the internal sales desk. The important detail is that both routes share one basket, one account and one order history, so the customer sees a single relationship rather than two disconnected systems.
Attributes, media, datasheets, drawings, declarations of conformity and safety data normally live in a PIM or document system and are published to the storefront rather than re-entered in it. That keeps one revision current everywhere and lets attribute filters, comparison tables and product finders be built from structured values instead of free text. Where no PIM exists, we scope a structured product repository inside the platform and design it so it can be handed to a PIM later.
Yes. Market and language are modelled as attributes of the catalogue and the account, which allows availability, pricing, units of measure, certification documents, delivery terms and legal content to differ by country from one platform. That is usually cheaper to run and better for search visibility than separate storefronts per market, provided hreflang, currency and stock logic are designed at the start rather than added once three markets are already live.
Budget for three continuing costs: hosting and platform maintenance, the integration layer between the site and the ERP or PIM, and the commercial time spent operating the storefront day to day. The integration is the one most often underestimated, because ERP upgrades and process changes reach it eventually. We set out those costs during scoping so the business case is built on total cost of ownership rather than on the build price alone.
Commerce work almost always arrives with portal and integration requirements. These are the services it sits with.
Tell us how customers find, specify, quote and order from you today, and which systems hold the product and pricing data. We will assess the commerce, portal and integration model that fits the business.