Six symptoms of poor B2B ecommerce performance

When a B2B Ecommerce channel starts to underperform, the warning signs are usually visible long before the numbers start to collapse. Low adoption, spiralling costs, or sluggish performance often indicate deeper, structural issues that need addressing fast. These are some of the most common symptoms we see, and the root causes that typically sit behind them.

1. Low customer adoption

Causes: Low adoption or engagement can be caused by poor UX (you didn’t understand the customers’ needs or behaviour when you built the channel), low trust/messy or complex buying journeys; missing features (catalogue, pricing, quoting, contract management and pricing, approval flows), or poor performance (speed, stock level visibility, payment options). Poor marketing and a passive rollout can also be to blame for low adoption. There may have been a ‘build it and they will come’ mentality meaning customers were never asked what they wanted or were left without a clear adoption plan.

2. High cost of maintenance

Causes: Rocketing maintenance costs and high levels of technical debt frequently emerge from custom or bespoke platforms or retrofitted B2C systems full of workarounds; lack of modularity/flexibility/agility; multi-point integrations (with ERP, CRM, PIM, WMS, logistics etc); and high effort overhead for managing content/ product/pricing/promotions, etc.

3. Fragmented systems

Causes: Along with siloed data caused by customer, inventory, orders and product data all in different systems with no unified view/multiple duplications, fragmented systems will result in an inconsistent experience across channels (store, online etc); inability to offer personalisation or tracking, etc.

4. Poor organisation and cultural alignment

Causes: Where digital is not accepted as core; there is a lack of tracking and reporting of success; no senior level ownership; front-line teams not aligned or bought in; skills gaps; change fear and resistance; lack of customer feedback visibility.

5. Scalability, performance, or security features missing

Causes: Platform was not built or selected to scale; age of platform; limitations of performance; strategic ambition wider than original scope (new markets or channels now leaning on platform); platform is too expensive to keep secure (resulting in needing to be turned off or so stripped back that it offers no value to users).

6. Poor measurement

Causes: KPIs wrong (focus on sales not profitability, LTV, retention, cost to serve etc); lack of customer voice; slow iteration of data; pilots left too long without scaling; emphasis on reactive not strategic change over time.

This article is serialised from our ebook: Why your ecommerce is not scaling. You can read the full ebook here 👇