Ecommerce B2B vs B2C product display

Question

I sell salt for customers and businesses.

Customers can buy the product in single packages or packages in a box (e.g. Box of 12).

Businesses can buy the same product, however they do not come in packages, but in huge drums for them to use as an ingredient or repackage under a different brand.

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My question is:

Is it better to group all these size options (packages / boxes / drums) within the same Product Detail page (since they are essentially the same product).

Or is it better to create a "Wholesale" category, with the products repeated but shown as drums in the images?

Keep in mind, packages are designed and have identity to them, easily recognizable by the user in the Product Listings page. The drums... not so much, they would all be brown drums or photos of different types of salt with no clear visual differentiation.

Thanks

Answer 1

Visual merchandising plays an important part in ecommerce; however having worked in online grocery, a lot of our customers (B2C) had trouble gauging size/quantity by product image alone - unfortunately we learnt from several rounds of eye tracking that customers rarely checked product details to confirm their initial understanding and ordered by image alone.

With this in mind, and despite the unappealing product imagery, I would sway towards separate product listings for the wholesale variants in this instance.

If possible, you could consider adding an example of the retail packaging onto the product image so at least it added a small variety to the drum imagery.

To separate further, you could look at introducing a filter for wholesale (which you may wish to explore defaulting to hide wholesale goods depending on your demographic split), but you would have to test this to see how it resonates with your customer split.

Hope this helps!