Buyer Expectations

What B2B buyers want from a manufacturer portal

B2B buyers want the operational visibility your reps already have: their own price, real stock by location, where the order is, and what they owe. The research is consistent on this, and it's also consistent on something less comfortable. When self-service falls short, buyers don't complain. They phone your competitor.

Ask a manufacturer what buyers want online and the answer is usually a better catalogue. Ask the buyers and you get something more mundane and more operational. They want to know their price, whether the thing is actually in stock, where their order is, and what's outstanding on their account. The gap between those two answers explains a lot of underused portals.

Buyers want to serve themselves, and they still want your reps

Two findings from the same Gartner research program look contradictory until you read them properly. In a survey of 646 B2B buyers fielded in late 2025, 67% said they prefer a rep-free experience for at least part of their purchase. In a companion release, 69% said they turn to sales reps to validate AI-generated insights.

Both are true, and together they're the most useful thing in the research. Buyers want autonomy on routine, repeatable work and a knowledgeable human on consequential, ambiguous work. Gartner's Robert Blaisdell put it directly: a preference for digital self-service isn't a signal that sellers matter less, it's a signal that sellers need to show up differently.

McKinsey's 2026 B2B Pulse, covering nearly 4,000 decision-makers across 13 countries, found buyers now use roughly 10 channels across a single buying journey, and that comfort with large online orders keeps climbing: 73% are now willing to place orders above $50,000 online, up from 59% in 2022. McKinsey's own summary is that omnichannel has stopped being a differentiator and become an assumption.

What they rank first is not what gets built first

This is the finding most likely to change a roadmap. When Distribution Strategy Group asked end customers to rank what mattered on a distributor's website, the top capability was viewing order status, including tracking shipments. More than half also wanted invoice copies, past orders, returns, and the ability to turn a past quote into an order.

In other words, the highest-value features are account self-service, not product discovery. In a repeat-purchase relationship the buyer already knows the part number. They're logging in to find out where it is. Build order visibility and reorder before you build a beautiful catalogue, and adoption arrives sooner.

Accuracy is the feature they judge you on

Buyers are unsentimental about data quality. In Sana Commerce's 2025 buyer research of 750 professional buyers at manufacturers, retailers, wholesalers, and distributors, 85% said outdated systems and inaccurate data created significant barriers, and 75% said the experience was enough to make them consider switching suppliers. Their single biggest frustration was a lack of transparency around stock and delivery dates.

The same research found that a third of online B2B orders in 2025 contained errors, and that the error rate itself discouraged 68% of buyers from using online ordering at all. A portal that shows stock it can't ship, or a price the invoice later contradicts, does more damage than no portal. Buyers extend trust once and withdraw it permanently.

When self-service fails, they don't complain

The failure mode isn't a support ticket. Research from Channel Marketing Group and BigCommerce covering 345 industrial buyers and contractors found that 65% had bought online in 2025, up from 45% in 2018, but the report's sharpest line is about what happens next: when ecommerce tools fall short, buyers fall back on phone calls, texts, or in-person visits.

That fallback is expensive twice over. The call lands on a rep or a customer service representative who re-keys the order, and the buyer quietly concludes the portal doesn't work. The same research found 58% of industrial purchases now happen outside traditional distributor relationships, which is what switching looks like in aggregate.

McKinsey's 2026 wave is precise about why buyers leave. Inconsistent information across teams was the top reason for switching suppliers, followed by not being able to reach a knowledgeable representative, with gaps in cross-channel order tracking third. Its conclusion is worth quoting plainly: falling short doesn't merely limit upside, it invites churn.

What this means for your portal

The research converges on a short brief, and none of it requires a redesign.

1. Show their price, not a price – Customer-specific and contract pricing has to render per buyer. A public price with a note to call for terms tells the buyer this isn't for them.
2. Show real availability – Stock by location, tied to what you'd actually commit to ship. Approximate availability is worse than none, because buyers act on it.
3. Show where the order is – Status and tracking, without a phone call. This is the top-ranked capability in the research and it's usually sitting in the ERP already.
4. Make reordering trivial – Purchase history, saved lists, and repeat-order in a couple of clicks. McKinsey's buyer research found only 15% of buyers want to talk to a salesperson when repurchasing the exact same product.
5. Open the account – Invoices, balances, and payment status. Accounts payable teams are portal users too, and they're the ones chasing your customer service team.

Reordering a roadmap around those five is cheaper than most manufacturers expect, because the data already exists. The work is exposing it accurately. What a portal needs to include covers the capability list in more detail, and the rollout piece covers how to launch it without the sales team pushing back.

If you want a read on where your own experience breaks down, start a conversation.

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