How to Create a B2B Wholesale Website in WordPress

Do you want to create a B2B wholesale website? To get started with your business, you can use WordPress and create a top-notch wholesale website. You don’t even need to know coding. WordPress lets you create and launch a modern and functional website within minutes. You can create your wholesale website with the help of a good e-commerce theme and plugins.

If you want to know how to create a wholesale website in WordPress, this article will be the complete guide. Creating a wholesale website in WordPress is simple if you have the right tools. It’s a good practice to follow a proper guide when building your website.

In this article, we’ll discuss several important features of a wholesale website. We’ll also explain how to create a wholesale website in WordPress. But we won’t be discussing the business strategies such as how to look for partners, setting up MVP, how to create RFP, etc. We’ll learn the technical aspects of building a wholesale website in WordPress. So let’s get started!

What is a wholesale website?

If we are to build a wholesale website we need to first understand what a wholesale website is. A wholesale website is an e-commerce website where businesses sell their products to other businesses in bulk. Websites like Alibaba, SaleHoo, The Wholesaler, etc. are some examples of wholesale sites.

Sometimes, a wholesale website is described as a B2B site. Although both are similar, there is a fundamental difference. A B2B website is a place where businesses sell their products or services to other businesses. Again, wholesale is a type of B2B transaction where businesses sell their products in bulk at a discount. 

So a B2B website can be a wholesale website if it allows businesses to sell their products and services in bulk and at a discount.

A wholesale website is an e-commerce website with a bunch of B2B features. Here are some common features of a wholesale website:

• Bulk order form: In a wholesale or a B2B site, buyers order products in bulk. So there should be a bulk order system to facilitate this action.
• Customer accounts and management: Robust and user-friendly customer account pages are essential to any wholesale eCommerce website.
• Different price tiers: When a buyer is selling a product in bulk, there should also be different price tiers for specified quantities. This will allow the buyers to provide discount when the item is ordered in bulk.
• Access restriction: A B2B site has different kinds of users. You will have B2B users as well as guests. A good B2B site should be able to restrict access to prices and products for certain kinds of users.
• User groups: As we discussed in the previous point, there will be many groups of users. A wholesale or B2B site should have proper ways to create user groups.
• Reporting and analytics: Wholesale eCommerce platforms should provide detailed reporting and analytics to help wholesalers track their sales and inventory.

These are some of the features that you can commonly expect from a wholesale website. You also need a fast and reliable hosting plan so that you’re buyers won’t face any issues with the website. Also having a beautifully designed website will enhance the wholesale experience.

So you need to pick a good domain-and-hosting service along with a modern designed theme for your wholesale website. This will give your buyers a good experience and will help you build trust.

Getting your website ready

Using WordPress to build a website is easy. If you use the right plugins and theme, you can easily create your dream website. For a B2B site you need to get a good domain hosting plan first. Then you need to setup your WordPress site. If you have a good hosting partner, you can ask them to setup your WordPress site for you.

After you have your WordPress site up and running, you need to get a theme. For themes, you can use any popular eCommerce theme. In this tutorial, we’ve used the Kadence theme. You can use that as well as Kadence is very popular. After that, you need to get a wholesale or a B2B plugin, and some other necessary plugins.

We’ll go through each step of creating a wholesale website in WordPress. We’ll try to keep it as simple as we can. So follow the below steps to build your wholesale site.

Get a good domain and hosting partner

You can build your website in localhost. But sooner or later you need to transfer it from localhost to live server. For that, you need to look for a good domain and hosting partner. There are several WordPress domain hosting services that you can look for. Some popular hosting services for WordPress are:

• Hostinger
• HostGator
• Bluehost
• WP Engine

Sure there are cheap domain hosting services that you can choose. But later on, you may face several unwanted issues like down times, slow website loading, server errors, and much more. To avoid these choose a reputed hosting partner.

The next step is to install your WordPress site on your server. If you have experience with the cPanel, you can install your WordPress in several ways. You can use Softaculous to install your WordPress site. Alternatively you can ask your hosting partner to install your WordPress site. After you get your WordPress site up and running, move onto the next step.

Installing theme and plugins

Now that you have a WordPress website, you can start building your wholesale site. First, we’ll need to install a theme. Your WordPress website needs a theme to run. By default you’ll have the Twenty Twenty-Four theme (depends on which version of WordPress you’re using) installed. 

Installing the Kadence theme

We’re going to use Kadence for this tutorial. From your WordPress Dashboard, simply go to Appearance > Themes and click on the “Add New” button. Now look for Kadence from the list below. Kadence is usually around the top. If you’re having difficulty, you can search for it via the search bar.

After you install and activate the theme, you should see a notification on top asking you to install Kadence Starter Templates. This is a plugin that works alongside the theme. It allows you to browse and import starter sites for Kadence.

If you don’t see the notification, you can go to Plugins > Add New and search for “Kadence Starter Templates” plugin. Install and activate the plugin.

After you install and activate the plugin, you can access the starter sites from Apperance > Starter Templates. This new option will appear right below Kadence. Click on it and choose a good eCommerce starter template for your site.

You can select the page builder you prefer from the top right corner of the screen. We prefer using Gutenberg, but if you love using Elementor, you can choose that as well. From the tags, you can select E-commerce so only the eCommerce starter site designs will be displayed. For our tutorial, we’re selecting the Wooden Craft template.

After you select a starter template, click on the “Full Site” button to import the full site. You do have the option to import a particular page also. Again, you can choose a particular color pattern for your starter site.

Once you’re done importing a starter site, you can check out your site. The importer should also import all the necessary plugins. If you’ve imported an eCommerce site, you should see WooCommerce installed as well.

Installing WholeSaleX

To turn your eCommerce site into a wholesale business, you can use a plugin called WholesaleX. This plugin allows you to build a B2B or a B2B+B2C hybrid marketplace.

👉 Get WholeSaleX Plugin (On SALE)!
🎉 Use coupon code WPGIZ10 for exclusive discount! 🔥

So download, install, and activate WholesaleX on your site. Then carry on.

How to create a wholesale website

We have our WordPress website online, our theme installed, and our wholesale plugin installed, we’re ready to start working on our website.

Create products or set up shop

Now that we have everything installed, we need some products to get started. With our starter site, we already got a bunch of products. If you don’t have any products, you can create it by going to Products from your dashboard and clicking on the “Add New” button.

Here you can add in your product name, description, image, image gallery, pricing, etc. You might also notice the wholesale options in the product data. But don’t worry about that now, let’s just create some products to get started.

WholesaleX general settings

After setting up your product data, we also need to go through WholesaleX settings. From your WordPress dashboard go to WholesaleX > Settings. Click on the first tab General Settings. In the first option, you can choose the type of wholesale site you want. You can create:

• B2B
• B2C
• B2B & B2C Hybrid site 

Select the type of site you want. The next option says Show Tired Pricing Table which is something we want. So enable it. There are some more options to go through, but if you’re unsure, you can come back to these settings later on.

Create different user types

A wholesale website has various user types such as B2B user, B2C user, Guest, etc. You need to have different price tiers for different user roles. To create different user groups, go to WholesaleX > User Roles. From here click on Add New B2B Role. Now name your B2B user role and look at the settings below.

In the Display Prices section, you can choose to include tax, exclude tax, or the default option. Then you can choose a shipping method (which needs to be created first) from the dropdown. You can check the next two options below but we won’t need it right now.

Click the Save button once you’re done. That’s how you can create different user roles. To assign a user role, go to Users from your WordPress dashboard and edit a user. Then from the profile, scroll down to find the WholesaleX user settings. From the dropdown, choose a B2B role for that particular user.

After you’re done, save your changes.

Setting up wholesale pricing

After adding your product, in the General tab of the product data section, you can set different price tiers for different users. Just click the Add Price Tier button and it will reveal 3 fields. First, you can choose from 3 different discount types:

• Discount amount
• Discount percentage
• Fixed Price

We’re choosing the discount percentage as it suits our needs. After that, you can choose the B2B User price followed by the minimum quantity. In this way, you can add multiple price tiers for multiple user roles.

After you’re done click on “Update” or “Publish” to save your changes. Now if you go to the frontend, and select this particular product, you should see the multiple price tiers.

That is how you can set up multiple price tiers for your products.

👉 Get WholeSaleX Plugin (On SALE)!
🎉 Use coupon code WPGIZ10 for exclusive discount! 🔥

Hiding the price for guests (logged out visitors)

Another feature of a wholesale site is to hide the price of the products from guests or unregistered users. To do this, we have to go back to WholesaleX settings. From the WholesaleX settings, click on the Price tab and hide the wholesale price for logged out users. See the screenshot below for more details.

After that, click the Save Changes button. Now if you log out of your WordPress dashboard, or visit the website in a private browser you’ll see the changes.

Adding a bulk order form

A wholesale buyer is most likely to order products in bulk. For that purpose, you need a bulk order form. WholesaleX has a bunch of add-ons you can use. From your WordPress dashboard, go to WholesaleX > Addons and enable the Bulk Order Form addon.

Now we’ll see a new tab in the WholesaleX settings. So go back to WholesaleX settings and click on the new Bulk Order Form tab. Here you can go through the bulk order form settings. But after you’re done, copy the bulk order form shortcode.

Now we have to paste in our shortcode where we want to show that form. Edit any page where you want to add the shortcode, or simply create a new page. To do this, go to Pages > Add New from your WordPress dashboard. Give your page a name. Then click on the + button to open up your Gutenberg block list. From here choose the shortcode block and add in your shortcode.

After you paste your shortcode, publish or update the page. Now view the page and you should see the bulk order form.

Now your buyers have a section where they can order products in bulk!

Adding Request a Quote button

It is also normal for a buyer to request a custom quote for products. Having this option on your wholesale site will be convenient for the buyers. WholesaleX has an addon for this purpose. So go to WholesaleX > Addons from your WordPress dashboard and enable this addon.

With this addon enabled, customers can request a quote during checkout.

Buyer registration

As we discussed earlier, a B2B site might have multiple groups of users. If you’re creating your B2B site you must ensure there are proper registration forms for the buyers. WholesaleX gives you the option to customize your registration form. From your WordPress dashboard, go to WholesaleX > Registration Form. Here you can add new fields, customize fields, arrange the order of the fields, etc.

After you’re done editing your form, you can click on the Get Shortcodes button to copy the shortcodes of different forms.

You can get a shortcode for a specific user group. In that case, the form will not have any selection field (for selecting which user group the user wants to register as).

After you copy the shortcode, go to the Accounts page which is located in the Pages section of your WordPress dashboard. This page is created when you import a theme or install and activate the WooCommerce plugin. If you don’t see this page, you can create one yourself. 

Edit this page and add the Shortcode Gutenberg block. Now paste the shortcode and Publish or Update the page. Now to view this form, you have to log out of your WordPress dashboard. Alternatively, you can also view the page URL in a private browser.

In the screenshot above, we’ve used the Global registration form shortcode. That’s why we can see the selection field where users can select which group they want to register for.

You can remove the WooCommerce registration form shortcode after adding in the WholesaleX form. Now buyers can register and select their role when creating their account.

Conversation

You can also add a B2B conversation feature. This comes in handy if a buyer has some inquiry or just wants to communicate with another buyer. This is also an addon, so you must enable the Conversation addon from WholesaleX > Addons.

After you enable this addon, buyers will have the conversation tab added to their dashboard. To see if for yourself, you can visit your account page. If you’ve imported the same theme as us, you might not find the page on the main menu. To locate the account page, visit Pages from the WordPress dashboard.

When you’re logged into your WordPress admin account, you should see the wholesale options on your account page. From here you can choose the Conversation tab. Here the buyers can select the type of message (Inquiry or message), title, and their message. When they hit the “Start Conversation” button, the other buyer who is registered on your website will see it on their dashboard. That is how the conversation mechanism of WholesaleX works.

👉 Get WholeSaleX Plugin (On SALE)!
🎉 Use coupon code WPGIZ10 for exclusive discount! 🔥

Conclusion

Creating a wholesale website with WordPress and WholesaleX is easy. WholesaleX gives you so many features to set up your B2B site. In this article, we’ve discussed some of the most important wholesale features that you need on your website. Of course, there is so much more to discuss. But this will only lengthen our post. 

You should take some time to explore the different features of this plugin and see what other options there are. You can experiment with the conversation, bulk order form, pricing, access restriction, contact form, and many more features.

So keep experimenting. Try out different tactics for your site and you’ll be on your way to becoming a successful business owner!