What Building Materials Buyers Actually Expect from Your Digital Experience

How dissatisfied are buyers with the current digital experience?

The expectations bar has moved. Features that were differentiators two years ago are now table stakes — especially in construction ecommerce and building materials ecommerce.

MDM's 2025 B2B buyer research found that:

• 67% of buyers make at least half their purchases online.

• 83% expect that number to increase.

• 45% remain dissatisfied with their current experience.

Sana Commerce puts the frustration figure even higher:

• 85% of B2B buyers report problems ordering online.

• 75% are willing to switch suppliers because of it.

Read those data points together. Most buyers are already purchasing through ecommerce for construction materials.

Most of them are unhappy with the experience. And three-quarters are willing to leave over it. That is simultaneously a threat and an opportunity.

In construction material ecommerce, the distributor who closes the experience gap does not just retain customers — they attract the ones leaving everyone else.

Why is personalisation expected but rarely delivered?

Buyers expect a personalised buying experience — contract pricing, trade-relevant catalogues, reorder lists that remember what they buy. Too often, their last online experience in construction ecommerce falls short of that expectation.

That gap between expectation and delivery is where competitors win.

Personalisation in building materials ecommerce does not mean product recommendations like a retail website. It means the framing contractor sees their negotiated price — not a generic list. It means the plumbing subcontractor's saved order list reflects what they actually buy, not a catalogue of 40,000 SKUs they will never touch. It means the procurement manager at a national builder sees their organisation's credit terms, approval workflows, and purchase order history — not a consumer checkout page.

For distributors operating in B2B building materials, this level of personalisation is not a differentiator. It is foundational. A modern building materials ecommerce platform must reflect how B2B customers actually purchase, with account-specific pricing, approvals, and workflows built in.

This is not a technology wish list. It is what buyers already expect based on their experience with every other digital platform they use, from Amazon Business to their banking app. The bar was not set by your competitors. It was set by every other digital experience your buyer has in a day.

What does self-service actually mean in building materials?

Self-service in construction materials ecommerce does not mean removing the sales rep. It means removing friction from routine transactions.

Forrester data confirms 71% of current B2B buyers are millennials or Gen Z. Meanwhile, BigCommerce’s 2025 Industrial Buyer Report found that 18.6% of buyers explicitly purchase online to avoid talking to a salesperson, and 24.4% use SMS to place orders.

This is not anti-relationship. It is pro-efficiency.

Buyers still value expertise when the situation calls for it — a complex takeoff, a substitution decision when a product is backordered, a new project with unusual specs. For those moments, they want a knowledgeable rep. For routine reorders in B2B construction materials, they want speed.

The distributor who forces every transaction through a phone call or an email is not providing better service. They are providing slower service and calling it a relationship.

Ask yourself: how many of the calls your counter team handles each day are truly complex? And how many are a contractor asking, “Do you have it, and what’s my price?”

If the second category is larger, your team is spending their expertise on tasks a modern ecommerce website for building materials should handle.

Why is mobile no longer optional?

When 48% of buyers order from their vehicles and many more from job sites, a platform that requires pinch-and-zoom or loads slowly on a cellular connection is creating friction at the exact moment a buyer is ready to purchase.

BigCommerce’s 2025 Industrial Buyer Report found that buyers place orders from their office (74%), from their vehicle (48%), from job sites, and from home. Many of those environments mean a phone screen, intermittent connectivity, and a buyer who has about 90 seconds between tasks to get the order placed.

In ecommerce for construction and broader ecommerce for building supply, mobile performance is not a design preference. It is a revenue decision.

Every order that fails to load on a phone screen is an order that either does not happen — or happens through a competitor, a B2B marketplace construction site, or a digital-first distributor optimised for ecommerce construction.

Construction ecommerce only drives real business impact when it works wherever the buyer works.

How does BigCommerce deliver the experience buyers expect?

Everything in this article points to one operational question: does your digital platform match what your buyers now take for granted in ecommerce for construction?

BigCommerce is designed to close the expectations gap:

• Customer-specific pricing and catalogues: Delivering the personalisation modern B2B buyers expect. Each buyer sees their contracted price, relevant product catalogue, and order history — not a generic storefront. This is how distributors operating in B2B commerce for construction machinery and broader building supply environments translate digital investment into competitive advantage.

• Saved lists and quick reorder: Serving the self-service expectation by letting contractors rebuild last week's order in seconds, not minutes. For buyers who prefer to avoid a phone call for routine purchases, this is the feature that keeps them within your ecosystem instead of pushing them to Amazon Business or a B2B marketplace construction competitor.

• Mobile-responsive design: Meeting buyers where they work with a fast, functional experience that performs on a phone screen with limited connectivity. Pages load. Buttons are tappable. Checkout does not require a desktop. This is where the construction ecommerce benefits business — by capturing revenue at the moment of need.

• Multi-user accounts with role-based permissions: Supporting procurement workflows common in B2B construction materials and larger commercial projects. The buyer submits, the manager approves, and the order flows through — no email chains, no phone calls to confirm authorisation. This is foundational to effective B2B sales management construction ecommerce.

• Self-service account management: letting buyers access invoices, order history, tracking information, and payment options without calling your office. This is no longer advanced functionality. It is baseline capability in modern ecommerce construction.

Distributors that invest in digital customer engagement tools now will be better positioned to navigate pricing pressure, supply volatility, and rising buyer expectations. The issue is not just customer experience. It is market share. And the window to treat it as optional has closed.

The final word

If you want to know whether your digital experience is keeping up, start with these five questions:

• Pull up your website on your phone and try to place an order from a parking lot. If it takes more than 90 seconds, you are losing mobile orders.

• Ask your three biggest accounts what they wish they could do online that they currently have to call about. The answers will prioritise your roadmap faster than any consultant.

• Measure the personalisation gap. Does your platform show contract pricing to logged-in accounts? Do buyers see relevant products, or do they see everything?

• Audit your self-service capabilities. Can a buyer check an invoice, track an order, and reorder last week's delivery without calling anyone? If not, you are below the baseline buyers now expect.

• Compare your experience to Grainger’s. That is your benchmark, whether you like it or not. Your buyers are already making that comparison every time they log in.

The buyers have already changed what they expect. They did not ask for permission, and they are not going to wait. The only open question is whether your digital experience has kept up — or whether you are training them, one frustrating session at a time, to buy from someone who has.

If you're ready to close the gap, request a demo and see how BigCommerce helps building supply and construction businesses deliver the experience today’s buyers expect.