Serving both wholesale and retail customers in your WooCommerce store comes with a ton of benefits, from increased market share to improved revenue streams, among many others. And yet, it also comes with its fair share of challenges. For instance, how do you ensure you provide a tailored purchase experience for these different customer segments? One powerful way is by levaraging WooCommerce role-based pricing and payment plans.
With role-based pricing and payments, you can craft a shopping experience that meets the needs and expectations of your B2B buyers. In this guide, we’ll teach you how you can implement this strategy in your wholesale store effortlessly.
So, let’s get right into it!
Why You May Want To Set Up WooCommerce Role-Based Pricing And Payment Plans
Implementing role-based pricing is crucial if you serve different types of customers. Wholesale buyers, for instance, have different needs from retail shoppers. Due to the volume of their orders, they expect you to provide bulk discounts and flexible payment terms. By offering WooCommerce role-based pricing and payment plans, you can:
1. Tailor the purchase experience for different customer segments
A one-size-fits-all pricing model won’t work if you serve both B2B and regular customers. With WooCommerce role-based pricing, you can personalize your prices based on customer types. Depending on your desired structure, you can further segment customer roles based on order volume, frequency, or commitment level. This level of customization will help you serve your customers better, giving them rates or payment options that are in line with their purchase behaviors and loyalty.
Apart from product pricing, this advantage extends to your offered payment methods too. For instance, you may want to offer exclusive payment terms to long-term or VIP wholesale clients. With role-based pricing and payment, you can ensure only eligible customers get access to these perks and options.
2. Improve customer relationships
This is directly related to point number one. Implementing role-based pricing and payment plans is a powerful way to showcase your commitment to meeting the unique needs of your clients. Setting discounts and offering more payment terms that match their requirements makes customers feel seen and appreciated. This enhances their satisfaction with your business, potentially building trust and loyalty in the long run.
3. Streamline pricing management
Without the right tools, managing pricing and payment terms for multiple customer segments can be a real headache. With WooCommerce role-based pricing and payments, you can set up an easy, automated system that allows you to assign discounts, manage invoices, and offer payment terms effortlessly. This not only saves you time but also reduces the risk of errors and discrepancies in your pricing and payment processes, which is always good news for your business.
4. Create a competitive edge
Setting WooCommerce role-based pricing and payment plans gives your store a unique advantage over competitors who fail to offer the same options.
According to industry insights, 74% of millennial B2B buyers have switched to competitors who offer seamless payment processes that are at par with B2C transactions. This highlights the evolving expectations of B2B buyers. To stand out in today’s market, it’s crucial to give your wholesale customers the convenience and flexibility they crave when it comes to payment terms and processes.
How To Set Up WooCommerce Role-Based Pricing And Payment Plans (Step-by-Step)
Now that we’ve uncovered the advantages of offering WooCommerce role-based pricing and payment plans, let’s get into action! WooCommerce by default does not offer a functionality to create additional user roles and base prices on these roles. Fortunately, you can leverage plugins to implement this strategy effortlessly.
In this tutorial, we’ll use two powerful plugins from Wholesale Suite: Wholesale Prices Premium and Wholesale Payments. These two tools allow you to create additional wholesale user roles and set discounts, pricing, and payment plans based on these roles.
Take note that you have to install and activate both plugins to take advantage of the powerful features we’ll discuss in this tutorial. So, with that in mind, let’s dive right into the steps!
Step 1: Create additional user roles
The first thing you’ll want to do is to create additional user roles based on your current wholesale customer segments.
Wholesale Prices automatically creates an additional “Wholesale Customer” role apart from WooCommerce’s default “Customer” role. However, you may want to create more wholesale roles if you plan to tailor the purchase experience to different B2B segments. This will also allow you to provide varying prices, discounts, and payment plans to different types of wholesale customers.
To do so, navigate to Wholesale > Roles. This takes you to the Wholesale Roles page, where you can add as many new roles as you like.
To create a new role, simply enter your desired Role Name, Role Key (optional), and Description. Under Role-specific settings, you can also tick the “Prevent purchase if wholesale condition is not met” to restrict wholesale buyers from placing orders if specific rules or conditions are not satisfied.
💡 Power Tip: Before creating additional wholesale customer roles, you may want to brainstorm about how you plan to segment your customers. In our example, we used the terms Bronze, Silver, and Gold wholesale customers to indicate levels of purchase volume. However, you can use any terms or tiers you want, depending on your business requirements.
Step 2: Set WooCommerce role-based pricing
Wholesale Prices Premium allows you to set wholesale prices and discounts based on wholesale user roles in many ways. Let’s walk through the two easiest and most common ways to do this.
Setting wholesale role-based pricing on the product level
The first one is setting role-based wholesale prices on the product level. This is perfect if you want to tailor wholesale pricing only for specific offerings in your inventory.
To do this, navigate to Products > All Products, then click on “Edit” on the product you want to modify.
Then, scroll down to “Product Data”. Under General, you’ll find the option to set wholesale prices for each customer role you’ve created.
Don’t forget to save your changes by clicking “Update”.
Setting global wholesale role-based pricing discounts
Alternatively, you can set global wholesale role-based pricing. This allows you to specify a role-based percentage discount that will apply across all your product listings. This is a simpler and more convenient approach, ideal if you have an extensive inventory and want to apply fixed percentage discounts based on user roles.
To set this up, navigate to Wholesale > Settings > Wholesale Prices > Discount.
Under “General Discount”, you can map percentage-based discounts for each role. To do so, select the role, set the percentage discount you wish to offer, and click “Add Mapping.” For example:
Here’s how it will look once you’ve finished mapping out the discounts:
Important note: Wholesale Prices follow an order of precedence for discounts if you have multiple discounts set for each customer role. If you have multiple discounts configured for a customer role, the discount applied at the individual product level takes the highest priority. Learn more about how wholesale pricing works in this guide.
Step 3: Enable role-based wholesale payment plans
Now that we’ve successfully set our wholesale pricing, it’s time to set the payment plans to be enjoyed by your wholesale customers! Unlike retail shoppers, B2B typically buyers seek payment terms that better match their purchase volume. Examples include special deferred plans like NET/30/60/90, or longer installment plans.
While you need to offer these payment plans to wholesale customers, you don’t want to make them available to regular shoppers. Giving regular customers access to wholesale payment terms may cause confusion for buyers, or lead to misunderstandings.
Fortunately, you can easily enable role-based payment plans with Wholesale Payments. To do this, navigate to Wholesale > Wholesale Payments > Payment Plans.
Here, you can either enable the plugin’s pre-configured plans or create a custom payment plan for your wholesale customers. In both cases, you can restrict the accessibility of the plan based on user roles. Let’s take a look at both scenarios.
Role-based pre-configured payment plans
Wholesale Payments feature a list of pre-configured payment plans that are typically offered in the B2B world. To access your available payment plans, navigate to Wholesale > Wholesale Payments > Payment Plans.
To enable a pre-configured payment plan, simply select the plan you wish to offer, and click “Ok.”
The plan will automatically be enabled and displayed on top of the Wholesale Payment Plans page. To modify payment plan role access, click “Edit”, scroll down, and toggle “Apply payment plan restrictions” to Enabled.
This will give you the option to select the wholesale user role and specific wholesale users to the plan will be available to:
Role-based custom payment plans
If you wish to create a custom payment plan, simply click “Create a custom payment plan”.
This will take you to the Edit Payment plan page, where you can set your Plan Name, Plan Description, Breakdown, and apply role restrictions.
Wholesale Payments give you immense flexibility in modifying your payment plans. For a full tutorial on how to create your custom payment plan, check out our guide here!
In the example below, we created a payment plan that allows Gold Wholesale Customers to pay their total invoice amount in four equal installments:
So, that’s it! In this three-step tutorial, we’ve successfully set up WooCommerce role-based pricing and payment plans! With these capabilities in your WooCommerce store, you can create a tailored experience for your B2B clients and meet their expectations seamlessly.
Creating A 5-Star B2B Customer Experience With Wholesale Suite
In this tutorial, we’ve used two powerful plugins from Wholesale Suite to implement WooCommerce role-based pricing and payment plans. Just imagine how much more you can do with the entire set of plugins from Wholesale Suite:
- With Wholesale Prices Premium, you can manage wholesale prices, set wholesale discounts, create unlimited wholesale user roles, implement role-based shipping and tax settings and so much more!
- Wholesale Order Form allows you to create an intuitive one-paged bulk ordering form that makes wholesale purchases a breeze for B2B clients. With this plugin, you can create multiple order forms, make them exclusive for different customer roles, and tweak product visibility settings right within the form.
- Capture B2B leads seamlessly with Wholesale Lead Capture! This powerful tool allows you to create a user-friendly wholesale registration form to sign up wholesale customers. Automate onboarding emails, set your desired approval system, and engage leads from the get-go.
- Wholesale Payments allow you to offer flexible payment terms to B2B buyers. With this powerful tool, you can create custom payment plans, automate invoicing, and gain full visibility into outstanding balances and payments right within WooCommerce.
Wholesale Suite is tailor-made for WooCommerce wholesalers like you. Our collection of four plugins integrates seamlessly with each other, allowing you to create a seamless B2B purchase experience from start to finish.
Conclusion
One way to enhance the wholesale customer experience is by implementing WooCommerce role-based pricing and payment plans. In this guide, we’ve outlined key reasons why you might want to leverage this strategy for your WooCommerce store. To summarize, it allows you to:
- Tailor the purchase experience for different customer segments
- Improve customer relationships
- Streamline pricing management
- Create a competitive edge
Additionally, we’ve discovered how you can seamlessly implement this strategy using Wholesale Prices Premium and Wholesale Payments. It only takes three steps:
- Create additional wholesale user roles
- Set WooCommerce role-based pricing
- Enable role-based payment plans
WooCommerce wholesalers can create a five-star B2B customer experience with all-in-one solutions like Wholesale Suite. Our collection of four powerful plugins is designed to help you bring your entire wholesale business online.
Do you have any questions about setting WooCommerce role-based pricing and payments? Let us know in the comments section below!
