Know your business model: B2C, B2B and content sites

What does your business model mean for your setup?

Whether you have a B2C or a B2B site, the main setup is the same: tracking, a product feed and modules on your pages. What changes is which modules you choose and what you track. Two questions decide it:

Who are your customers? Consumers (B2C) or business buyers (B2B).
What do visitors come for? Products, content such as articles, guides and recipes, or both.

B2C or B2B?

B2C and B2B customers shop in different ways, so they need different recommendations.

	B2C	B2B
Typical visitor	A consumer who browses, compares and often arrives without an account	A returning business buyer who knows the webshop and often logs in
What they need	Inspiration, personal offers and products that go together	Fast reordering, plus products they didn't know you carry
Where recommendations help most	Personal offers on the front page. Bigger baskets on product pages, in the powerstep (the step shown right after a product is added to the basket) and in the basket	Most-bought products on the front page or account page. Accessories and consumables on product pages
Identify visitors by	Cookie ID, plus a user ID when they log in	User ID for every logged-in buyer, plus cookie ID

Starting modules

B2C: GetUserItemRecommendationsWeb, GetPopularItemsWeb, GetSimilarItemsWeb, GetPIMRelatedItemsWeb, GetPIMRelatedItemsForBasketWeb
B2B: GetUserItemHistoryWeb, GetUserCrossSellingItemsWeb, GetPIMRelatedItemsWeb

👀 Use case: In B2B, several people often buy on behalf of one company, such as engineers, purchasers and managers. Send each person's own user ID, so their recommendations match their role and follow them across devices. See User Tracking: Understanding Soft IDs, Hard IDs & Raptor Identity Matching.

💡 Example: For a B2B example, see how INDI uses personalization in the B2B buying journey (raptorservices.com case study).

Products, content or both?

Raptor can recommend products, content, or a mix. What you track decides which modules you can use: a Visit event teaches Raptor about products, and a ContentVisit event teaches it about content.

	Product visits	Content visits
Tracking event	Visit: a visitor views a product page	ContentVisit: a visitor views a content page, such as an article, guide or recipe
Mandatory parameters	EventType, ProductId, ProductName, CategoryPath, BrandId, ItemPrice, StockStatus, MasterId (if your products have variants)	EventType, ContentId, ContentName, ContentCategory
Unlocks	Item modules	Content modules
Typical site	Webshops where most traffic lands on category and product pages	Sites where much of the traffic lands on articles, guides or recipes

Example modules

Item modules: GetSimilarItemsWeb, GetPopularItemsWeb, GetUserItemRecommendationsWeb
Content modules: GetSimilarContentWeb, GetPopularContentWeb, GetUserContentRecommendationsWeb

If you have both products and content, track both events. That unlocks the modules that connect the two:

GetItemsBasedOnContentWeb shows products related to the article being read, turning readers into shoppers.
GetContentBasedOnItemWeb shows content related to the product being viewed, such as a guide or a recipe.
GetContentBasedOnProductCategoryWeb and GetContentBasedOnProductBrandWeb show content related to a category or a brand.

🔍 Note: Content modules also need content data, so Raptor knows your articles and how they relate to products. See Content data.

See all 24 modules in Web modules: Recommendation Strategies.

Next step

Once you know which modules fit your business, see Best practice: where to place your modules to decide where they go on your website. (INDSÆT LINK)