B2B web portal is a place for suppliers and buyers to exchange the information so as to conclude the trade. Most B2B websites provide the offline communication for the member. That is the suppliers / buyers have to click on the “Contact Now” button and then send the messages. After that, they have to wait for the reply from another side. In this case, the contact might be lost because the email address might be wrong or they never check the Inbox on the B2B platform. So how to resolve this problem? Let them telephone call each other. This will increase the cost and take the time.

I think the best solution is to enable the Internet Messenger (MSN, Skype, AIM, GTalk, Yahoo! Messenger) on the B2B web and pages. All internet messengers (IM) have web page embedding features. You can program the internet messengers scripting and trigger them on the page. So if the members store their IM type and account in B2B websites. Once they go online and open the IM, their IM status will be indicated as “Online” in B2B web page. If the buyer is interest in your product, he can trigger to call with you in IM, other than send you the message. It is perfect that your potential buyer can contact you in real-time. He does not go to other suppliers at the moment but chat with you for more information about your products.

You can also speak to buyers via the talk feature in IM. Almost all IM have talk features and they are free. So you will save a lot of time and money. Also the all the chatting history can be saved in IM file base. You can review them at any time if you want to recall something from your memory.

In the internet world, we should fully utilize the automatic tool to increase the work efficiency. We won’t totally relay on it but they have become must-have in our business operation. In addition the B2B websites market your products worldwide. You should grasp all opportunities come from there. The combination of B2B and IM is wonderful. It will become main stream in the global trade.