The reason your web store is struggling: Introducing digital distance

We commissioned Forrester Consulting to survey 335 B2B e-commerce decision makers about how their buyers behave online. One pattern jumped out quick: 7 in 10 organizations still watch their buyers pick up the phone, usually at the exact moment they’re ready to buy.

Think about what that means. It’s like a customer standing at the checkout with a full cart, then deciding to call the store instead of heading to the till. It adds time and inefficiency for all parties involved.

The gap between what your web store offers and what your buyers actually want has a name: digital distance.

There’s a difference between running a digital channel, and having a web store that buyers trust enough to use (without double-checking). Most B2B sellers invest a great deal of their budgets in the former, assuming the latter is a given.

But the gap is costing businesses more than they think.

What the research tells us

So when do buyers actually skip your digital channel and pick up the phone?

These are the high-stakes moments where you’re most likely losing revenue.

The commissioned Forrester survey revealed the three that came up most were checking availability, confirming a price, and requesting a quote.

This isn't a question of whether B2B buyers want digital. They do:

83% of buyers now prefer to self-serve orders online
61% want to do most of their buying without a rep involved at all.

The question is really about what happens when those buyers arrive at a digital channel and find it doesn't quite work the way they need it to.

Most of them don't complain. They simply call sales, email an account manager or worst of all, place the order somewhere else.

So what is digital distance, really?

Picture digital distance as the space between two things that should line up but don’t:

What your buyer expects to see, know, and do online

What your systems, data, and experience can deliver in real time

When those two match, buyers move forward. When they don’t, buyers hesitate. And in B2B, where the same handful of customers come back for purchases worth millions, every hesitation adds up.

The three forms of digital distance

Digital distance shows up in three forms, and most organizations are dealing with all three at once. That’s part of why it’s been so hard to pin down. Each one feels like a separate problem, but they share a single root cause, and they quietly feed off each other in ways that cap your growth.

1. Operational distance

Operational distance is what happens when the systems powering your digital channel can't deliver real-time accuracy. If your teams are spending most of their time plugging gaps your digital channel struggles with, you’re likely struggling with operational distance.

Here's the gap in numbers:

49% of B2B buyers rank accurate pricing and availability as their number one expectation from a digital experience.
Only 53% of organizations believe their commerce platform can handle the full range of order types their customers actually place.
64% point to ERP integration specifically as the biggest barrier to giving buyers the real-time visibility they want.

The results look a little something like this:

Stock errors: your webstore says an item is in “in stock" despite the warehouse knowing otherwise.
Pricing bottlenecks: a price needs to be confirmed by a rep before it's quoted.
Communication blindspots: An order status that lags reality by hours or days.

While none of these are dramatic failures, when repeated across thousands of buyer interactions, that quietly train your customers not to rely on the channel.

2. Commercial distance

Commercial distance is what shows up on the revenue dashboard. It's the gap between a buyer who's ready to act and a digital experience that keeps making them work for it.

The commissioned Forrester research found three signals worth reading together:

47% of B2B sellers identify faster, easier reordering as their biggest untapped opportunity.
41% are still working to make digital the default channel for their existing customers.
42% are actively prioritizing friction reduction in the buying process.

Here’s what commercial distance looks like in your business:

Repeat orders, which should be the most predictable revenue in B2B, sliding back into phone calls and manual order entry.
The customers you worked hardest to win defaulting to a rep instead of a channel made for them.
A sale lost at every extra step between “I want this” and checkout.

The instinct might be to fix this issue with a discount, but this isn’t a pricing problem as much as an experience issue. A buyer who finds reordering unintuitive at full price will feel the same, even at 10% off.

3. Emotional distance

Emotional distance is caused by a lack of buyer trust. When your buyers are defaulting to calls even when the information is available, it’s clear that there’s a lack of faith in the web store, and this can cost your business both time and money.

Our stats show many businesses struggle with this problem:

Only 53% of organizations believe their buyers actually trust the accuracy of what they see online.
58% of customer service challenges involve manual order intervention.

If your buyers hesitate, your digital channel is still a huge opportunity.

In practice, emotional distance shows up as:

Buyers calling or e-mailing to confirm details on the web store
Routine orders that could be self-served getting routed through customer service instead
Your team spending its time reassuring buyers, rather than helping them buy more.

The good news in the commissioned Forrester research is this: distance you can measure is distance you can close. The three forms of digital distance can all be measured, once you know what to look for.

In the next pieces in this series, we'll go deeper on each of them: the operational layer where the data lives, the commercial layer where momentum breaks, and the emotional layer where trust either grows or erodes.