Yes. Shopify Basic can support a B2B website that presents your products or services, helps buyers explain their requirements, and starts a sales conversation. Your team can prepare quotations and complete the sale outside the website. The work is in connecting useful content, a reliable contact route and a clear follow-up process. Buying a subscription alone does not create that process.
This approach suits businesses where the price or solution depends on specifications, quantities or project scope. A buyer may need technical advice before ordering, or your team may need to assess the request before offering a price.
By GRC. Platform documentation checked September 26, 2026. The examples and checklists below are planning guidance, not reported customer results.
What does Shopify Basic provide for an inquiry website?
Shopify documents Basic as supporting a customizable online store for showcasing products. That gives you a storefront foundation. A B2B inquiry website uses that foundation to help a visitor understand an offer and contact the business, even when the quotation and purchase happen elsewhere. Shopify Basic plan features.
Shopify also provides a contact-page template with a built-in form. Standard contact-form submissions go to the store's sender email address. Check the actual template, fields and notification destination when planning your site. A working form is one possible route; a clearly presented business email or another contact channel your buyers use may suit the process better. Shopify contact-page documentation.
Start with a specific journey: a visitor finds a relevant offer, checks whether it fits, sends enough information for a useful reply, and receives a response from the right person. Decide how each step will work before adding an app or changing plans.
Which B2B businesses fit this approach?
Consider these illustrative buying situations:
| Buying situation | What the buyer needs before contacting you | What the inquiry should establish |
|---|---|---|
| Custom manufactured product | Materials, specification options, capabilities and project constraints | Intended use, key specifications and estimated quantity |
| Equipment or technical solution | Applications, compatibility and the problem the solution addresses | Operating requirements, destination and desired timing |
| Professional or project service | Scope, deliverables, relevant experience and responsibilities | Current situation, intended outcome and project constraints |
These buyers may not be ready to select a fixed item and pay immediately. An inquiry website should help both sides decide whether a conversation is worthwhile.
If your buyers already know exactly what they want and expect to reorder online, include that expectation in the requirements. Account pricing, payment terms and purchasing workflows may need a separate design. A website focused on inquiries can be an appropriate starting point without being the right final system for every business.
Which pages help turn interest into a useful inquiry?
A contact button gives the visitor somewhere to go. The surrounding pages give them a reason to use it.
Build a small, connected set of pages around the questions that determine whether a buyer can proceed:
| Page or content area | Question it should answer | Useful information to include |
|---|---|---|
| Product or service page | Can this meet my requirement? | Scope, specifications, options, limitations and relevant images |
| Application page | Does this fit my situation? | Use conditions, selection considerations and information needed for review |
| Capabilities or company page | Can this business deliver the work? | Verifiable capabilities, responsibilities and evidence you can substantiate |
| Purchasing FAQ | What happens if I contact you? | Quotation inputs, sample or evaluation process where applicable, and next steps |
| Inquiry or contact page | What should I send, and how? | A clear contact route and a short request checklist |
Put the next step near the information that supports it. On a technical product page, ask the visitor to discuss their application or request a quotation with the relevant specifications. A vague invitation to learn more may leave the buyer unsure what will happen next.
Use only evidence the business can stand behind. If a capability, certification or delivery commitment needs confirmation, resolve it before presenting it as a fact. A well-organized page cannot compensate for an unsupported promise.
How do you replace the retail buying path with an inquiry path?
For relevant product templates, Shopify documents a way to hide quantity selectors and purchase buttons, optionally hide prices, and add contact content. Its examples include products that require a quotation or a discussion of custom requirements. The available sections and exact implementation depend on the theme. Shopify's quotation-oriented product-page guidance.
Choose the action that matches the buyer's next decision. A configurable product might invite a request for a quote; a project service might invite a discussion of scope. Explain what information to provide and what the team will do with it.
Hiding a purchase button does not, by itself, prevent purchases. Shopify explicitly warns against relying on theme changes alone to stop customers from buying. If the requirement is that no online order can be placed, verify the transaction paths and relevant settings separately. Treat that as an implementation requirement, not a visual preference. Shopify's purchase-path warning.
What information should an inquiry collect?
Ask for enough information to decide the next useful action. Avoid making every visitor complete the full specification work before they can reach you.
A practical starting point is:
- A name, company where relevant, and a reliable reply address.
- The product, service or application being discussed.
- The main requirement or problem.
- Estimated quantity or project scope, when it affects the response.
- Destination and preferred timing, when relevant.
These are suggested information requirements, not a claim that every field is included in Shopify's default contact form. Decide which details belong in the first request and which your team can collect later. Adding structured fields, preserving the originating product, or accepting files may require theme work, an app or another integration.
For example, an equipment buyer could identify the application and desired output in the initial message, then share a detailed specification during follow-up. A service buyer could provide a website URL and describe the problem before assembling a complete project brief. Both are illustrative intake designs; neither guarantees a qualified opportunity.
What happens after someone contacts you?
Assign an owner to incoming inquiries before launch. Define how they check for missing information, distinguish relevant requests from spam, and record the next action. An inbox that receives messages is only the beginning of the process.
For a small operation, a shared inquiry record can track the received date, contact route, relevant offer, owner, status and next action. A larger team may need routing and CRM integration. Choose the approach around workload and responsibilities, and keep the records accessible only to the people who need them.
Test the whole route with an internal test inquiry. Confirm that the message arrives, contains the expected information, reaches its owner and can be answered. Repeat the checks on mobile. If the website describes a response time, make sure the team can meet it; do not add a promise simply because another website uses one.
What might require extra configuration, apps or development?
Separate the storefront subscription from the work needed to support your process.
| Requirement | What to evaluate |
|---|---|
| Basic product or service presentation | Content, navigation and theme configuration |
| A simple contact route | Template or channel setup, notification delivery and mobile usability |
| Detailed RFQ with conditional questions or attachments | Field behavior, storage, access and the chosen form implementation |
| Several products in one quotation request | Item and quantity capture, how the request is submitted, and quote handling |
| CRM routing and follow-up automation | Supported integrations, ownership, error handling and operating cost |
| Logged-in purchasing with negotiated terms | Current B2B feature requirements and the complete ordering workflow |
This is a scoping checklist, not a list of features automatically included in Basic. Budget for the theme, content work, required apps, implementation and ongoing maintenance as applicable. A higher subscription tier should address a demonstrated requirement; it does not automatically supply the missing page content or sales process.
How should you measure whether the website is working?
Track the journey in stages: contact actions, received inquiries, qualified inquiries, quotation opportunities and subsequent sales progress. Keep the definitions distinct. An email-link click is an expression of intent; it is not proof that a message was sent or that a new opportunity exists.
Define a qualified inquiry in terms your team can apply consistently. It might require an identifiable buyer, a relevant need and enough context to assess the next step. Record why a request is unsuitable as well as why it qualifies. Those patterns can reveal missing information or a mismatch between the page and the visitors it attracts.
Review the results over a period that fits your sales cycle. When attribution is incomplete, keep the source unknown rather than assigning every inquiry to a campaign. Improving inquiry quality or follow-up reliability may matter more than increasing raw submission counts.
What should you prepare before building?
Select one representative offer and write down what its buyer must know, what your team needs before quoting, and who handles the response. Then outline the pages and contact route that support those steps. Test that small journey before extending the same structure across a large catalog.
If you are evaluating a Shopify inquiry website, explore GRC's Shopify design, theme implementation and operations services. Bring your current site if you have one, representative products or services, your quotation inputs, and your follow-up process. Discuss your project through the WeChat QR or email on our contact page. We can discuss the project scope and a suitable next step; deliverables and fees are agreed separately.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need Shopify Plus just to receive B2B inquiries?
No. Basic provides the storefront foundation, and Shopify documents a native contact-page route. Evaluate advanced ordering requirements separately if buyers need more than an inquiry and a quotation conversation.
Can I show products without displaying a price or Buy button?
Shopify documents hiding those blocks in relevant product templates. Check your theme and all affected pages. If purchases must be prevented, verify that requirement separately from hiding the visible controls.
Do I need an RFQ app from the beginning?
Not necessarily. First define the information and workflow you need. A simple contact route may be sufficient; more complex quote requests need their own implementation assessment.
Will a Shopify Basic website bring in inquiries by itself?
No. The platform provides a website foundation. Relevant visitors, useful content, a functioning contact route and consistent follow-up still need to be developed and assessed.
