Specifics of UX/UI processes for B2B and B2C business: things to consider for project success

Why can't a high-quality UX/UI design be universal for all web products, and what should B2B and B2C business owners consider when creating a website interface? 

Denis Studennikov, COO and Head of the UX/UI department at Turum-burum, a specialist with 9 years of experience, shared his expertise and recommendations below.

Defining the concepts of B2B and B2C

Before going into the details of UX/UI solutions, let's look at the definitions and differences between B2B and B2C business models:

• B2B (business-to-business) is a business model oriented toward selling goods or services not to users but to other companies. In other words, it is a business that serves other businesses. One of the most eloquent B2B examples is a clothing manufacturer that sells its goods to retailers, who in turn sell them to their customers.

• B2C (business-to-consumer) is a type of business in which a company sells its goods or services directly to people (customers). It is a traditional commercial model when stores sell products or services to customers for personal use.

Since B2B and B2C businesses have different target audiences, it is pivotal to consider the specifics of these models when creating a product's style and user flow (the sequence of decisions a company or customer makes when placing an order).

UX and UI principles: how to develop a high-quality web product

To build a client-oriented and converting website, it is important to follow key UX/UI principles:

UX (User Experience) design principles 

The main goal of UX is to create a convenient, efficient, and pleasant user experience for customers when they interact with e-commerce. By providing a high-quality user experience, businesses allow website users to quickly and easily satisfy their needs, increasing brand loyalty.

Key UX principles:

• Understanding the target audience's needs: Conducting an in-depth behavioral analysis of your customers will help you determine what users want and expect from your product.
• Ensuring transparency and accessibility: The interface should be clear and easy to navigate. The design is expected to create an enjoyable user experience and help users understand how to use the product, including people with visual, hearing, mobility, and cognitive disabilities.
• Providing easy and quick interaction: This involves minimizing the number of steps to place the order and removing unnecessary or irrelevant content and functionality to avoid overload.

UI (User Interface) design principles

The UI aspect of a web product focuses on the visual side of interface elements. A high-quality UI creates an intuitive, aesthetically pleasing, and efficient user experience.

Key UI principles:

• Predictability: All design elements should be clear, obvious, and placed predictably for the user.
• Consistency: Design elements should be unified throughout the application or website to provide a comfortable and predictable user experience.
• Interactivity and feedback: The interface should provide feedback on certain user actions so that they understand what is going on and can control the ongoing processes.
• Aesthetics: Whether restrained or bright, emotional or strict, the website's visual aspect should appeal to the target audience and convey the company's main messages.
• Accessibility: The design should take into account the needs of people with different abilities (ordinary users and those with specific disabilities), ensuring the accessibility of content and functionality. To do this, you must pay attention to contrast, selected fonts, color palette, etc. 

Adherence to the basic usability and design principles is the key to success and high conversion rates for both B2B and B2C. However, the ways to achieve these goals differ depending on the business peculiarities.

Chapter I: UX challenges for B2C and B2B business models 

The critical success indicators for B2C and B2B projects differ:

• In a B2C context, key success metrics include user engagement, customer satisfaction rate, brand loyalty, and ability to convert visitors into customers.

• For B2B, it is increased productivity, workflow efficiency, cost reduction, and improved ROI.

That’s why we should follow different approaches to developing UX/UI solutions for these business models.

Below you will find more details about the main parameters that determine the success of B2C and B2B products.

Target audience

• In B2C scenarios, end users are looking for products or services that fulfill their personal needs or desires. The user experience here is often focused on convenience, speed, and emotional attachment to the brand. The target audience itself is wide and diverse.

• In contrast, in a B2B context, users are often professionals in a particular industry looking for solutions to specific business problems. They may have more complex needs and higher requirements for functionality, integration, and customization of web products.

Recommendation:

Identifying the target audience for B2C products is more difficult than for B2B. Therefore, for B2C, it is essential to create detailed buyer persona portraits via segmenting users by their age, geographic location, profession, and other criteria. These portraits will be extremely useful for future research and understanding each user segment's specific needs and goals.

The decision-making process 

• In B2C, purchasing decisions are usually made more quickly and are often based on impulsive emotions, personal preferences, or recommendations.

• In B2B, this process usually involves detailed analysis, product comparison, and cost estimation, requiring more time.

Recommendation:

Given the importance of the emotional component, social proof is crucial for B2C customers. Therefore, it is worth implementing blocks with the overall product ratings and reviews of other customers. It is also pivotal to allow users to share feedback and ask questions about the product of their interest. According to statistics, displaying customer reviews can increase e-commerce conversion by 67%.

Since B2B website pages usually contain a lot of textual information and service descriptions, it is important to think through user flows in detail and ensure well-structured information and navigation website architecture so that users can intuitively use the website and quickly find necessary sections and products.

Usability

• B2C products are typically simpler and more intuitive, emphasizing rapid user engagement and immediate satisfaction of needs.

• The B2B model is characterized by higher complexity and advanced usability, as it must satisfy the expectations of complex business processes and integrate with other systems or technologies.

Recommendation:

For B2B platforms, it is important to develop a website or dashboard design that displays the vast amount of data in an understandable and interactive way. Therefore, in addition to low-fidelity prototypes, you need to think about high-fidelity prototypes for such projects. It will allow you to test the usability at the development stage, thus saving the budget for future improvements.

In terms of B2C products, it is important to implement well-thought-out cross-sell and upsell tools into your interface. This will allow you to engage users more effectively and increase the average check. 

Chapter II: features of UI design for B2C and B2B models

UІ design for B2C

One of the main purposes of UI design for B2C business is to create an emotional connection with its users. Therefore, the design should be visually appealing, contain informative banners, high-quality graphics, relevant fonts, animations, etc. 

At the same time, the website stylistics should be consistent with the brand identity to increase the company's recognition and customer loyalty.

Therefore, even when choosing a service design, you should implement interesting visual accents and trends: custom images or icons, bright call-to-action blocks, or large product images to emphasize the business's strengths. This will allow you to convey the company's general mood and values, choose a beneficial tone of voice, thereby increasing user loyalty and business conversion.

UІ design for B2B

Unlike B2C products, the style of B2B websites is usually more restrained and traditional. Since B2B businesses usually offer complicated products, UI design must not distract clients from placing the order and help them find relevant information to make a purchase decision.

For example, for Logistic management software, we developed a dashboard that allows users to manage parcels easily, track them in real time, schedule pickups and deliveries in one place. The greatest challenge there was to place all the necessary design elements without overwhelming the interface.

When creating UI design for B2B, you should:

• Opt for service design;
• Don’t overuse different colors;
• Be careful with animations and interactive buttons;
• Add high-quality images;
• Create custom images to showcase the company's services and advantages.

Thus, while working on the RPC Fast project (a product for blockchain node deployment), the Turum-burum team focused on creating a design that would be visually appealing, functionally advanced, demonstrate all the company's advantages, and take into account the peculiarities of the target audience.

To do this, we developed many custom elements with deep meaning.

On the website's main page, we added an image of a safe where the nodes are stored. Safes are associated with security, showing that the company prioritizes user data protection. This is one of RPC Fast's main advantages and an important factor for B2B clients.

Interface personalization 

• B2B products usually offer personalization at the organizational or user role level, focusing on workflow efficiency.

• For the B2C model, personalized blocks are essential in building loyal user relationships and creating emotional connections with them.

Recommendation: 

Since 91% of B2C customers are more likely to buy from brands that offer a personalized user experience by providing relevant offers and recommendations due to the customer preferences, we recommend

• add personalized blocks: ‘Viewed products’, ‘Similar products’, ‘Popular’, etc.;
• notify users about the availability of goods or price reductions via email notifications;
• use AI technologies such as machine learning and deep learning to create a personalized user experience;
• store some information about the user: postal data, geographic location, order history, which will allow you to personalize the delivery of goods or speed up the ordering placing process.

B2B vs B2C design: the bottom line

To create a client-oriented UX/UI design for B2B and B2C products, you need to provide different user experiences in terms of balance between usability, aesthetics, and personalization.

So, when creating a design for any product, you should focus on business goals, niche features, and the peculiarities of your target audience. 

In both B2B and B2C, a clear understanding of the buyer persona and their needs and requirements defines the success of developed web products. Turum-burum studio is always ready to help you find the best UX/UI solutions for your online business.

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