B2B and B2C businesses are completely different. In product design, some design principles are universal, such as clear information architecture, simple and easy-to-understand interactive interfaces, and so on. But at the same time, there are many differences between the two.
Some time ago, our team made a return visit to the participants of an offline event, and one of the results surprised me:
Nearly 70% of the participants did not pay for the tickets themselves, but the company paid for them, and then either the department leaders assigned them or they applied for participation.
what does that mean? The insight into the customer is not deep enough, and it leads to errors in the promotion strategy. We originally thought that the person who bought the ticket was the person who used the ticket, but this data tells us that this is not necessarily the case.
If this data is really reliable (yes, further analysis is needed), then we have to switch from the original B2C thinking to B2B thinking in terms of publicity strategy and product design. Because, although our service objects are ultimately C-end users, most of our sales objects are the B-end enterprises where the users are located.
You know, B2B and B2C businesses are completely different. In product design, some design principles are universal, such as clear information architecture, simple and easy-to-understand interactive interfaces, and so on. But at the same time, there are many differences between the two.
The well-known Nielsen Norman Group (NN Group) published an article on its official website called “B2B vs. B2C Websites: Key UX Differences” , which explained the 5 core differences between B2B and B2C websites.
1. The content of the B2B website takes longer to support the purchase decision
Just like the example cited above, the purchaser may not be the real user. Therefore, it is difficult to determine what factors are affecting the purchaser’s purchase decision. Maybe they need to communicate with multiple leaders of the company to get approval; maybe they need to communicate with end-product users to understand their needs; maybe they need to go through months of investigation to make a conclusion (think if you buy a year for the company A project that costs millions, dare to make a decision easily?).
Then, in order to support their decision-making, you may need to provide technical white papers, buying guides, customer case descriptions, etc. on the website to help them better understand how your product or service can meet their needs.
Speaking of this, I have to give an example of Intercom’s website, which I like very much. They not only explain clearly “Which awesome customers do we have” and “How do our amazing customers evaluate”, they also share some of the customer’s use of the product. Story and effect.
Case stories on Intercom
2. B2B websites need to provide detailed and necessary information
Today, many products no longer need to develop a certain functional module by themselves, and directly integrate professional third-party service interfaces. For example, Ping can be used for payment, a push can be used for message push, and Zhuge IO can be used for data burying. These B2B products basically provide technical instructions for use.
Ping has a stylish developer center
Of course, even if it is not a software service, some hardware products need to provide explanatory information. Can you imagine how to use a printer without an instruction manual?
3. The content of the B2B website should be geared towards both shoppers and real users
As mentioned above, sometimes buyers need to do certain investigations before they can finally decide whether to purchase services. However, the survey is not necessarily the purchaser, but the real user.
This is easy to understand. For example, the boss heard that other companies are using cloud services, and he wants to see if it is necessary. At this time, most of the boss will ask the development team to do a usage survey. Then, at this time, B2B products have to face real users-development teams.
4. The price system of B2B websites is more complicated
Unlike B2C e-commerce selling a piece of clothing, in many cases the corporate customers targeted by B2B products have more personalized needs and often require customized services. This means that the price display of B2B products is not as easy as that of B2C websites.
Therefore, we can often see that in addition to specific packages, the price pages of many B2B products also often have a “customizable” package.
5. B2B products have different customer segments
Customers in different industries, or customers of different sizes, may have different needs. Therefore, B2B products have to provide different content for different groups of customers, including function introduction, service process, price system, etc.
