What's with B2B UX?

Gist

UX Design for B2B and Enterprise applications vary greatly from the typical UX principles you’d think to follow, while still retaining the fundamental best practices that make a product usable.

I wanted to take a deeper look at what exactly separates the two and how one can best equip themselves to deliver on both fronts.

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Setting The Scene

Now, I’ve been interested in UX Design for a couple of years now, ever since I started exploring the field more during my time in University. Since then I completed several online courses on UX Design in an effort to learn more and make a foothold for myself in the UX job market.

So when I joined the company I currently work at, I was delighted to hear that they had a UI/UX Task Team comprised of members who, like me, were getting more and more interested in UX Design, and wanted to apply what they’d learnt into improving our company’s products.

Since then I’ve participated in several design reviews and I was surprised to learn just how much of what I thought I knew about UX Design wasn’t directly applicable to the products we were creating here; And the primary reason for it was that I learned what UX means for end users who are Customers, whereas now I was reviewing products and software that was designed to be used by Businesses.

How Do They Differ

When it comes to B2C applications, we’re all consumers too, so we understand roughly what the user experience of a product is, at least when we’re talking about the demographic we’re in. And since B2C applications are open to the general public, UX Designers can perform crucial competitor analysis and use them as reference.

For Enterprise/B2B however, products tend to be very specific to the industry, with intricacies and use cases that the average consumer shouldn’t be expected to know. The main consideration for these applications are often not the user themselves, but the organizations and management that they work under. So how does one reconcile the strict, specific needs of the organization, with the troubles an actual end-user might have in deciphering them?

Special Considerations for UX in B2B

I’d like to preface this by saying that I’m by no means an expert on the matter. In fact I’ve only just started to be exposed to the design of B2B products. But here’s a few considerations I made to better review these products for usability without compromising on the decision maker’s requirements:

Prioritize easy navigation

Let’s get this out of the way. B2B applications tend to be cluttered as hell. With a slew of functions, data views, admin screens etc. One of the best ways to spare the real end-user of these complications is to make it easy to move around the applications, understand where you are in it, and what you can do with it. Provide clear ways to navigate with appropriate titles, breadcrumb menus, tooltips, and the works.

Allow for customization

B2C applications research the target users, and provide an appropriately stylish and widely-lovable looking application as the final product. The user doesn’t necessarily need to be able to control every aspect of it, they just need to like how it looks and enjoy how it runs.

For B2B however, the application might include a whole suite of services and functions that every single end-user of the organization might not always need, or even understand. Allowing for customization - whether that’s in the form of a ‘Favorites’ section in the menu navigation, various filters and views for data, etc - will make the end product better to use for everyone involved.

ALL the Documentation!

Don’t underestimate the importance of extremely thorough documentation. There’s no detail too trivial or ‘obvious’ for it. I should know, I’ve turned to documentation countless times when undergoing my training as a new employee. Provide extensive detail about the product, and leave as little as possible to chance. Of course one should strive for the most usable and understandable UI that’s possible within the project’s constraints, but when that falls short - and it always does, eventually - the documentation will be your saving grace.

Design Systems are everyone’s friend

If you’re part of a team building B2B applications, consider investing a decent sum of time and resources to building an intuitive design system with user-centric considerations. Don’t skimp on the visual appeal of a system simply because it’s internal-facing or B2B, rather design in a way that keeps the system comprehensible to everyone, while still performing all the functions required of it by the client.

Conclusions

This is my first entry into my blog, and honestly it’s more of a summary of my own thoughts than any guide or lesson to anyone reading. But I hope to expand this blog/wiki/knowledge-base more and more as a way to keep learning and growing my skill stack.

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Tokyo, JP