The end of B2B eCom­merce design (as we know it)

MANYYEARSFROM NOW

There’s no telling how future gen­er­a­tions will view 2020, as our under­stand­ing of his­tor­i­cal events often changes over time. His­to­ry is loaded with exam­ples of events once con­sid­ered trans­for­ma­tive that are lat­er viewed as much less significant. 

The Pan­ic of 1873 was a major eco­nom­ic down­turn that sig­nif­i­cant­ly affect­ed glob­al finan­cial sys­tems. At the time, it was seen as a seri­ous cri­sis. Many feared would lead to a col­lapse of the finan­cial sys­tem and even a glob­al col­lapse. But then came the Great Depres­sion. It had such a sig­nif­i­cant, last­ing impact on the glob­al econ­o­my that every­one for­got about 1873.

So who knows? 2020 could go down in his­to­ry as a turn­ing point that changed the course of human­i­ty for­ev­er. Or there could be oth­er devel­op­ments that make future gen­er­a­tions look back to 2020 and see it as a mere blip on His­to­ry’s radar. In any case, for those of us who lived through it, things changed, and they changed big.

True, things change all the time. That’s the only con­stant thing about life. But most times, the most impact­ful changes, with longer-last­ing effects, hap­pen grad­u­al­ly, not sud­den­ly. This time, things changed quick­ly and massively.

The changes involved events and behav­iors, and also time.

BYE, BYE, KANSAS STYLE

2020 changed the pace of things, their rhythm. With lock­downs and dis­tanc­ing, some things seemed to get slow­er. We seemed to have more time each day, time we were not spend­ing com­mut­ing or going shopping.

But oth­er things got real fast, real quick. Like eCommerce.

Dur­ing the 2020 hol­i­day sea­son, US online sales totaled $188 bil­lion, a 32% increase from the pre­vi­ous year. McK­in­sey found that eCom­merce pen­e­tra­tion in the US went from 16% to 34% in just eight weeks dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. A 10-year leap for­ward in 90 days. Not DeLore­an fast, but quite fast.

The shift to dig­i­tal com­merce was already under­way, and the pan­dem­ic took it to Ludi­crous Speed. For B2B, both accel­er­a­tion and change were even more dra­mat­ic. With peo­ple ‑cus­tomers and work­ers — at home, B2B com­pa­nies had to adapt quick­ly to sur­vive. 96% of B2B com­pa­nies shift­ed their go-to-mar­ket mod­el dur­ing the pandemic.

B2B com­pa­nies began to learn dig­i­tal fast because they had to. Whether or not they had plans to do it, and regard­less of what stage those plans were in. Why? Because although com­pa­nies with strong online pres­ence were bet­ter pre­pared than those just con­sid­er­ing the shift, the sit­u­a­tion pushed every­one to up their game to meet the new demands.

ANDNOONEWANTSTOGO BACK

Peo­ple turned mas­sive­ly to eCom­merce. B2B peo­ple too. 

“Both B2B buy­ers and sell­ers pre­fer the new dig­i­tal real­i­ty. More than three quar­ters of buy­ers and sell­ers say they now pre­fer dig­i­tal self-serve and remote human engage­ment over face-to-face interactions (…)

Safe­ty is one rea­son, of course. But self-serve and remote inter­ac­tions have made it eas­i­er for buy­ers to get infor­ma­tion, place orders, and arrange ser­vice, and cus­tomers have enjoyed that speed and con­ve­nience. Only about 20 per­cent of B2B buy­ers say they hope to return to in-per­son sales”.

These eight charts show how COVID-19 has changed B2B sales for­ev­er — McK­in­sey & Company

Buy­ers now com­plete 83% to 95% of their pur­chase deci­sions before con­nect­ing with a sales­per­son. This means they are rely­ing less on sales­peo­ple to guide them through the pur­chas­ing process. Instead, they are using online resources such as prod­uct descrip­tions, reviews, and online demos to make their pur­chas­ing decisions.

It also means sales staff now get about 5% of a customer’s time dur­ing their B2B buy­ing jour­ney. Buy­ers con­nect with an eCom­merce plat­form, and that plat­form bet­ter deliv­er an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence, because the B2B buy­ing cycle is long and clients are tak­ing that jour­ney on their own.

THESAMEOL’ NORMAL.

More com­pa­nies are fight­ing for online pres­ence, and that’s not a trend that may go away any­time soon. Every­one is doing the same thing, and ​“every­one” means increas­ing­ly more peo­ple, so mak­ing sure the cus­tomer, poten­tial or oth­er­wise, enjoys the expe­ri­ence enough to stick around for one more click is essen­tial. What else is new.

In B2B, the tar­get audi­ence is a busi­ness and that implies dif­fer­ent process­es, strat­e­gy, pro­mo­tion, and also design. Yes. The buy­ing cycle is longer and the aim is to engage and direct leads, rather than get­ting huge flows of traf­fic. Also yes. And the deci­sions are often made by teams, not one indi­vid­ual, so eCom­merce sites must cater to dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers, and offer a seam­less expe­ri­ence to all. Again, yes. But the lines between B2B and B2C are increas­ing­ly blurry.

BUY­ERSARE PEOPLE

B2B buy­ing is a per­son­al expe­ri­ence and B2B can be a tricky acronym. Busi­ness­es don’t make buy­ing deci­sions. Peo­ple in busi­ness­es make buy­ing decisions. 

Deci­sion-mak­ers gen­er­al­ly base some pur­chas­ing deci­sions on cold hard facts. That is, depend­ing on their busi­ness­es and their busi­ness­es’ needs, not so much on impulse. But many oth­er deci­sions are influ­enced by per­son­al expe­ri­ences, per­son­al being the oper­a­tive word.

Buy­ers, who­ev­er they may be buy­ing for, want to be treat­ed like human beings, not leads. And expect to engage on their own terms, at the times and places they choose. B2B is per­son­al and per­son­al user expe­ri­ence is key, just like in any oth­er form of com­merce. The thing is that in B2B every­thing is big­ger and the stakes are higher.

Hav­ing said (all) that, there are somespe­cif­ic design strate­gies to con­sid­er for B2B eCom­merce. But first, a digres­sion, per­haps. Way­back machine.

DESIGN: THEESSEN­TIALVIS­I­BLETOTHE EYE

Back in the (13^th cen­tu­ry) day, the Ital­ian ​“dis­eg­nare” referred to draw­ings and sketch­es used to make beau­ti­ful build­ings. And that’s where we got the word ​“design” from. In the Ren­nai­sance, the mean­ing shift­ed to include dec­o­ra­tive arts and plan­ning of gar­dens and pub­lic spaces. With the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion, the mean­ing of design shift­ed fur­ther towards pro­duc­tion, effi­cien­cy and func­tion­al­i­ty. By the mid-20^th cen­tu­ry, design became a strate­gic busi­ness tool, focused on con­sumer behav­ior, brand­ing and mar­ket­ing. It lat­er expand­ed fur­ther to include dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences, ser­vices and sys­tems, apart from tra­di­tion­al prod­ucts. And in the 21^st cen­tu­ry, design is about func­tion­al­i­ty, usabil­i­ty, and accessibility. 

None of that is new because all along, since the 13^th cen­tu­ry, the word con­veyed a much wider range of mean­ings beyond visu­al or aes­thet­ics, includ­ing the plan­ning and inten­tion behind an artis­tic or archi­tec­tur­al work, the details that made it beau­ti­ful, and tac­ti­cal roles for exe­cu­tion. Design and func­tion­al­i­ty are inseparable.

Design has always meant, and will always mean, ​“how it works”. And how it looks. 

And how it makes you feel. 

Which brings us to the his­tor­i­cal­ly ugli­ness of B2B design in the visu­al, UI/UX departments.

A SITEFORSORE EYES?

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, and some­what under­stand­ably, the focus of B2B design has been on fea­tures and func­tion­al­i­ty. But this results in clunky, ugly and/​or frus­trat­ing expe­ri­ence for users, forced to spend hours nav­i­gat­ing con­fus­ing inter­faces. Bad visu­al and UX design costs busi­ness­es time, mon­ey, and clients.

This may have always been the case, but it’s cer­tain­ly urgent now, and things are chang­ing because they have to, and because they can. Most stan­dard user-expe­ri­ence prin­ci­ples dis­cov­ered for B2C apply to B2B, and B2B com­pa­nies are imple­ment­ing design fea­tures tra­di­tion­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with B2C eCom­merce. Increas­ing­ly blur­ry line.

But although some design strate­gies for B2B are gen­er­al, only per­haps more impor­tant in B2B, some spe­cif­ic design fea­tures are par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant in B2B eCommerce.

B2B: MORENEEDS MORE

B2B eCom­merce needs more time, more secu­ri­ty, more flex­i­bil­i­ty, more agili­ty and ease of use, more options, more scal­a­bil­i­ty. It can be a long list.

When adopt­ing, or adapt­ing to B2B eCom­merce solu­tions, com­pa­nies need to be able to con­tin­ue doing what they are already doing, with­out mas­sive efforts and resources. They need to be able to do more, to do bet­ter, and to do it as secure­ly and as fast as pos­si­ble. And they need air, room for deci­sions and for growth, space to do what they may want to do in the future. These are all mas­sive­ly sig­nif­i­cant con­sid­er­a­tions in B2B eCom­merce design. 

THEOPPO­SITEOF A MONOLITH

Head­less archi­tec­ture is a very clever approach, despite its some­what mis­lead­ing name, that sep­a­rates the cus­tomer fac­ing head (store­front) from the back end solu­tions body (prod­uct and order man­age­ment systems).

Glob­al ecom­merce momen­tum con­tin­ues to accel­er­ate and gain long-term share over brick-and-mor­tar. Many enter­pris­es use mono­lith­ic lega­cy ecom­merce plat­forms that need to be replaced by more mod­ern and flex­i­ble archi­tec­ture. Head­less and com­pos­able com­merce archi­tec­ture makes imple­ment­ing new ecom­merce soft­ware for B2C and B2B mer­chants eas­i­er than the old rip-and-replace model.

Big Com­merce 2022 Annu­al Report

Head­less archi­tec­ture means mer­chants don’t have to start over from scratch, and it also brings agili­ty. As the back end stands firm, the (mul­ti­ple-head­ed) fron­tend allows com­pa­nies the flex­i­bil­i­ty to move fast when their cus­tomers do, and also to move freely when some aspect of their busi­ness is ready to scale, with­out being forced to try to scale every sin­gle aspect at the same time. 

Head­less is also cru­cial for B2B com­pa­nies to man­age inte­gra­tions with the often com­plex sys­tems they use to man­age oper­a­tions, such as ERP, CRM, and inven­to­ry man­age­ment sys­tems, among oth­ers. Com­pos­able com­merce allows B2B mer­chants to con­tin­ue oper­at­ing with­out hav­ing to give up their pre­ferred stack or pay the price by deal­ing with a host of com­pli­ca­tions to man­age operations. 

It addi­tion, it allows them to respond to increas­es or changes in traf­fic, order vol­ume, prod­ucts or any oth­er expect­ed, or unex­pect­ed, change by com­bin­ing best-in-breed solu­tions to cre­ate a cus­tomized, robust stack.

UXBESTPRAC­TICES — NOWFOR B2B 

Cus­tomiza­tion is one of the ways an eCom­merce plat­form adapts to the merchant’s require­ments and not the oth­er way round. It’s also vital to set the site apart from com­peti­tors. A B2B eCom­merce plat­form cus­tomiz­able by design gives mer­chants the flex­i­bil­i­ty to tweak dif­fer­ent aspects of their site to opti­mize oper­a­tions and adapt to mar­ket shifts, chang­ing trends, and their own growth and evolution. 

Account man­age­ment

B2C eCom­merce usu­al­ly requires only one account per cus­tomer. But B2B buy­ers usu­al­ly have dif­fer­ent roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties that require dif­fer­ent lev­els of access and author­i­ty. This makes account man­age­ment fea­tures cru­cial to B2B eCom­merce design.

Whole­sale

In B2B eCom­merce, cus­tomers are often buy­ing in bulk. There­fore, the plat­form design must allow for bulk pur­chas­ing with quan­ti­ty dis­counts and plac­ing orders quick­ly and easily.

Cus­tom pric­ing and order­ing features

B2B eCom­merce cus­tomers are often repeat cus­tomers. Thus, the plat­form should be designed to accom­mo­date fre­quent orders, reorder func­tion­al­i­ty, and account-spe­cif­ic pric­ing because, unlike B2C com­pa­nies, which usu­al­ly have stan­dard pric­ing for all cus­tomers, B2B com­pa­nies often have nego­ti­at­ed pric­ing with their cus­tomers. This means B2B eCom­merce solu­tions must be flex­i­ble enough to han­dle cus­tom pric­ing based on cus­tomers’ spe­cif­ic needs and vol­ume of purchases. 

Respon­sive design

Lega­cy, mono­lith­ic plat­forms were built for desk­top shop­ping. As more B2B buy­ers use mobile devices to research and pur­chase prod­ucts, mobile opti­miza­tion for all plat­forms has become an increas­ing­ly impor­tant require­ment in B2B eCom­merce design.

Secu­ri­ty ‑focused design 

B2B trans­ac­tions often involve sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion such as finan­cial and per­son­al data. Plat­forms designed for secu­ri­ty and com­pli­ance help pro­tect buy­er infor­ma­tion and ensure the plat­form meets reg­u­la­to­ry requirements.

Go Hybrid

With the right plat­form, it’s rel­a­tive­ly easy and inex­pen­sive to expand your ser­vice to the end audi­ence as well. It’s not for every busi­ness, but if it match­es your mod­el and audi­ence, it’s def­i­nite­ly worth con­sid­er­ing. You can serve all of your audi­ences with one eCom­merce web­site, brand­ing strat­e­gy, look, feel, and shared user expe­ri­ence. If you want to explore the how, the why, and the poten­tial, give us a shout .

AND I FEELFINE

It’s the end of the world as we know it. But it hap­pens all the time. The eCom­merce land­scape is con­stant­ly chang­ing and grow­ing. With most B2B buy­ers con­duct­ing their research and mak­ing pur­chas­ing deci­sions online, the eCom­merce plat­for­m’s user expe­ri­ence should be exceptional.

Design has always meant more than just mak­ing things look good, and this is even more true for B2B eCom­merce. B2B eCom­merce solu­tions must include sev­er­al key fea­tures and func­tion­al­i­ties to allow com­pa­nies to con­duct their large scale, com­plex oper­a­tions. These include cus­tomiza­tion and account man­age­ment fea­tures, bulk pur­chas­ing, and cus­tom pric­ing options, among others. 

How­ev­er, a func­tion­al, secure plat­form is vital, but not enough. An ide­al B2B eCom­merce plat­form should not only be a present oper­a­tional solu­tion, but also a future pos­si­bil­i­ty. It must be flex­i­ble and scal­able by design to allow com­pa­nies the room and capa­bil­i­ties to go big­ger, bet­ter, and faster when needed.

WHATCAN I DO?

There are a few options out there and we are famil­iar ‑and fine- with many, as their suit­abil­i­ty often depends on the spe­cif­ic needs and resources of each busi­ness. But nat­u­ral­ly, after a part­ner­ship that dates back to 2012, we rec­om­mend BigCommerce’s B2B solu­tions that give mer­chants all the pow­er, and none of the trouble.

Of course, you could also con­sid­er hir­ing a dig­i­tal agency with exper­tise in B2B ecom­merce design, and, nat­u­ral­ly, we can help with that too, if you think we can be a good fit. Check out sam­ples of our work, more sam­ples of our work, or go right ahead and book a free con­sul­ta­tion call.