B2B companies sell products and services that other businesses use. They must provide a great user experience (UX) that will delight their clients and make them want to return.
A B2B buying process often involves multiple people working together to buy a product or service, with a longer decision-making phase than a typical consumer purchase.
User-centric design
A B2B company needs a UX strategy focusing on delivering prospects the best possible experience. To achieve this, a site should provide users with the necessary information and tools to solve their problems without overwhelming them.
User-centered design (UCD) is a process that involves gaining a deep understanding of who the target users are and how they use the product, then incorporating this knowledge into the design of the product. Using this approach, companies can create products designed to meet their users’ needs and expectations, leading to improved sales and reduced customer support costs.
UCD is an iterative process that enables designers to gain a deeper understanding of their target users and implement changes to improve the design based on user feedback. It also ensures that personal bias is not incorporated into the design of a product, allowing teams to focus on creating truly user-centered products.
The user needs to be able to find specifications, capabilities, guidelines, and best practices, for example. Again, building trust is key. For example, if you have a B2B service for writers, a user comes to you from an organic search for “write my essay 4 me free” – without great UX, you can`t retain the user because their decision-making is lightning-intensive.
Several methods can be used to gather insights into user needs and requirements during a UCD process. These include contextual inquiry, questionnaires, and surveys.
Contextual inquiry is a type of user research that requires observation and interviewing. It is a great way to learn about the context in which a product is used, how users interact with it, and why they are using it.
Questionnaires and surveys can also be used to collect data about user experiences, preferences, and habits. These methods can be incorporated into any type of user-centered design process, including waterfall and agile.
Iterative processes such as Agile help create software that meets users’ needs and can be delivered quickly. They offer a collaborative environment and a clear view of how the project is progressing.
User-centered design can be valuable for any business, especially B2B companies. It can help to reduce costs, improve the user experience, and increase brand loyalty.
The best UX practices involve a multidisciplinary team that is well-versed in all aspects of the design process and willing to implement design changes based on user feedback. The team should be able to produce innovative ideas that align with the user’s goals and needs. This can be done by involving them in the entire process, from ideation to implementing the final product.
Usability testing
Usability testing is a crucial UX strategy for B2B companies because it helps identify friction points before a product or website is launched. This allows businesses to improve their products and services, leading to increased customer usage and results.
Learning directly from your users is the key to success with any UX strategy. It can be difficult to create an effective design if you don’t have a good grasp of your users’ needs and wants. Luckily, UX experts can help you understand your audience’s goals and expectations and develop a plan that works for you.
One of the biggest challenges with usability testing is recruiting the right participants. Ideally, your participants should be people who are like your actual users and closely resemble your target demographic. It’s also important that they can access the system you’re using to conduct your study.
You can recruit potential participants through online methods such as forums or social media. Many of these sites allow you to moderate the testing and have tools that let you gather feedback.
Another option is to conduct remote tests. This is a common practice for B2B sites and can be used to test essential centerpiece pages such as products, value propositions, or lead generation forms.
In addition, it’s also important to ensure that a potential customer finds your site and its content easily. This is because 46% of users will leave a site if they can’t find what they want.
Aside from this, it’s important to ensure all your contact information is easily accessible. This includes phone numbers, contact forms, and emails.
Lastly, it’s vital to have a clear message that speaks to your target market. Remembering this can increase your conversion rates and help you boost profits.
Usability testing is an important part of any UX strategy, but it’s especially useful for B2B companies. These businesses often provide complex software solutions for other businesses and therefore need to test the usability of these products and services before releasing them to their customers.
A/B testing
A/B testing is a UX strategy that compares 2 or more versions of a web page or app against each other to see which one performs better. It is typically done with statistical analysis and can help you determine the most effective changes to your website or app for a particular goal.
A key benefit of A/B testing is that it helps you test the impact of small changes on existing traffic. This can save you time and money on acquiring new traffic and increase conversions without the risk of jeopardizing your current traffic levels.
It also enables you to optimize your conversion rate by focusing on specific areas of the website, which will improve customer experience and boost sales. This includes optimizing the landing page, form submissions, email subject lines and other parts of your website.
As you plan your tests, make sure that your goals are clear and understandable to everyone involved. These goals can be simple as determining the number of clicks on a CTA or more complex as analyzing data to determine the most effective changes for conversion rates.
Once you have your goals in place, create a variation (a different version of the control) and A/B test it against the control to determine which variation has the highest conversion rate. You can also use an analytics tool to track the results of your test in real-time as it occurs and change the goals as you see fit.
With A/B testing, it is important to prioritize your tests and focus on the areas that need the most work. This can be difficult to do when the website is in a state of flux, but it is essential for success.
For example, if your website suffers from poor conversions due to low engagement, you may want to focus on optimizing the landing page or email subject line first. This can help you increase your email open rates, reduce bounce rates, and convert more subscribers into customers.
You can also focus on reducing the number of forms users must fill out to submit their information. This can help you increase form completion rates and save you time on manual form processing.
Analytics
Analytics are critical to any UX strategy because they enable you to identify and address common user pain points, optimize design, and drive user engagement. Without this data, you’ll have difficulty designing a product that meets your users’ needs.
For example, you can track how often customers experience issues with a specific feature or interface. Moreover, you’ll be able to understand why they encounter those issues. This type of information can help you make changes that will improve the user’s experience and, in turn, increase conversion rates.
Using this type of data can also help you reduce user exit rates. By implementing heatmaps, session replay, or open-ended surveys, you can find out where customers are getting stuck and fix those problems.
As a result, you can anticipate and fix those friction points before they cause user frustration or even abandonment. This means you can improve your product’s quality and save money on customer support.
One of the best analytics solutions for B2B companies is Google Analytics. This solution is primarily used for market research but can also be useful for evaluating UX design.
In addition, it can be used to track goal conversions build funnels, attribute conversions to marketing channels, and more. However, it’s not a comprehensive UX analytics solution without a way to collect qualitative data.
For this reason, you need to look for a solution that provides both quantitative and qualitative UX analytics. The ideal UX analytics tool should be a full-featured solution that’s easy to use and doesn’t require IT support.
Another important element of an analytics solution is collecting and storing data in a centralized repository. This ensures everyone in your organization can access the data they need to make better business decisions.
To do this, you need a tool to store and manage data in a scalable, cloud-based system that can easily be accessed from anywhere, anytime. Additionally, you need a tool that’s flexible and customizable so that you can adapt it to your specific needs.
