What changes when you’re designing a b2b product #UX

I’ve been working with user experience for a while, but I rarely had opportunities to be part of business-to-business projects… Until last year!

During my first year at Booking.com, I had the chance to dig into a b2b product and study this new perspective of user experience. Along with this project, I kept noticing things that are a little different, especially to fit into the users’ shoes and understand that you are now part of their business too. How to understand and empathize with someone else’s work routine?

I’m not going to address specifically the accommodation business but, instead, I will list a few points to consider when designing for b2b.

Let’s do that then!

You are part of someone else’s job

Imagine a store, any store. We assume the experience is different for those who are shopping and those who are working there, right?

That’s because they are there for different reasons and motivations, and have a very different list of tasks in their hands.

Customers usually have dozens of other stores to choose from. They can look around and leave, or buy something every couple of months. The thing is… the employees of your imaginary store will be around way longer than any heavy customer the business may have. They have goals to reach, repetitive tasks to perform and, at the end of the day, not even the most millennial-optimized company can make it not feel like… work.

Less is (even) more

I know it is tempting to focus on the delightfulness of your interactions, but keep in mind that your business users will be interacting with that flow several times a day.

For instance, if you are buying a ticket to a concert, it’s lovely to see some pretty cool animations to make it fun and exciting! But, imagine the software you use to work having flips and fades within their essential functions. How many times a day would you have to see things popping and moving around? Even the shortest animations would become super annoying very quickly.

In those cases, it is even more important to go straight to the point and remember that the interface needs to be, above everything, functional.

Find the personas

In b2c, we usually have a clear task in mind for users to achieve: buy a ticket, order food, post something, chat with someone, subscribe to the service, and so on. To order food, for example, you may get on something similar to this: user searches, selects, confirms, pays, and reviews. And even if your product has a whole collection of other small features, it will have that one main flow that needs to work in order for your product to do its job.

Once you start working with business-to-business users, there’s a good chance you won’t find one, but a few flows that users have to go through. Depending on their role, they may have a predefined set of tasks and responsibilities, or maybe they do a little bit of everything with no particular order. You can be dealing with the business owner, an employee, or even a third party working for another company. What are the main tasks they need to perform? Are they driven by sales? What numbers do they need to report by the end of the month?

It’s up to you to figure out how relevant each flow is to each one of these roles, and it does help to invest time into building personas and developing the ones you find more crucial to the product.

There is a routine

It’s normal to see ourselves focusing on features, but that feature will always be part of a repetitive workflow. Jobs have a routine –some are clearer than others– and understanding these processes will bring crucial insights on how to visualize, prioritize, and build things.

You can rely on quantitative data to find the main flows but remember: there’s a lot going on outside of your software too. Keep in mind that doesn’t matter how fancy your tracking method is… you have to talk to people. In that scenario, user interviews and shadowing in their own environment are your best options.

When you are interviewing users and digging for a routine, I can tell you up front that it is not easy to describe something like that off the top of your head, so a nice way to prompt this topic is to ask what do they do as soon as they get to work, and so on. If they mention a specific action, ask them what comes before and after this action in order to place it into the flow you are building. Is there any offline task that can be brought to the product? Are we using the same terms and slangs that they are familiar with in the business? Do they have to interact with other people, or is it a lone job?

By understanding the users routine, you may find that they are using a simple combination of pen and paper to walk around a broken experience or to compensate for a missing feature. And believe me when I say that they are very creative in coming up with some hacks! Find those.

Last thing around the routine topic: interviews are also essential to build empathy. It's not just about performing tasks, so learn about their business, their plans for the future, and of course, the impact that your product has on it. It’s a cliché, but show them that you actually care about their job too.

Changes may break the flow

Productivity is a big keyword here. And if you have a daily routine, any change will easily break the flow. Final customers already get mad with changes, so imagine when you are messing with someone’s job (and incoming).

The recommended approach is always to communicate these changes to your users: say what and why you are changing something, so they have a better perception of control on their hands to make their own decision. If it’s something big — after testing the frak out — , give them the chance of opting-in and out, at least until you are more confident that whatever you’ve built is solid and it is an actual improvement.

Users are willing to help

It may be harder to recruit people that already use the product and to fit into their busy schedule, but there’s a great thing about this scenario: users may be more willing to help you to help them, after all, you’ll be making their work more productive.

There’s a good chance that these users depend on your software to do their jobs. The number of competitors is usually small when compared with b2c products, and even if they decide to switch to a different one, it would probably have a significant impact on costs for their business.

Give people a tool to send you feedback and report bugs. Reach them to see if they have 15 minutes to talk to you or even ask if you could visit their office for a quick chat. Ask around if they want to test something new that can improve their productivity.

All of this talking is essential for your learnings. It will power up your empathy map, and on top of that, it will make your users feel heard.

That’s it!

I’m sure I forgot something important to add to the list, so feel free to share your thoughts and learnings in the comments! ;)