B2B vs. B2C in Front End Development
There might be a large difference between B2B and B2C customers experience.
Let’s go through some notable topics that differentiate B2B and B2C front ends in the context of common pages.
Every ecommerce website has a similar structure of webpages. That is because of their purpose: the page content provides product info for customers, either B2B or B2C. This allows us to go through typical pages common to both B2B and B2C approaches and compare them.
Homepage
The home page of every ecommerce website is the most notable part — this represents the first customer impression. This page is accessible using the links provided in ads, on business cards, on branded packaging, in Google search results, etc. For this reason, you want it to correspond to your target audience.
You know the most famous B2C websites: Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, Walmart… lots of them. They are attractive, colorful, bright, and have eye-catching animations. Their goal is to impress every customer enough to choose their brand in the vast scope of competitors.
The common B2C homepage structure may look like this:
- Topmost announcement block for the most valued ad placement
- The main menu with search and common catalog navigation
- Header banner with some pictures or videos related to current promotions
- The featured products
- The most-viewed categories
- Partners and supplier logos
- Customer reviews
- CTA block
- SEO block
- Footer with all the standard links to contacts, support, legal info, etc.
As you can see, the B2C page tends to provide users with emotional purchases: discounts and special offers, bright product images, and attractive videos — all these elements are intended to stimulate purchases. B2C customers expect websites to deliver an emotional impact along with discounts and quick order processing speeds.
On the other side, there is a large B2B segment. B2B websites usually have a more formal, minimalistic design. Users who are familiar with the B2C experience think those B2B sites are somewhat confusing, because they are so different, but this is not a mistake. B2B portals have their own goals — to serve the needs of corporate users.
B2B ecommerce users are mostly business buyers, but also people from management and finance departments. Oftentimes, businesses already know what they need based on pick lists. Emotions are not a part of B2B deals. Just imagine you are shopping with a strict list of items for a precise budget — you only need certain products and none others.
Business customers typically have a long-term relationship with suppliers, formalized by contract agreements. They usually need to access their own account with a personalized catalog, prices, currency choice, payment and delivery options, etc.
The home page of B2B portals may look like this:
- Brand information
- Login form
- List partners’ or most-valued customers’ logos
- Footer with all the remaining links, including legal
- As you see, it is much simpler and shorter
This page’s intent is not to sell something. Instead, it needs to provide generic information and allow users to log in. The menu with personalized search and product catalog navigation can be accessible after the login.
For the authorized user, the home page should be different from the default home page. The most common approach is to show some kind of a dashboard with the aggregated data from the most sensitive parts. Numbers, tables, and pie charts are the most common dashboard elements. Businesses need to analyze how much money they spent, how fast their orders were processed, what the most in-demand goods were, etc.
Registration steps
One of the main differences between B2C and B2B portals is the customer number. B2C has a vast number of users, while B2B users comprise a much smaller figure.
Customer registration is usually simple for B2C. Those ecommerce portals often allow users to sign up using their phone number or social media account. Let users create an account in one click and they will be happy, because nothing is distracting them from their emotions.
Let B2C users enter their personal data only when it is really needed — during the checkout — then use an avatar during the review posting, and an email to provide the payment confirmation. Having a registration form with a lot of fields is one sure way to scare off your B2C customer.
B2B users often have no option to even self-register. Rather, the company account is created by a specially authorized person, and user accounts are created and managed by a company administrator. Such portals usually have a login form with password reset flow. The registration form may be very complex, and it may send user registration data to the managers’ email.
Category pages
Most often, the goods in B2B and B2C are divided into several product categories. They may be hierarchical and accessible from the main menu, which is the topmost navigation part of the whole website.
Since the page purpose is the same between B2B and B2C, the implementations are not so different. Both B2B and B2C ecommerce solutions have a nearly identical page structure. It contains the current category title, some kind of filters, and the product list. That’s all.
However, there are some differences. Since B2C users need one-click purchases and to shop according to their emotions, such category listings usually have infinite-like scrolling instead of classic pagination. This allows users to concentrate on browsing without losing the focus on some annoying actions like clicking the “next page” button. Images are the central part of the listing, so if you are a web designer — make them bigger, add in-place galleries, and include videos or animations. Here is definitely the right place to implement the image lazy loading to make the content render faster. Thus, a user will get the desired results in just a moment’s time.
B2B users usually do not browse the product catalog aimlessly. They need an advanced search functionality in addition to the classic filters. They search by product name, SKU, brand, spare parts, etc. They already know what they are looking for and the price tag. Pagination is not a problem; it is just indicating how many results are there.
Also consider that there is more important information to include, like stock quantity, in-transit quantity, and other key identifiers. To incorporate this, the best solution may be to add the table or list view to compile such data into columns. Business users are always comparing their choices. They may also need an approval loop from management.
Product pages
Product pages are the most important part of a website, since they generate sales. Again, both B2B and B2C ecommerce solutions expect the same content from these pages. They must contain the product name, pictures, description, some properties, and, of course, the price.
As for B2C, their product pages usually contain some additional data: user reviews, comments, simple variations selector, etc. Above all, users need to be entertained, so keep images on the main portion and put sensitive properties on the top. Be sure to hide extra info — don’t force the user to read a lot of content (hint: they don’t like reading at all). They want other users to read instead, and prefer to make the purchase decision based on the product rating.
Users are looking for colorful images, noting the rating stars, and comparing prices — no boring descriptions, long specs tables, additional certificates, or scans; that’s a waste of time. Your main goal is to let users purchase your products easily, so this might mean adding express checkout or one-click purchasing; just don’t let their emotions cool down. They are here at the product page because they want to buy something.
B2B users are more meticulous. Responsibility for the purchasing process is often shared among several staff members, some of whom are responsible for comparing and selecting goods by properties, some are comparing prices, some are looking for supplier information, and some are checking tracking with the transport provider.
Note that all these B2B users are working with the front end, so the product page must contain as much well-structured data as you can provide. Display the entire specifications table, available certificates and declarations, branches’ working hours, estimated delivery time, package size, and weight. All that data is sensitive to B2B users while planning the order, but be incredibly careful not to have this data fragmented; otherwise, users will not be able to find what they need.
Again, colorful images are not the purchase driver; real-world photos and drawings supply the magic.
Checkout page
Ultimately, the main purpose of every ecommerce webpage is to convert visitors into clients. The checkout page is the last barrier between the intent and the purchase — so please, don’t fail at the last step!
B2C users love checkout speed. No wasting time, no big forms, no extra data to fill in. Keep the purchase process simple. Notice that B2C customers usually purchase a small quantity of goods at a time, so all of them can be displayed on one screen.
The whole purchase process is usually completed in minutes. An abandoned cart, however, could be kept for a prolonged period of time, enabling you to send email reminder messages to the user, so they can come back to complete the order when they are ready.
Design your checkout process efficiently and only require forms directly related to the purchase. Lastly, allow users to pay with their favorite method: PayPal, bank card, Webmoney, Apple pay… there are lots of them. If you are developing a multiregional platform, display payment methods common to the selected region. Simplicity is the key.
B2B users are on the other side. As mentioned earlier, there are a number of users who may be involved in the purchasing process, so an order can be a long-term activity for B2B. Often the order is prepared, then it goes through some validation and confirmation processes. Then, after all these steps — finally, it can be ordered. Consider saving all the steps on your back end. Users can refer to the cart from various devices (desktop, mobile) within this extended period. Keep in mind that there can be a month of lag between the initial visit and the checkout step of the order placement.
Businesses tend to buy a lot of products in one order. There may be dozens or even hundreds of SKUs on one purchase request. In that instance, it’s better to add some kind of pagination to allow sorting and search abilities within the cart. Also because of the long period of time, the available quantity may change; some goods may no longer be available at all. It’s better to highlight and prompt the user to resolve such problems prior to checkout.
The above information leads to the idea that a one-page checkout is not the best option. Split the checkout into some relevant steps if you can. Let different roles of users do their work independently.
And what about payment methods? Keep in mind that businesses are more unique: they usually need some kind of invoice to pay by wire transfer. Don’t add too many available methods for B2B; check what is best for your users and implement the most reasonable minimum number of solutions.
Account management
B2C users frequently have some kind of a personal account page on the ecommerce website. This is where they can manage their profile and view a history of orders. Also, it is common to display some loyalty data, bonuses, and other perks here.
For B2B, corporate users more often have a company account with several users and approval tiers attached to it. This requires account management to be divided among the company manager, users with admin functionalities, and company end-user sections.
Company managers should have the ability to manage their users, modify company information, billing accounts, billing and shipment addresses, view order history, and have a complex dashboard to analyze purchases.
B2B users should have the ability to reset their password and view available orders and carts — usually, that’s all. However, there may be different roles that require additional permissions.
Search functionality in B2B and B2C
A rich search capability is the main driver of successful purchases. Both target audiences of B2C and B2B users want to easily find their desired goods. However, their approaches to the search process are different.
B2C users usually want to find goods by name or main properties: “red dress with long sleeves,” “iPhone 13,” “smartphone with 3 cameras,” etc. The best approach is to give them some kind of search hints or search-ahead behavior. Set up the topmost search bar to allow the user to type something in and get immediate results. Users should have the ability to review the results right there on the page.
If you redirect users to a dedicated search page on every single search, the user will be tired of infinite page browsing. However, the search page is really helpful. Keep in mind that users are prone to typos. So, provide typo correction, morphological search, and other handy functions. For example, searches for “iphon 13”, “aifon 13”, and “ifon 13” should return the same results, because users are likely to make mistakes.
B2B users, on the other hand, search using more accurate options like SKUs or product codes. A combination of letters and numbers like “UH-434” or “LT213HK4-MKII” are relevant search queries. A B2B portal is not the best place to implement search correction. If users want such a specific keyword, that means they really need it. Those requests are usually made by copying from some other database. Your solution should be set up correctly to provide results for this type of search.
Website performance
Regardless of your target audience, the performance of your ecommerce website is key. If your ecommerce solution is slow, users won’t wait; they’ll go to another site that is faster.
Ultimate website performance is especially crucial for B2C. You can find a lot of reviews from Google and other giants reporting how even a one-second delay can decrease the conversion rate in B2C ecommerce.
The B2C ecommerce portal is the place to make your metrics and performance budgets as tight as they can be. Every feature or improvement should consider those budgets. The implementation of new handy features shouldn’t affect performance. Include the loading time, time to interact, number of queries, and amount of transferred data in your budget, and try to reduce them. Load data asynchronously, keep data placeholders and skeletons to avoid content flickering, load only visible data (load an image from carousel only when it’s going to be visible), etc. You can also use a thermal map of the pages for UI/UX analysis.
B2B users are more loyal and less likely to leave your site because of performance issues. They are using your solution because you provide goods they need and their performance budgets are more flexible. However, don’t think that performance is something you can disregard.
Technologies, frameworks, concepts
Keeping up with progress is essential. Incorporating the latest technology allows you to create fast, attractive ecommerce solutions. Having a modern tech stack can also bring you more experienced and inspired developers.
B2C solutions should be brilliant, so using outdated technology or framework is the way to nowhere. Keep track of what devices and systems are most used by your customers. Don’t waste time and resources to maintain outdated browser versions, unused devices, etc.
B2B solutions are more inert. They reflect well-established technologies, so there is a significant time lag to integrate technology changes. Keep in mind that, for now, many B2B companies are still using older versions of Internet Explorer (even if it is not supported), Windows XP, Windows 7, low-performance tablets, and computers with low-resolution displays. That’s your audience in the real world. When trying to develop a modern solution, think about customers who are still using nearly obsolete devices.
Final solutions
To create a brilliant ecommerce front end, learn who your target audience is, what the limitations are, and what your competitors are doing. If you’re trying to use the latest available technologies without regard for the customers’ needs, you probably won’t reach your business goals in full. Keep in mind that a great customer UX is not only your responsibility, but a meaningful opportunity for your company to shine among competitors. Don’t let it go to waste.
