When a SaaS business thinks of UX design, it most commonly keeps an idea of a B2C app in mind. These apps are aimed to serve individual customers and are built with a single user at the heart of the design approach. However, B2B product design is a completely different task you should understand inside out to reach out to business-level clients with relevant offers.
That’s why you may need the assistance of an experienced SaaS web design agency that will bring your UX design in compliance with the global B2B digital products’ standards. What are they? Read on to find out.
B2B vs. B2C UX Design
So, what sets the B2B and B2C apps apart? First, you should understand that a B2C app is used by retail customers – people just like you. Thus, a preliminary UX research effort can give you a proper understanding of your end user and how you should appeal to them with the right UI/UX design, a well-developed set of features, and an attractive UVP.
Things work differently with B2B apps, as they are meant for corporate use. Thus, your software should satisfy the needs of an organization instead of an individual user. This requirement sets specific limitations and demands on what you should produce to make the app successful. Your app should be:
- Complex (to the degree that satisfies the client’s organizational complexity)
- Scalable
- Distributed
- Mission-critical
- Component-based (its architecture should allow distinct operation of various components by different departments)
Besides, don’t forget that modern organizations need to manage and store large amounts of information, so you should take proper care of data safety and automation of data flows.
Design Bottlenecks You Should Resolve
Now that we know what a B2B app should be, let’s consider what can prevent you from achieving this outcome (which may become a reason for your SaaS product’s failure). The most common challenges that SaaS businesses encounter in the process of B2B product design are:
- Diverse employee mindset. While individual users look for stunning designs and exclusive features, corporate users are directed at efficiency and automation of their job duties. Thus, a design agency should understand the business context inside out to deliver custom-tailored B2B solutions that solve a specific company’s pressing issues and help employees do their jobs better and quicker.
- Resistance (and high cost) to change. A large organization with a complex IT infrastructure may find switching to a different SaaS solution hard and costly, even though it promises productivity and performance gains. So, the SaaS business’s task is to offer the visible benefits of switching to a new B2B app with proper regard to the existing workflows and processes.
- Optimal complexity. The B2B app’s complexity is way higher than in B2C apps; it’s an unavoidable feature a B2B app designer will surely come across. You should be ready for the infinitely growing complexity of the project as the need to incorporate multiple data formats, visualization tools, and multi-user work on a single platform is a must in corporate software solutions. Though it may be hard to think beyond design conventions, try to apply the design thinking approach and optimize the app’s UI with out-of-the-box solutions.
- Consistent UX. Your client’s current IT architecture may be fragmented and heterogeneous, so you’ll inevitably face the challenge of bringing the B2B solution to consistent UX. The problem is explained by the longer product cycles and asynchronous performance of various cycle operations.
- Functionality vs. UI. It’s hard to be genuinely innovative and game-changing in the B2B context, but you should do your best to accomplish that aim. Only trailblazing technology solutions are here to stay, and you should always give your B2B clients a bit more than an efficiency and functionality boost (though they may swear that it’s all they need).
Elements of Superior UX Design of a SaaS App
With all those hardships and underwater stones in mind, you’re now ready to take your B2B SaaS product to a new level of performance and excellence. Here are our pro tips for achieving this.
Dashboard Design
A transition to a new SaaS product may be problematic for employees, so they should always be informed about the way their activities reflect in the app. It may be achieved by equipping the user accounts with sleek, simple, and intuitive dashboards that will reflect the current state of every user, the tasks they’ve been assigned, the status of their activities, etc. This information should be presented in a user-friendly format to avoid confusion or friction.
Onboarding Tools
An organization has many employees, and each of them should master the B2B app’s functionality to be able to work in it effectively. Thus, you should design user-friendly onboarding videos and manuals that every person can access from their individual accounts. It may also work to add group training sessions that can be scheduled for entire departments or teams. This way, you can ensure that everyone is on the same page and answer questions about the core functionality in real time.
24/7 Customer Support
A company’s employees may find it hard to consult their colleagues or supervisors about the complexities of using a new SaaS product. So, you should add a variety of self-help tools (like an extensive FAQ section or a Wiki database with the core functions and features explained in detail) and a 24/7 live support feature. This way, the employees of your client organization can turn to you for technical support instead of doing guesswork and wasting their work time.
Flexibility in Every Detail
A SaaS product you’re offering to an organization should be as flexible and modular as possible. It should allow effortless scalability and adaptation to the changing business needs, achieved with microservices architecture and cutting-edge adaptivity.
Holistic Design Thinking
It’s easy to move away from the original idea of UX design with all those numerous additions, tweaks, and changes. However, a skilled designer should always have a holistic design idea in mind, focusing on how every new detail adds to it and affects the B2B app’s usability and consistency.
