Published in · 5 min read · Jan 12, 2023
--
As many of you will know, ChatGPT (OpenAI) has been the talk of tech circles across the world. I thought I’d take a shot here as I’ve sat on writing this article for over a year now and wanted to validate using AI if what I thought was the problem, really was a problem.
I found the following:
Absolutely spot on.
Number 1 & 2 are going to be the focus of this article, as the other two are slightly less impactful.
I’ve worked on an absurdly large number of B2B2C products in my career. It’s become an unplanned niche almost. Some examples include:
- A property-tech product serving real estate agents and tenants
- A university events platform serving students & student unions
- A biotech product serving clinical trial managers & patients
Throughout all of these products, one common theme has existed when designing for their experiences.
The Landing Page.
Specifically how problematic the Landing Page is.
Products & Companies that operate in a B2B2C market have the challenge of balancing 2 customer bases at once. It’s not possible to minimise (or remove focus) from one, because the market has to include both. You don’t get agents with tenants and you don’t get trial managers without patients.
We had this problem highlighted to us by a client when they wanted to revamp their landing page. It was very basic at the time and needed a brand uplift alongside UX improvement.
It was clear to both the stakeholders and us when conducting the kick-off, that the biggest challenge when building the LP is how we would balance the two stakeholders in one space.
As with every good Designer, we started to research similar products. We first started with events platforms and primary competitors, but due to their poor quality, we quickly moved into general B2B2C products.
The typical experience we found was that of a primary B2C-focused landing page, with a link out to the B2B dedicated landing page, typically in the top right of the navigation, next to the login button:
And then we dug into how the B2B dedicated pages looked like:
Treatwell and AirBnB are two standout examples of B2B2C products, and they are also both marketplaces, one for beauty, the other of course for accommodation.
This all made sense and the solution to have a separate landing page might make sense for large, established brands like Treatwell and Airbnb, but for an early-stage startup or product being incepted, it might not be realistic. There are a few reasons for this:
- More work — creating a whole new LP will take time and will double the effort required
- More maintenance — that’s another website to host, code to test and experiences to align
- Longer journey — the B2B customer will have to navigate through a technically irrelevant part of the website before they get to their section
Due to these issues, we decided to dig deeper and see what we could find to create a more seamless solution to a B2B2C Landing Page.
Up until this point, we had focused most of our research on the actual Landing Page itself. So when we decided to dig deeper, we literally dug deeper into the potential journey for both our B2B and B2C prospects.
What we discovered ultimately became the seamless solution we were all looking for.
Statistically, the majority of B2B2C customers are unlikely to directly type in the website URL and land on the LP without any prior. This is especially true for smaller products.
There are a few gateways to a landing page. For example, potential customers might see an advert somewhere, or have a link shared by someone.
We, unfortunately, did not have data to see the exact source of our visitors on our LP, ( you definitely should set this up as a must-have), and so we had to dig into other product journeys.
A common scenario for visitors to a Landing Page is to Google the company/product first. You might do this anyway for your sanity to check its legitimacy.
When looking at other B2B2C products, we found a trend in their Google results:
Each of these products had a specific entry point in their results, to divert their B2B customers into one place, and their B2C to another.
SEO is how the B2B2C problem was solved.
By navigating your different users at this top level, you can reduce the need for a balanced and complex UX on the LP.
So that’s what we suggested doing for our client’s LP too. Instead of the B2B side being pushed to the top, the B2C was pushed primarily to SEO and B2B became the primary focus of the page.
This was one of the final design options we went for:
These are some of the examples of B2B2C products that were analysed throughout this project:
www.native.fm
www.goodlord.co
airbnb.com
treatwell.co.uk
Drop me a message if you want a link to the Loom video breakdown of this process.
There were some interesting lessons that came out of this project, including some unexpected ones:
- Do full user journey mapping
When you are tasked or asked to look at a feature/page, don’t make the mistake of designing in isolation, look beyond that single experience. - Some design solutions might have no design involved at all
We are fortunate to work in a space where there are many available solutions, plenty beyond what might be suggested by your stakeholders. Explore them! - Think about touchpoints outside of the website when handling the website
This is where true UX comes in, your digital product or website won’t be the only thing your customers will have experienced, so bear that in mind, and sometimes leverage it. - Track your incoming users
Measuring and tracking are so important in product development, and I’ve seen them missed over and over again with clients. You need to know what your users are doing, and then you can explore the why. This leads to less uncertainty in decision-making and a better working culture not ruled solely by egos & opinions.
