B2B UX: How manufacturers can improve their online experience

Nearly 75% of B2B executives say that they know customer expectations for personalized experiences are much higher today compared to just a few years ago. In fact, 73% of B2B buyers say they want a personalized, B2C-like customer experience.

And yet, only 22% of B2B customers say their most recent online experience was completely personalized to them.

B2B buyers expect the same conveniences and personalization they have with B2C purchases. Forward-thinking manufacturers are delivering the improved user experiences their buyers expect – and taking greater market share as more buyers move purchasing online.

Enough B2B manufacturers are improving their online experience through personalization and strategic user experience (UX) design that it’s quickly becoming table stakes.

If your business isn’t focusing on UX to make the buying experience easier for your customers, you risk losing them to your competitor.

Here are three ways B2B manufacturers and wholesale distributors can take a cue from the B2C world and revamp their UX to satisfy retailers and business partners for better bottom lines.

B2B buyer trends reveal shift to online

The journey of the B2B buyer looks radically different than it did a decade ago. Today, 83% of B2B buyers prefer to order or pay online, according to Gartner.

The typical buyer completes up to 70% of their research on their own, using self-serve channels like websites, before they contact a sales rep.

Overall, only 17% of a B2B buyer’s time is spent meeting with a potential supplier, and only 5% or 6% interacting with any individual sales rep — a small sliver of the buying cycle.

This trend will only continue, as 44% of millennial buyers would prefer to never interact with a B2B sales rep at all, according to Gartner. At the same time, 77% of B2B buyers say their last purchase was very difficult or complex.

Help yourself: Self-service tools improve B2B UX

One way B2B manufacturers can align with these trends is to develop self-serve tools that allow customers to easily browse and buy without interacting with sales reps.

1. Provide helpful content on product pages like descriptions, multiple images, reviews, specs, product minimums, availability, and anything else that may answer users’ questions.
2. Optimize UX across navigation, visual hierarchy, and content flows to make it easy to find information and products.
3. Display personalized pricing tiers and loyalty discounts based on the account.
4. Serve up product recommendations based on past purchasing behavior or other real-time buying signals.
5. Leverage site search to allow buyers to quickly find a specific item.
6. Make it easy to check order status, pay invoices, and view other relevant information from an account dashboard.

For example, Creative Co-Op, a leader of wholesale home accessories, increased time on page by 40% and referral revenue by 33,000% by leveraging personalization, robust portals, and multi-site content to introduce different brands and products.

Integrate the martech stack with back-office systems

A great UX for B2B buyers answers questions proactively with real-time data.

Delivering this powerful personalization, like displaying real-time inventory and personalized offers or incentives, requires integrating your website with your back-office systems. This has the added benefit of enabling data to flow back and forth, reducing manual updates, offering a holistic view of your business, and producing accurate reporting.

By integrating their website with a marketing automation platform, CRM, and other tools, manufacturers and distributors can empower their marketers to capture, analyze, and act on customer behavior.

• Browsing and purchase behavior
• Logged-in status
• Frequency of visits
• Region
• Seasonality
• Business type
• Industry
• Buying stage
• Abandonment
• Persona

The ability to act on customer insights — across the tech stack —  better positions B2B marketers to understand and personalize the customer experience with relevant and helpful messages at opportune times.

Get the most out of your customer data

Finally, B2B manufacturers and distributors should use their data to understand what’s working, so they can continuously optimize customer experience.

Customer data platforms (CDPs) are an essential tool here. CDPs make it easier for businesses to tie together buyer activity and understand what is or isn’t working for your customers. Marketers can then run tests to get more granular data and modify their strategy.

Marketers should run experiments to understand what resonates for different users and how to improve their UX. Everything from promotional themes, website layout, offer copy, imagery, and more can and should be tested to make more informed strategic decisions.

Experimentation software makes running tests and capturing results simple and can help marketers glean insights about what motivates different customers to purchase, depending on their stage of the funnel, type of account, or regional or demographic preferences.

The insights from these experiments may lead to better content, better products, and better marketing. Revamping the entire site experience with this user-first mindset can drive major results.

B2B UX: Building a stronger, more profitable future

Forward-thinking B2B manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributors have a massive opportunity to take action on their UX. Those who do so now will be ahead of their competitors.

A line will be drawn between those who understand the importance of UX and radically change the B2B buying experience for the better, and those who fail to do so. Make sure you fall on the right side of that line.