Creating an Intuitive B2B Mobile User Experience

Have you ever clicked onto a website searching for a specific item, but you just can’t seem to find it? Beyond that, you want to ask for help and it takes digging around the site to find their service contact section. Frustration sets in as you circle around the site trying to find the right page and you finally end up leaving the site to make a purchase elsewhere. Beyond that, maybe your loyalty to the company dissipates because they aren’t easily able to serve your needs. More often than not, clients nowadays associate their negative user experience with the company or product.

As more B2B buyers shift from sitting behind a desk all day to doing tasks in the field, during commutes, between meetings or after regular hours with their mobile devices the need for an intuitive B2B mobile user experience is becoming more apparent. Whether you choose to go with a native app, progressive web app or simply a responsive website (or a combination of these)- making sure the customer is able to easily navigate and complete their tasks with ease is imperative to the success of the mobile strategy.

Winners in retail prove this. They invested in mobile strategy and continually introduce new innovation to delight their customers and outpace their competition. Companies who specialize in B2B commerce can learn from their example. As retailers raise the bar on improving upon their mobile experience, B2B users expect the same

Creating an effective intuitive B2B mobile user experience means more then just easy to navigate. You can expect a return on your user experience investment, expect to intimately know your users and their behaviors and expect opportunities to surface based on interactions with your users.  Intuitive design will direct users attention to the tasks that are important and your users will be engaged and happy because they will have simplified routines, increased self-service and improved daily work tasks. If your mobile user experience isn’t meeting these expectations it could mean it's time for a review to ensure your brand is on a path of future growth and success.

Creating this type of user experience is a recipe of both qualitative and qualitative methods that precisely map out key user tasks by understanding the core processes, watching actual user behavior - and then designing the experience to maximize efficiencies in their given tasks. By vetting out functions and flows that will best support both business operations and individual needs, you will then be able to improve mobile engagement. 

6 Steps to an Effective B2B Mobile User Experience

  1. Gather Info and Insights / Compile and document a 360 degree view of the current work flows (online and offline) via Stakeholder Interviews, User Journeys and Key Tasks
  2. Create a UX Strategy / Watch users in their natural environment to understand actual behavior versus bias, and mine new opportunities for efficiencies and online tasks via Contextual Inquiry, User Interviews and Personas
  3. Concept Experience / Analyze online data to see patterns, gaps and dead ends via Analytics Reports and Heuristic Analysis
  4. Brand and Visualize / Utilize best practice design patterns that focus on learnability, hierarchy, readability, and device-specific usability via Wireframes and Prototypes. Create an engaging, on brand experience to delight your users - backed by a digital strategy system via Visual Strategy Guide and Page Level Design Comps
  5. Development / Launch features or functions, set KPIs, then analyze data to validate assumptions and seek new patterns via Site Analytics
  6. Test and Validate / Seek feedback from users for continuous improvement via Surveys, Contextual Inquiry, User Interviews and Usability Testing

By leveraging your data and applying best practice user experience and usability principles for mobile, you can identify key pain points and areas of opportunity in your experience. At Echidna, we work with our B2B clients to provide them with tangible, prioritized insights & recommendations that can be smoothly transitioned into their roadmap and implementation plan in order to create intuitive mobile user experiences.

If you found this post interesting, download our B2B Mobile Strategy Insight which provides in depth information regarding leveraging mobile-first features, progressive web apps, native mobile apps, and user experience best practices for B2B mobile.

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