What is the B-end product

  • Company management services, operation services, such as HR system, ERP system
  • For a small number of professional users, users need to have relevant industry knowledge to use
  • The important goal is to provide more comprehensive, professional and powerful features. The user experience is less important and less critical than the C-side, but not less critical
  • Focus more on business logic and business integrity
  • That doesn’t mean our products don’t have to focus on interactive and visual details

Key points of b-side design

1. Clear

Clarity of the interface at all times is the most important aspect of the experience for us.

Users need to complete tasks and achieve goals in a clear enough interface environment. While b-side products generally require more expertise than C-side products, overly complex and obscure interface designs can irritate even experts.

You can’t expect people to be as curious and inquisitive about a product as you are, so we need to put clarity first.

  • The interface is prioritized: it is easy to distinguish primary and secondary functions, key and supplementary information, and primary and secondary controls.
  • For core users, it’s easy to figure out what they can do on the current page without getting confused or overwhelmed.
  • The core information of the page is clear and easy to understand, and the sentences are concise and unambiguous. It is necessary to explain and explain difficult to understand professional terms.

For example, in the source database, the new personnel’s side slip form is classified into four modules: basic information, work information, contract information, face recognition, and marked with mandatory symbols, you can directly see which is required, which need not be filled

2. Efficient

Efficiency is one of the most common words we hear when discussing business. This is a very strategic goal for many product managers or managers. We always try to put it first, but when we push “efficiency” to the extreme, we see problems.

For example, in the human resources system, in order to improve the check-in speed, we modified the interface for several times and reviewed the invitations. We only simplified the number of clicks on the surface, without realizing that these are not the most efficient solutions or the real needs of users

A form that requires only one click to “submit” may seem efficient, but long forms have proven to be more annoying and error-prone, which is why many “order” pages require multiple steps.

So “efficient” comes second.

  • Can let the system rely on internal or set business logic automatically associated operations or judgments, do not let the user to carry out; (Automatically defaults, etc.)
  • Tasks or operations that can be completed on the current page without going to other pages as far as possible; (Minimize page hopping)
  • For 80% of operations or required information, it takes less than 3 clicks to get there;
  • Be able to identify core user behaviors and make recommendations as they move forward. (In fuzzy search, search recommendation is made)

3. The consistency

Consistency is often one of the biggest headaches for designers in complex B-end products.

In the early stages of a product, it is difficult to predict all scenarios, and even if a complete design specification is defined, it is often difficult to meet in later scenarios. Due to the complexity of product business, information barriers between personnel and different implementation of design specifications, this is more likely to lead to the occurrence of consistency problems.

Consistency is important, for example, to reduce user learning costs, to establish design patterns, to create a unified brand image that is intuitive, and so on. But if there is too much uniformity, the system will never have a chance to evolve.

All design codes have one principle: only specify 80% of things. We need to leave room for timely design innovations, so we put it in third place. The most common consistency criteria are:

  • Consistency of business logic: Does the same thing happen to the same function in different modules or pages? Does the same definition use the same title or copy?
  • Consistency between the structure layer and the frame layer: the structure of the navigation menus at each level, the frame and layout of the page, etc. For example: “new” entrance jump or sideslip? Does the menu pull down or slide sideways? Whether the operation area is located on the right or bottom of the page, etc.
  • Consistency of presentation layer, namely whether core controls, elements and interactive actions are consistent: including visual and interactive styles, such as common controls: buttons, ICONS, toast hints, pop-ups, mask layers, menus, etc. Common interactive actions: click effect, sliding effect, transition effect and so on;

4. Beautiful

Important to designers, but not central to the experience.

For products, especially enterprise type products, achieving goals is always the first priority. Many so-called beautiful product designs are boring to use, and user interfaces that look amazing are often hard to recognize and remember. Beauty is an important means to enhance the experience and inspire pleasure, but for us it is impossible to prioritize it over any other design principle.

Aesthetic standards vary, and it is difficult to reach a more uniform standard, but there are still some broad guidelines:

  • Readability of page information;
  • Color unity and coordination;
  • The coordination of the layout, clear priorities

B end products and C end products

What is a C-end product

Often referred to as a mass product or personal product, the product is aimed at the individual user, directly serving the end user, such as some entertainment, social, tools products. 2C (2C=To Customer) products directly serve revenue-generating users

The product logic of 2B is [money], and the product logic of 2C is [people].

For 2C products, there are many quantitative indicators. For example, the product target is the number of users, which can be measured by the number of new users, daily activity, monthly activity, etc. If the product target is the revenue, it can be measured by the ARPU value (the profit the operator gets from each user within a period of time), the ratio of paying users, and the total revenue. But 2B (2B=To Business) products are hard To quantify, the Business behind the product can have all kinds of metrics, but these are To measure the Business, not the Business system that supports the Business, but at the end of the day the Business is money.

2C product design is a woman, 2B product is a man

Men care about destination and result, women care about process and feeling. The word “pain point” is used in product theories. Only 2C products that meet a certain pain point of users can be used and spread, and then survive. Therefore, it is necessary for 2C interaction design to have strong empathy, to quickly and accurately substitute itself into the user scene, think about the user’s thoughts, feel the user’s feelings, and personally feel the “pain”, so as to have a chance to find the real “pain”.

In the design process of 2B products, the most important thing is to analyze business processes, various business dependencies, exhaust business scenarios, etc., abstract influencing factors, sort out logical processes, and deduce causality, all of which are the main field of rational thinking.

Product 2C users have zero tolerance for the use of cost, but product 2B can accept high cost learning

2C products pursue user experience, with simple operation and clear instructions. Users often realize their goals before they realize them. As a result, users have higher and higher requirements for ease of use. For example, if you find a familiar APP and go to see user comments, you will often see that users do not use it, and are sprayed as cheaters and spicy chicken. This forces 2C products to reduce the cost of user cognition and operation as much as possible. In 2C products, the product manager is sprayed as a dog by the user

The help/manual in product 2B is a necessary output and should be as detailed as possible. Some companies also arrange special training courses to train business personnel systematically. For example, every time we launch a new product or update the product, we will return to our users for training, write a simple use instructions, and follow up each time