Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Tom Karwatka

Building a B2B eCommerce Platform is one thing but getting users engaged is another.

Developing eCommerce since 2004, I‘ve seen how successful B2B clients digitize their businesses and how they onboard users. Probably the best example I saw up close was TIM (one of the biggest electrotechnical B2B retailers in Europe). We started cooperation with TIM in 2011 and since then we’ve helped them move about 80% of their sales from the off-line to on-line channel. They have transformed the whole business, making more than 150m EUR in revenue.

TIM Sales going from off-line to on-line

We work with multiple B2B companies, helping them go fully digital. Today I will share what we’ve learned by doing this.

Why this is such a huge problem

While researching this article, I saw that 40–60% of software users will open an app once, and never login again. Other analysts said that about 70–80% of users never use the app again 72 hours after onboarding. It’s even worse for Voice Assistants. When a voice application acquires a user, there is only a 3% chance that user will be active in the second week.

So if you don’t win the user over with a great first impression, it’s hard to be successful. Now, when many companies are trying to move their clients from off-line to on-line, this is really crucial.

According to a HRB Survey, about half of executives listed a lack of communication as a significant challenge during onboarding new clients.

HRB Survey

Getting the Management Board involved

Change is hard. When I don’t see personal involvement in a digital transformation from the Management Board, the outcome is always a flop.

One of our clients announced publicly that 1 year after their eCommerce went live they would receive orders only through this channel. Some old-clients called the CEO and threatened to end cooperation because they don’t like eCommerce. Do you know what the answer of the CEO was? I’m very sorry but we don’t have any other options here.

Without a brave Management Board, a company will struggle, being afraid of the change.

You know what the outcome was for this CEO and his company? They lost this client and several others but thanks to their online presence, they won many more new clients and they cut their costs significantly.

Know your Client first!

To effectively convince a client to do anything, you must first get to know him. Every time we design a new B2B system we start from building Personas. To do so, we often conduct user research — for example field research.

Here you can see Kasia, our in-house psychologist, working in the field, gathering insights.

In the picture, you can see Kasia in one of our end-clients’ facilities. Our initial idea was to create a mobile app for construction workers that allows them to make an order, etc. While doing field research, we learnt that people who work there are smartphone owners but they leave their smartphones at home or in the car to keep them safe and instead bring some old-school phones that are more resistant to dust and are easier to use, even in gloves. So they don’t want to have an app, they need a call-center. To get this kind of insight you really need to meet these people and observe how they work.

Based on research such as this, we prepare Personas. A persona is a fictional identity that reflects one of the user groups we design for. Personas help you to understand what a client actually needs. Usually, we create 3–4 personas for each project.

Here you can see the persona of Henry. Henry is a 47-year-old technician with his own team. We have written things that Henryk sees, feels, what his problems are and how a company like TIM can help him. A persona, like Henry, gives the customer data a human face. Personas also help prevent some common design pitfalls, which may otherwise be easy to fall into.

Here you can see the persona of Henry. Henry is a 47-year-old technician with his own team.

Every time our team imagined new feature — we asked ourselves — will Henry like this and will be able to use this?

Map the real use-cases

After we implemented the first version of TIM B2B eCommerce, one day a consultant found an order for 100 light bulbs and a huge utility pole.

Consultant found an order for 100 light bulbs and a huge utility pole.

To ship such a pole, you have to carefully arrange the delivery. The consultant, then calls the client — only to find out that the client does not need this huge utility pole, but used it as bait; he only wanted the consultant to call him so that he could negotiate the price of the light bulbs. 😀

This is when we figured out that there had to be the possibility to convert the cart contents into offers.

One of the major problems with onboarding is missing these crucial features. The client knows that when he contacts a sales rep directly, he can do X, Y or Z with him. When there is no such option in eCommerce he will instantly feel that this channel is not as good as the old channel.

The worst case scenario here is to leave out some promotions or other mechanisms that create massive value for the end client. If in eCommerce I can’t use my B2B discounts, I feel like a loser and I don’t like to use this system anymore.

Another example from the TIM Case Study is Dynamic offering. A company like TIM has lots of already-cut cables in stock and wants to sell those pieces to avoid a loss.

Imagine, you want to buy 2km of cable. As it so happens, TIM has a 2.5-km-long piece in stock, which they’d love to get rid of. So, they offer you their 2.5 km cable cheaper than your 2 km one. It is up to you to decide which length you will opt for. This tool just broadens your choice and moreover — solved logistic issues for TIM warehouse (to get rid of short cable cuts taking up space on warehouse compartments which wouldn’t have been sold otherwise).

And what is the most important thing here — this tool create real, valuable business opportunities for the end clients — just like a good sales rep.

Pick one, the most important scenario of success

Knowing what is really important for each Persona, you can create onboarding scenarios based on these values. The whole scenario can start even before the user sees the platform. You can create dedicated ads and train your sales force to show this specific value to clients.

When a client logs in to the platform you should deliver the first glimpses of this value as soon as possible. Some people name this “initial success”, “wow” or the “aha” moment. The idea is that you make the user do something, and then you show them the tangible output. So they say, “Aha! Got it!”

Mailchimp encourages clients to add the first test subscriber and then send the campaign.

Sometimes it can look like a hard goal to achieve. I saw a good example at Mailchimp.

The initial success for an email marketing system would be to send the first email campaign, right? This could take many hours, if not days (when you don’t have subscribers). So Mailchimp encourages clients to add the first test subscriber and then send the campaign.

Here’s a sample screen they show when a campaign is scheduled for sending. Cool, isn’t? 🙂

Knowing exactly when your client is achieving initial success can help you a lot when you offer a free trial period. Imagine if you could ask for the closure right after the client achieved their first success — if that happens on day one, you could convert a customer that very day, without waiting 29 days until the trial is over.

Avoid Cliffs, use Stairways Instead

You could also illustrate this another way — Avoid Cliffs, use Stairways Instead.

This is a clever idea from Jonathan Rochelle (the guy behind Google Docs). When you show a user a small successes, you will keep him engaged and ultimately he will stay for good.

Jonathan Rochelle, Co-founder Google Docs/Drive at The Next Web 2016

Some people call this “progressive app onboarding” — the ideas is to let the user discover the app by themselves and present information as they use the app. It doesn’t overwhelm the user, only shows the next step, the next related feature, but ultimately, lets the user decide.

Trial period

Let’s get back to this trial period for a moment. As I wrote before, we should give the user as much time as he needs to achieve the first success. But giving him more than that is just wasting money and time.

I really like the idea of a dynamic trial period. I first heard about it from ProdPad blog. They decided to shorten the trial period first from 30 do 14 days, and then to 7 days. But they offer additional trial days if user is still active.

Shortening the trial period forces the users to get right to work, completing key tasks within the first few days and signing up for paid accounts within days, not weeks.

So what they offered was a 7-day trial… but the more you use ProdPad, the longer your trial becomes.

Entered the name of your product? 2 free days. Added your first idea? 1 free day.

The more you use ProdPad, the longer your trial becomes.

By combining an ever-shortening trial period with dynamic additional days, they were able to increase trial-2-buy conversion 300%!

Data

People really hate to input data manually. Many clients can lose their motivation when they see there is no data in the system. It’s a good idea to import as much data as possible into the client account.

People are much more likely to complete something that’s already 60% done. You can, for example, import Company Data from your CRM for existing clients or use databases like clearbit.com for new clients.

Mix channels to support users, give them the human touch

Many clients know that when you introduce eCommerce, you must also create support channels because many clients (especially at the beginning) will struggle with online ordering.

Imagine this: you are a B2B client and you’ve just added something to your cart. The recommendation engine has analyzed your shopping cart — it occurs that the clients who bought this type of thing also bought some specific stuff to connect these things. You’re still browsing when a company sales force employee calls you and offers you help. In B2B, advising your customers is crucial to building strong relationships with them because they always put loyalty over pricing wars. Since you are interested in the special offer from the consultant, you decide to buy these products. He or she remotely adds them to your shopping cart and wishes you a good day!

We saw that especially for B2B eCommerce, phone assistance is very valuable for clients and can really help them achieve success. We build these kind of live integrations between eCommerce, Reco-engine and CRM, and clients are delighted.

To move clients from off-line to on-line, sometimes you need an intermediary — phone is an ideal channel to help clients. But the key is that call centers should help clients use the B2B eCommerce System, not do the work for them. So when a client calls, your CC consultant should help the client make an online order.

Bots or chats could be also a good idea for immediate help. But remember that for B2B clients, you should be really careful about the quality of responses. So use bots with caution. A good example is the humble Slackbot.

The humble Slackbot

Sales Team can be the best onboarding tool you can imagine

One of our clients had a large local structure of sales reps. They were sitting in local offices, drinking coffee with clients and just taking orders and then emailing these orders to HQ. When the company introduced eCommerce they closed these local offices — but instead of firing these sales reps, they gave them tablets and cars. Now their responsibility was to visit as many clients as possible and onboard them manually during the meeting. So they met every client and signed them up to the platform and made their first orders together.

Another great story involves a client who converted sales reps into sales consultants. Moving them from the ground to the call-center. The new goal was to help clients onboard.

So there is huge potential to increase the efficiency of your sales team and to use this sales team to make onboarding smoother. Of course you should align sales commissions and quotas with the new goals. But this is really not so hard.

Physical means safe

Try to prepare a safety net for your clients, during the first days of dealing with the new platform. A not-so-bad idea is to print old-school flyers with step by step instructions on how to make an order. Sounds quite stupid, but believe me, this is B2B and in some industries AOV can be in the millions and people are really afraid of making a mistake. Having physical help can be a real trust builder.

One of our clients prepares special edition tablets with a pre-installed website and gives them away to their best clients.

Demo account

Having a demo account could help clients familiarize themselves with the system and its features, without being afraid of the consequences. The biggest problem for a demo account is still to get people really engaged. With a demo account, it is quite hard to create some realistic initial successes, especially for eCommerce. Still, this could be part of your safety net for the most stressed clients.

Documentation, slides, movies

I’m really not sure about the value of these. For sure this is part of any safety net you are building around your product, but users prefer acting to reading and watching. I think that a better idea is to create these Progressive Onboarding scenarios and send users bits of education while they are using system.

I think that a better idea here will be to create some proof of value. For example, one of our clients identified that, for their clients, accessibility of goods at warehouse is the most important value of eCommerce. To use this value as a attractor, we created video streaming directly from the warehouse to show that the warehouse is really so huge and people are really sending things all the time.

Video streaming directly from the warehouse to show that the warehouse is really so huge and people are really sending things all the time

e-commerce half way

Some B2B companies hesitate to implement eCommerce because they are afraid of distribution conflicts. So the strategy to onboard the most sensitive clients is to onboard them first to non-transactional systems. We offer them the Product Information Solution and the Open Loyalty Solution.

These systems can help clients and definitely will help the company to build a digital bond with B2B clients. You can register clients in the system which is the first step in their eCommerce journey.

Sources

https://research.google.com/pubs/pub38315.html
https://library.gv.com/how-to-choose-the-right-ux-metrics-for-your-product-5f46359ab5be
https://cloudcraze.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Why-Digital-Will-Become-the-Primary-Channel-for-B2B-Engagement_Study.pdf
https://www.prodpad.com/blog/our-new-user-onboarding-process-ux/
https://www.madkudu.com/blog/how-to-accelerate-saas-sales-with-behavior-based-conversions-part-13/
https://sixteenventures.com/customer-onboarding
https://sixteenventures.com/desired-outcome
http://voicelabs.co/2017/01/15/the-2017-voice-report/
https://hbr.org/resources/pdfs/comm/northhighland/BringingValueOnboard.pdf

How to onboard B2B eCommerce Customer — Full Case Study of B2B Digital Transformation

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How to onboard B2B eCommerce Customers

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