The Business-To-Consumers (B2C) Model in UX/UI Design

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What is The Business-To-Consumers (B2C) Model in UX/UI Design?

The B2C (business-to-consumer) model in user experience (UX) design and user interface (UI) design is the provision of UX services by designers and design agencies to create digital products that connect businesses with individual consumers. When designers work with a B2C model, they understand consumer needs, simplify complex processes, optimize designs for mobile devices and incorporate persuasive design elements. 

Director of Design at Societe Generale CIB, Morgane Peng explains the importance of an impressive UX portfolio—a chief instrument for designers to win B2C contracts:  

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    A portfolio is a collection of  work and projects curated by you   to showcase your skills, experiences, and  achievements. Think of it like a friend:   it's your best advocate. It tells your story,  it introduces you without you being around,   and, if you're looking for a job, it's  a key tool to get noticed and hired.

 

Table of contents

Why Is the B2C Model Important in UX Design?

Freelancer designers’ and design agencies’ main goal in the business-to-consumer business model is to create seamless, enjoyable experiences that drive conversions and boost customer loyalty to brands. To ask what is the direct-to-consumer (B2C’s other name) model useful for is a fundamental question. As with the B2B (business-to-business) model, the competitive B2C marketplace is a prime working area for user interface (UI) and UX designers, as it involves: 

1. Direct User Interaction

Businesses interact directly with end consumers—so, their digital products like websites are vital brand ambassadors. B2C UX/UI design is crucial for brands because it directly impacts customer satisfaction, retention and—ultimately—the success of the business.   

2. Emotional Connection

B2C transactions tend to involve more emotional decision-making—a critical reason for designers to create positive emotional experiences that resonate with consumers. The feelings their users experience can heavily shape how consumers perceive a brand. That’s why it’s critical to make sure positive experiences can keep users and customers coming back with enthusiasm and loyalty. 

Author and Human-Computer Interaction Expert, Professor Alan Dix explains important points about emotions in design: 

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    So feelings clearly matter in a user interface. That's why we worry about user experience. But depending on the kind of product, the kind of service, the kind of system you're creating, then feelings matter in different ways. So I'm going to distinguish two major ways this can be. So first of all, where emotion is the primary goal of what you're designing.

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    So eliciting that emotion is the very purpose of the product. So think about art. Think about games, entertainment applications in general. What you're trying to do is create a *sense of emotion* in the person. That's the primary goal. Other things are secondary. Now, in order to satisfy that primary goal, you often need to get *good functionality* and *good usability*.

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    So when you’re wanting to choose what movie to watch, you want to be able to find, perhaps, the box set that you know is there and the right episode of it as efficiently as possible. So you still have these fundamental usability requirements, even if the primary goal is emotion. But it's often the things that serve that. So think about again, if you're going to share a picture you just taken a picture of, whether it's a meal you're eating

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    or your cats or whatever else you're wanting to share, the sharing is about the emotional impact that you're wanting to pass on to other people, to your friends, and to your family. However, when you take that photograph, you want a very efficient, slick and easy process to actually get that shared on your social media channels. So, again, although emotion is the primary purpose of what you're doing, you still need the usability and functionality in order to support that process.

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    Alternatively, emotion might be a secondary goal. So the primary purpose might be something that's more, shall we say, business like. It might be about your work. So like I'm doing now, producing this video, it might be about office work, might be using a spreadsheet, using a database, might be about getting your money from the ATM and get the money out of the hole in the wall.

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    It might be about paying using your card in a restaurant. But the thing you're trying to do at that point, the primary goal is to get the thing done efficiently and effectively. However, typically, emotions help. They help in the sense that if you're doing, say, a repetitive job, then being alert is important. You know, this is true whether you're a policeman on the beat and watching out, or a soldier in a battlefield situation.

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    Whether you're driving your car and needing to sort of have a little bit of peripheral awareness. So emotion helps you do that. It helps you keep alert so that you're ready for things. So if you think about online shopping. Some of online shopping is about getting the job done and getting the thing purchased. But there's also an aspect of shopping, this is particularly true of offline shopping. Of when you go into a clothes shop where

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    the actual process of doing the shopping is part of the joy of the shopping. It's harder to do that online, incidentally. But there are some brands where that is the thing you’re trying to do. You're trying to create a sense of identity in the brand, a sense of joy in exploring it. So within the same kind of application area, online shopping, depending on the brand and depending on the person's need at that moment,

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    you might want to emphasize one or the other.

 

3. Customer Expectations

B2C consumers often have high expectations for ease of use. That’s especially so, given the abundance of user-friendly apps and websites they interact with daily. It’s therefore essential for designers to meet—but ideally to exceed—these expectations through effective UX design and keep it in mind long before a brand’s product development and marketing campaigns roll out a digital solution for consumers. 

4. Mobile-First Approach

Many B2C interactions happen on mobile devices—a phenomenon that means most users access brands on their handheld devices. So, while that can be more challenging—due to smaller screens and varied contexts of use—it’s vital since B2C mobile experiences need to take priority. 

5. Trust and Security

In B2C transactions—especially those where users must divulge financial or personal information such as an online store—the UX needs to instill a great sense of trust and security, a fact that also applies to B2B companies. So, every aspect of the digital solution has to build towards that throughout the user journey for the first purchase to become a reality, let alone repeat purchases of existing customers. 

CEO of Experience Dynamics, Frank Spillers explains important points about user journeys: 

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    I wanted to just spend a little bit of time on the *user journey*. So, we can see how important user research is to creating really compelling value propositions and creating value for organizations that are trying to use service design to innovate, improve, streamline and smooth out. Well, there's nothing better to tackle that with than the user journey.

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    I wanted to just spend a little bit of time on this technique in case you didn't have that much experience with it or maybe you were doing journeys in a way that was different to the way I'm going to present to you. At least, I just wanted to share a template with you that can give you better access to what you're looking for. For me, now, a journey is something that you *build on*. So, first off it's your *customer journey*.

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    And on that is your service blueprint. And remember that the journey is going to reveal those cross-channel like, say, *breakpoints*, *pain points*, *disconnects* that you can map in the different *swim lane diagrams* – is the official term for a journey map. So, it comes from that – these swim lanes. And so, you'll have like maybe your channels here – you know – you'll have your user tasks here, pains and gains, or you can just have positive (+) or negative (-).

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    And I tend to change my user journeys, try and improve them, try and improve them. One of the problems that I find with journey maps – and they became very popular, I think around 2010, maybe, was the heyday of user journeys – 2010 / 2012, maybe. It was all about this beautiful big visualization. Let's be clear: A customer journey map is *not* about impressing your team

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    with really cool, big swim diagram visualizations with tons of little icons. It's a document like all deliverables in a human-centered design perspective. It should work for the internal teams that are using it as a decision-making document *as well*. The thing about the journey map that's particularly of value to the service designer is that it's happening across time

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    or across stages or across goals. So, the stages of, say, the life cycle – you know – you might have Research, Compare, Purchase, then the Return shopping. In other words, it's not just the purchase. A lot of conversion optimization and approaches to selling online just focus on this part here: the compare and purchase, or the funnel – if you will – the purchase funnel. And I think it's important to have the acquisition as much as the retention.

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    This is the conversion here. So, these two steps are the conversion steps. It's important to have *all* those steps represented. *Happy / sad moments* – you can have a little smiley face; *disconnects and breaks* – you know – so that you're like: "Ah! This is a break right here. They're on their phone, and they're researching, but the site's not responsive or it's *partially* responsive. And then, compare – when they go to compare, it only allows three items. So, it's like "Ohh!" – and then we have a quote from the user going:

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    "Why does this only allow (imitated mumbling)?!" – you know – something communicating the pain point. The other thing it's going to have is your reflections from your ethnography, from your personas. It's going to have those real-world contexts, basically. Instead of basically making it up and doing it internally, you're going to base it on user data. You'll also want to have *recommendations*. So, down here at the bottom you can have a list of recommendations

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    as well. This is an example of a journey map we created. And you can see the touch points we've added along the way. So, we have these different stages. We've got this – as the user walks through. So, we have Pre-apply, Apply, Post-apply. This is an online application journey. And we have the various channels that are occurring there. We've got the pain points represented. And the steps are:

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    Discover, Research, Apply, Manage and Dream. Discover was important because a lot of people didn't know that the offers were there. This is for getting an account. And basically the value proposition is you're going to have these offers – targeted offers – sent to you. So, the key is to find out how people are currently applying and at what stage makes sense to offer them these upsells, basically. And that's the value add that's being offered here.

 

Because the B2C model places the end consumer at the center of the business strategy, it becomes even more important for designers to attract, satisfy and retain customers for their brands. It's not just about creating a functional product or service. It’s about how designers create an experience that resonates with consumers on both practical and emotional levels, too, so they sense the value of the online presence they give custom to—as they can sense the brand values them as individuals as well. 

A screenshot from Skullcandy's landing page.

Headphone brand Skullcandy stands out to their youthful and energetic audience with the help of captivating images, easy navigation to product pages and more, as well as other points—such as fonts—that add up to a cohesive B2C website.

© Skullcandy, Fair Use

B2C vs B2B UX Design: What’s The Difference?

Many aspects differentiate the business-to-consumers model from the business-to-business model, namely in B2B vs B2C website design and B2B vs B2C product design considerations such as:  

1. User Complexity

  • B2C: Users are usually general consumers who have various levels of technical knowledge—which means they need more intuitive and straightforward interfaces to help them on their customer journeys or user journeys as they move forward to achieve goals.  

  • B2B: Users are often professionals who’ve got specific expertise in their field. They may need more complex features and functionalities to help them on their user journeys, which can find them helping other users—or customers.  

2. Decision-Making Process

  • B2C: Typically involves individual consumers who make faster decisions which are more emotionally driven.  

  • B2B: Tends to involve multiple stakeholders and longer decision-making cycles. The buying process is frequently more rational, and it’s based on return on investment (ROI).  

Chief Behavioral Scientist and CEO, The Team W, Inc., Susan Weinschenk explains important points about emotional decision-making: 

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    There's a part of the brain where emotions are processed. And if that part of the brain has damage, people can't decide at all. It's the ventro-medial pre-frontal cortex (vmPFC). And sometimes this part of the brain is not working because of perhaps disease or injury. And when that happens, people don't feel emotions; they just don't feel anything emotionally. And interestingly, when that happens, they also can't make any decisions,

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    like not even deciding what they want for dinner. So, we know that there's a *connection between feelings and decision making*.

 

3. User Goals

  • B2C: More varied—and these goals span from entertainment to personal problem-solving—frequently with an emphasis on enjoyment plus ease of use. 

  • B2B: Often task-oriented—and it focuses on efficiency, productivity and solving business problems that are specific.  

4. Design Aesthetics

  • B2C: Visual design is a vital factor, and the B2C model often needs more visually appealing designs—including the most effective color palettes—to attract and engage consumers.  

  • B2B: Typically prioritizes functionality and data presentation ahead of visual appeal—but this characteristic is changing.  

An illustration showing 7 visual design principles including unity, gestalt, hierarchy, balance, contrast, scale and dominance.

B2C designers especially leverage visual design principles to make alluring websites, web pages and more to delight their users and make a standout brand identity.

© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0

5. User Research

  • B2C: May involve larger-scale quantitative research to build an understanding about broader market trends.  

  • B2B: Tends to involve more in-depth, qualitative research with a smaller user base—for instance, technical help desk software.  

UX Strategist and Consultant, William Hudson explains the difference between qualitative and quantitative research:  

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    Qualitative is primarily about words, is about what user say and what we observe users doing. And we tend to write those notes down. We don't tend to count them very much. Sometimes we do in reports on qualitative data say “n users did this”, but really we have to take that with a pinch of salt. The numbers just aren't large enough to be statistically relevant. We should be focusing much more on what people are saying and the kind of

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    feelings and behaviors are involved rather than how many did certain things. Qualitative research is sort of the norm in social research and certainly has been in most user research. It is primarily about attitudes and behaviors. It's usually done with fewer than ten participants. The standard number for a day of user testing on the usability side of things is around six, six or seven, which is also partly to do with the fact

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    that that's how long it takes you. You need to allow about an hour per participant to do any meaningful amount of testing of a new product or a new iteration of a product, useful sources of ideas and explanations. This is what we get out. People of stumble on a particular task and they have said certain things that we've observed them doing certain things like they clicked on a vague word or icon and ended up on the wrong page and then realized their mistake

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    and went back. That's the kind of things that we get out of qualitative research. We cannot get that from quantitative. All that we can know from quantitative in most cases is that they went the wrong way and we don't know why. They won't have given us any explanation of why they won't even we won't even in some cases know what it was they were trying to do. Now, that's not true in testing tools like Early Early-Design Testing, fFrst-Click Testing is an example of that. Tree Sorting is an example of that. We can see where they were.

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    We given them the task and so we can see what it is they're trying to achieve and we can see where they went and we can get some feedback from that. We can kind of derive our own feedback about perhaps that term being a little bit misleading because 30% of our hundred users went the wrong way on the first attempt. So quantitative can be important, but typically when we're talking about face to face user testing, we're focusing on on qualitative and we expect

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    to have quite a rich set of results in terms of what people said. We typically, in qualitative research, ask people about the experience, which can also be very helpful in terms of where do we go now? How do we change this solution to be better for our users? And in many cases, the qualitative research is a precursor to much larger scale quantitative research. So it's a good plan. Typically to have some ideas about what's going to happen

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    when we launch this particular research project on a thousand or several hundred of our unwitting participants. Quantitative. Well, obviously the focus here is on numerical results and described using statistics and making sure that when we have got differences between Group A and Group B, maybe Group A are the people who converted, they checked out or donated to our cause and Group B that the difference is a large enough that we actually can call them statistically significant.

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    Normally when we're talking about quantitative results in the order of around about 30 participants or more, in some cases you might get away with 20. But 30 is really a good starting place for quantitative. And of course, when we start to talk about AB testing and web and app analytics, we will have available to us statistics from thousands, if not tens of thousands of users given a large enough period. So numbers don't need to worry us there, but they can be a concern when we're

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    trying to recruit enough participants for particular kinds of testing.

 

6. Customization

  • B2C: In the main offers less customization, and can focus on a one-size-fits-most approach. Even so, conscientious designers still should cater to power users as well as casual or novice ones.  

  • B2B: May demand more customization options to meet specific business needs.

7. Onboarding and Training

  • B2C: Usually the aim is for intuitive designs that need minimal training, if any.  

  • B2B: May call for more extensive onboarding processes and user training—like what medical staff need to use a hospital interface system.  

8. User Loyalty

  • B2C: May have lower loyalty—although high loyalty is ideal—with users being more likely to switch between competing products. 

  • B2B: Frequently results in longer-term relationships, which is due to higher switching costs.

9. Sales Cycle  

  • B2C: Typically has shorter sales cycles—and these focus on immediate conversion and customer acquisition. 

  • B2B: Tend to involve longer sales cycles—which frequently need ongoing support and relationship building.   

10. Regulatory Compliance

  • B2C: Still subject to regulations, but these brands’ design solutions are often more subject to general consumer protection laws.  

  • B2B: May have to adhere to industry-specific regulations and standards.  

At any rate, accessible and inclusive design is important for designers to understand, as our video explains:  

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    Accessibility ensures that digital products, websites, applications, services and other interactive interfaces are designed and developed to be easy to use and understand by people with disabilities. 1.85 billion folks around the world who live with a disability or might live with more than one and are navigating the world through assistive technology or other augmentations to kind of assist with that with your interactions with the world around you. Meaning folks who live with disability, but also their caretakers,

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    their loved ones, their friends. All of this relates to the purchasing power of this community. Disability isn't a stagnant thing. We all have our life cycle. As you age, things change, your eyesight adjusts. All of these relate to disability. Designing accessibility is also designing for your future self. People with disabilities want beautiful designs as well. They want a slick interface. They want it to be smooth and an enjoyable experience. And so if you feel like

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    your design has gotten worse after you've included accessibility, it's time to start actually iterating and think, How do I actually make this an enjoyable interface to interact with while also making sure it's sets expectations and it actually gives people the amount of information they need. And in a way that they can digest it just as everyone else wants to digest that information for screen reader users a lot of it boils down to making sure you're always labeling

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    your interactive elements, whether it be buttons, links, slider components. Just making sure that you're giving enough information that people know how to interact with your website, with your design, with whatever that interaction looks like. Also, dark mode is something that came out of this community. So if you're someone who leverages that quite frequently. Font is a huge kind of aspect to think about in your design. A thin font that meets color contrast

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    can still be a really poor readability experience because of that pixelation aspect or because of how your eye actually perceives the text. What are some tangible things you can start doing to help this user group? Create inclusive and user-friendly experiences for all individuals.

  

11. Pricing Models

  • B2C: Typically has simpler and more transparent pricing models.  

  • B2B: Frequently involves complex pricing structures, subscriptions or custom quotes. 

12. Feature Depth vs. Breadth

  • B2C: Often there’s a prioritization of breadth of features to appeal to a wider audience.  

  • B2B: Usually there’s a  focus on depth of features for specific use cases.  

13. Performance Metrics

  • B2C: Frequently has a priority placed on engagement, conversion rates and user satisfaction.  

  • B2B: Metrics such as efficiency, time saved and ROI are more the focus.  

14. Update Frequency

  • B2C: Frequently has more frequent, incremental updates to keep users engaged.  

  • B2B: May have less frequent—but more significant—updates due to the systems’ complexity.  

15. Brand Relationship

  • B2C: Concentrates on making emotional connections and forwarding brand loyalty.  

  • B2B: Places an emphasis on building trust and long-term partnerships.  

A screenshot from Amazon's landing page.

Amazon.com’s ecommerce model set the standard high for B2C, with factors such as a quick-and-easy checkout process and easy returns system to help win users as customers.

© Amazon, Fair Use

What Are the Benefits of Design Work with a B2C model?

UI-UX design work in a B2C context offers some significant benefits, such as: 

1. Enhanced User Experience

In B2C, the main focus is on individual consumers, and UI-UX designers can make intuitive, user-friendly interfaces—ones that cater to a wide range of users, and these users will have varying technical skills. This is a conscientious approach—and it’s something that leads to improved user satisfaction and higher levels of engagement, too. 

2. Increased Customer Retention

A well-designed UI-UX can greatly bolster customer retention rates. So, when consumers find a product or service easy and enjoyable to use, they'll be much more likely to become repeat customers and stay on as brand loyalists. 

3. Competitive Advantage

In the crowded B2C space—especially in e-commerce and digital services—user experience can be a powerful differentiator. A well-designed, user-friendly interface can give a company an edge over its competitors as a key differentiator.

4. Higher Conversion Rates

Good UI-UX design can streamline the customer journey. That can make it far easier for potential customers to navigate through the sales funnel—a powerful plus that can lead to higher conversion rates and increased sales. 

A screenshot from Ratio's landing page.

Luxury coffee-maker brand, Ratio’s website features clear navigation, CTA buttons with contrasting color and clear action words in the labelling, as well as many other effective features that make the brand stand out as it speaks clearly to its target audience.

© Ratio, Fair Use

5. Brand Identity Reinforcement

Effective UX/UI design plays a crucial role for how brands establish and reinforce their identities in the marketplace. Consistent design elements across all touchpoints can strengthen brand recognition and recall among consumers. What’s more, it can help direct positive emotions towards not just the brand itself but the brand’s signature elements—like a well-designed logo—too. 

6. Reduced Customer Support Costs

Intuitive design can cut down on how much customer support a brand needs to have. That’s because products or services become easier to understand and use. That can lead to major cost savings for businesses as they avoid the headaches of clogged helplines. 

7. Faster Market Adoption

Products with user-friendly interfaces tend to have a shorter learning curve. Naturally, that high learnability can lead to faster market adoption—something that’s especially important in the fast-paced B2C environment—and provide an auxiliary boost to marketing strategies a brand might use. 

8. Improved Customer Feedback

Well-designed interfaces often include mechanisms for bringing in user feedback. This direct line to consumers can provide valuable insights for product improvement and innovation. Better still, on B2C design, it’s often possible to collect user feedback rapidly. So, the feedback they get in is something designers can quickly work into UX improvements—allowing a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement. 

9. Mobile Optimization

With the increasing use of mobile devices for online shopping and interactions, UI-UX design in B2C often focuses on mobile optimization. This finger on the pulse of the digital public—most of whom use their smartphones and tablets ahead of laptops or desktops for their digital experiences—makes sure a seamless experience happens across all devices. That strategy captures a wider audience. 

A screenshot from Etsy's landing page.

Etsy—with their price transparency and mobile-friendly design—exemplifies good B2C design with high-quality images, effective color scheme and more.

© Etsy, Fair Use

10. Personalization Opportunities

B2C UI-UX design often incorporates personalization features. This lets businesses tailor the user experience based on individual preferences and behaviors. This can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. So, designers need to guide how their tailor user experiences with the best user research and leverage the collected user data to get the clearest insights into what users really want. 

11. Accessibility

Good UI-UX design in B2C often emphasizes accessibility, to make sure that products or services are usable for people with various abilities. This doesn’t just expand the potential customer base; it demonstrates corporate social responsibility, too. An even bigger benefit is that to design for such a diverse consumer base—including users with disabilities of many types—means that all users can enjoy the help of accessible designs, such as subtitles for users who can hear but are in loud environments.  

12. Scalability

B2C UX design often means a brand deals with a large number of users. Good UX design therefore means that the product—or service—can scale effectively while it keeps a positive user experience going. 

13. Data-Driven Design

B2C models often have access to large amounts of consumer data. UI-UX designers can use this data to inform design decisions, creating interfaces that better meet user needs and preferences. 

UX Strategist and Consultant, William Hudson explains vital aspects about web and mobile app analytics and how it helps designers craft better solutions: 

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    We're going to be looking at how analytics  fits into the user experience profession. It's been around for a long time. Analytics have  been around for as long as the web, obviously. And so has usability and user experience. They've been around since before – *long before*, in fact, if we're talking about usability. But the two have really not come very much into contact with each other until fairly recently – I'd say in the last five or seven years,

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    we're starting to have much more interest in analytics from a user experience perspective. And bear in mind that analytics is really quite a big topic and that  there are people who spend their entire lives looking at analytics. We're obviously going  to be skimming the surface somewhat, but from a user experience perspective. So, the kinds of things that we're hoping to get out of analytics, whether we're talking about web  or mobile app – I'm not going to differentiate

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    between the two very much. In fact, Google Analytics treats them pretty much as   equivalent. But the kinds of things we can get out  are largely around the area of behavioral data – which is obviously of great interest to us from a user experience perspective. But we'll also be looking at some of the other kinds of data – typically demographic – which also can be useful for user experience. So, *bounce rates* is a number that is often quoted in analytics circles.

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    It's how *often people appear* at a page on your  website and then *immediately disappear*. So, they've bounced. Obviously, it's very disappointing for  web designers to see that they've got high bounce rates on certain pages; and, of course, it can be a  variety of issues that leads to that happening, and that's really one of the challenges facing us from  a user experience perspective: Is it the content? Is it stuff that directed people to our site without our particularly being aware of it?

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    Is it faulty information? What kinds of things go on? *Conversion rates* – really the queen of statistics from an analytics perspective: Are people doing what you want them to do? That's what a conversion is. Are people coming to your website and buying stuff? Or subscribing to your newsletter? Or voting for your candidate in whatever kind of organization this might be? Those are all examples of conversions. And, from a UX perspective, we tend to think of those as achievement of goals, and

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    there is also the question, which we'll be talking a bit  about later on, of our organizational goals versus users' individual goals; hopefully, those are aligned, but they may not be; and sometimes the analytics can help us with that. *Repeat usage* – how often  people come back; obviously very important for most websites – we don't want people just dropping  in and then disappearing forever. We really would like them to engage with our content in most cases.

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    *User profiles*, *demographics*, *platforms* – these are all the kinds of things that the analytics tools can tell us. And some of this information has been available since year dot in the web arena – information that's passed back to a web server by the browser, for example. But it has become much more elaborate and much more sophisticated of late, especially with platforms like Google Analytics  doing a lot of that work for us. *Search behavior* – this has become a little bit complicated in recent years,

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    mostly because the search information used to be passed in with the request for a page. So, if you went to Google or Bing and you typed in a search string and then clicked on one of the resulting links, the search page would very kindly tell the server what the user was searching for at the time, but for various reasons that isn't happening so much now – some of it for information privacy reasons.

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    So, search behavior is dealt with slightly differently these days. We're not going to go into great detail on that particular topic, but if you're working with Google Analytics, which  is what we're going to be using as an example of an analytics platform, then rest assured that  you can get to the search behavior, but it involves integrating Google's search analytics with the web analytics for your interactive solutions. *User journey* is obviously very interesting from a user  experience perspective –

  10. 00:04:33 --> 00:05:00

    Where are people going? What kind of people go where? How long are they spending at various locations? Does visiting one page or another improve or decrease the chances of them actually converting – buying something or signing up, what have you? Analytics is a really huge field,  and we're going to be just kind of skimming in and looking at some of the highlights there and  trying to understand how it all fits in. So, how this data is collected and reported

  11. 00:05:00 --> 00:05:27

    – what's good about it? What's bad about it? There are inherent weaknesses in some of the data that we're going to  be looking at, and you obviously need to know and understand that. And that is one of the things that  I'm planning to do for you – is to point out some of the really important weaknesses and obviously some of the important strengths, too, but a lot of this data can be very helpful when it comes to locating and possibly even fixing user experience problems.

Video copyright info

Author: Stewart Cheifet. Appearance time: 0:22 - 0:24. Copyright license and terms: CC / Fair Use. Modified: Yes. Link: https://archive.org/details/CC1218greatestgames

 

How Do UX Portfolios Help Designers Get Profitable B2C Contracts?

For freelance designers, the way to get B2C contracts is through a powerful UX portfolio. First and foremost, designers should consider the value proposition they intend to distinguish themselves with in a highly competitive market, so they can reach the right clients: 

Director of Design at Societe Generale CIB, Morgane Peng explains why it’s vital to have a value proposition: 

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  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:31

    A value proposition is a clear statement that  explains how something, like a product or service,   or someone, solves a problem or meets the need  of someone else and provides an opportunity for   a specific audience. So, basically, it should  answer the question: why should people care?   Why should your product or your service be more  interesting than others and the competition? And  

  2. 00:00:31 --> 00:00:59

    if you're a candidate, thinking about your value  proposition again compared to other candidates,   and thinking about what sets you apart, maybe  you have some specific skills that employers   will need, or maybe you have some specific  experience that others don't have. For example,   if you worked in international markets and  maybe you know the behavior of certain types   of customers, this is something specific  that many of the designers may not have.

 

Portfolios play a crucial role in helping designers land lucrative B2C contracts because they: 

1. Showcase consumer-focused projects: A well-crafted UX portfolio lets designers highlight their experience with B2C projects, and shows how capably they can create user-friendly interfaces for consumer-facing products or services.  

2. Demonstrate understanding of consumer behavior: B2C projects often call for a deep understanding of consumer psychology and behavior. A portfolio that showcases projects with successful user engagement metrics is one that can prove a designer's ability to create experiences that resonate deeply with individual consumers. In a way that mirrors this is how designers can present their understanding of client behavior, and structure the content of their portfolio to account for it. 

Morgane Peng explains why content strategy is vital in a portfolio: 

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  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:29

    Having a content strategy is the opposite of  designing or writing something at random.    When you have a content strategy, you will study, plan, and  develop the content so that it aligns with your   goals and your target audience. For example, if  you want to be hired in the fintech industry, you   will want to show more of the dashboard work that  you've done or anything done on complex design.

 

3. Highlight mobile and responsive design skills: Users and customers access many B2C products and services on mobile devices. So, a portfolio that shows strong mobile UX design skills is particularly attractive for B2C contracts—since it shows the designer's ability to create seamless experiences across various devices and screen sizes. 

CEO of Experience Dynamics, Frank Spillers explains important points about responsive design: 

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  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:30

    Now, just to start off by saying responsive is a default. Responsive is not an option – *do it*. And the reason is because that's where the world is at. Everyone expects things to be mobile-optimized, and responsive just means that if I switch from my laptop to my tablet to my phone, the site's going to fit to that resolution; it's going to kind of follow me.

  2. 00:00:30 --> 00:00:52

    And we know that users do that; that's the default. So, by doing responsive design, you're supporting device switching, and that's why it's important. You're also potentially making things a little bit more accessible and SEO-friendly, which is a factor for Google's algorithm that prioritizes responsive sites.

 

4. Showcase e-commerce expertise: For B2C contracts related to online retail or services, a portfolio that includes successful e-commerce projects can be extremely valuable. It can prove how skillfully the designer can create intuitive shopping experiences and optimize conversion rates. 

5. Illustrate brand consistency: B2C companies typically put a high value on brand identity and consistency. So, a portfolio that shows how a designer can keep a high level of brand cohesion across various touchpoints is one that can be very appealing to potential B2C clients. 

6. Demonstrate data-driven design decisions: B2C projects often involve large user bases—and that makes data-driven design crucial. A portfolio that showcases how the designer uses UX research, A/B testing and analytics to inform design decisions can be highly attractive to B2C clients—who’ll look for the numbers as well as the reasons behind the steps in a showcased digital product’s journey. 

UX Strategist and Consultant, William Hudson explains crucial aspects about A/B testing: 

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  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:32

    A/B testing is all about changes in behavior. We present people with alternative designs and we look to see how much that alters their subsequent response. So in the simple A/B case, we show them design A, we show them design B, and we measure typically a completion goal, which a lot of subject areas in user experience we refer to as conversions.

  2. 00:00:32 --> 00:01:04

    So signing up to a newsletter, adding an item to a shopping basket, making a donation to a charity. These are all things that are important to their respective organizations. And typically for the interactive technology that we're working on. So websites and and apps, for example. So these are the things often that we're measuring, but they're not the only things that we can measure. We can measure really straightforward stuff like time spent on page, time spent in the site and also bounce rates.

  3. 00:01:04 --> 00:01:33

    For example, we'll be looking at some of those a bit later on. Just a reminder that because A/B testing is done very late in the day with live sites and large numbers of users, you really want to make sure that your solution is sound before you get this far. You're not going to be able to test everything that is possibly worrying you or possibly causing problems to users. It's just too long involved and potentially expensive in terms

  4. 00:01:33 --> 00:02:00

    of user loyalty and also the amount of effort you'd have to put into it. So we are looking at using A/B testing to basically polish the solution rather than to rework it. Bear that in mind and make sure that you've done adequate testing up to this point. Also, bear in mind that A/B testing tends to be focused on individual pages, so it is possible to have multi-page tests, but

  5. 00:02:00 --> 00:02:30

    it's a more complex area than we're going to be looking at in this lesson. So experiments have research questions that basically the things that you're trying to answer and because A/B testing focuses on changes in behavior, the research questions are going to be centered on defined goals. And as I've mentioned already, typically conversions. So will as an example, moving the add button above the fold improve sales conversions? I would imagine it would actually do something. I always find people

  6. 00:02:30 --> 00:03:01

    are making the mistake of getting too talkative on the first screen of the page and the actual “buy this” or “add to basket” button gets pushed further and further down until users actually don't even see it. Will a more clearly worded charitable purpose increase donations? If people have a better understanding of what your charity's about or where this money is going, would that improve conversions for those users? So both of these can be A/B tested by using goals that you almost

  7. 00:03:01 --> 00:03:30

    certainly have already defined in your analytic solution. So these are very good candidates for A/B and multivariate testing. But I'll give you some examples of bad questions too. So obviously I will repeat the words “don't ask this” when I've mentioned them because they're not meant as examples that you should be taking away. Conversely, research questions that are not directly related to improved goal completions tend not to be suitable for AB testing.

  8. 00:03:30 --> 00:04:02

    And a kind of vague question like “will better product photos reduce questions to customer service?”, don't ask this, is the sort of thing that you simply cannot effectively test in A/B testing. And the reason is that there are all kinds of channels to customer service and only some of them are through the website and only some of them can be effectively measured as goals. So it's just not a suitable scenario for A/B testing. There is a related question you could ask though,

  9. 00:04:02 --> 00:04:30

    which might be just as good, although not exactly equivalent, and that would be: “Will better product photos improve sales conversions?” Because if it reduces queries to customer service, it's almost certain that people are going to be much more confident about placing orders, adding those things to their basket. So that is a very easily measured outcome in terms of A/B testing, and that is the kind of question that A/B testing is very good at.

  10. 00:04:30 --> 00:04:43

    So simply rewording or rethinking the question in terms of defined user and business goals is one way of getting to a satisfactory conclusion, even if you have a slightly squiffy question to start with.

 

7. Highlight accessibility and inclusive design: B2C products often need to cater to a diverse user base. A portfolio that demonstrates expertise in creating accessible and inclusive designs can set a designer apart. That’s especially important for B2C contracts targeting broad consumer markets—and where accessible design is often enforceable in law, too. 

8. Showcase rapid prototyping and iteration: B2C markets can be fast-paced and competitive. A portfolio that demonstrates a designer's ability to quickly prototype, test and iterate on designs is one that can be very appealing to B2C clients who’re looking to stay ahead of the curve. 

Author and Human-Computer Interaction Expert, Professor Alan Dix explains important points about prototyping: 

Show Hide video transcript
  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:31

    So, why do you need prototyping? Well, we never get things right first time. It's about getting things *better* when they're not perfect and also *starting in a good place*. Maybe if I'm going to make a wall for a house, I know exactly how big the wall should be. I can work out how many bricks I need. I can make it exactly the right size.

  2. 00:00:31 --> 00:01:00

    So, I can get it right first time. It's important to. I don't want to knock the wall down and retry it several times. However, there I have a very clear idea of what I'm actually creating. With people involved, when you're designing something for people, people are not quite as predictable as brick walls. So, we *don't* get things right first time. So, there's a sort of classic cycle – you design something, you prototype it,

  3. 00:01:00 --> 00:01:31

    and that prototyping might be, you might sort of get a pad of paper out and start to sketch your design of what your interface is going to be like and talk through it with somebody. That might be your prototype. It might be making something out of blue foam or out of cardboard. Or it might be actually creating something on a device that isn't the final system but is a "make-do" version, something that will help people understand.

  4. 00:01:31 --> 00:02:03

    But, anyway, you make some sort of prototype. You give it to real users. You talk to the real users who are likely to be using that about it. You evaluate that prototype. You find out what's wrong. You redesign it. You fix the bugs. You fix the problems. You mend the prototype, or you make a different prototype. Perhaps you make a better prototype, a higher-fidelity prototype – one that's closer to the real thing. You test it again, evaluate it with people, round and round and round. Eventually, you decide it's good enough. "Good enough" probably doesn't mean "perfect", because we're not going to get things perfect, ever.

  5. 00:02:03 --> 00:02:33

    But "good enough" – and then you decide you're going to ship it. That's the story. In certain cases in web interfaces, you might actually release what in the past might have been thought of as "a prototype" because you know you can fix it, and there might not be an end point to this. So, you might in delivering something – and this is true of any product, actually – when you've "finished" it, you haven't really finished, because you'll see other problems with it, and you might update it

  6. 00:02:33 --> 00:03:02

    and create new versions and create updates. So, in some sense, this process never stops. In one way, it's easy to get so caught up with this *iteration* – that is an essential thing – that you can forget about actually designing it well in the first place. Now, that seems like a silly thing to say, but it is easy to do that. You know you're going to iterate anyhow. So, you try something – and there are sometimes good reasons for doing this –

  7. 00:03:02 --> 00:03:32

    you might have *so little* understanding of a domain that you try something out to start with. However, then what you're doing is creating a *technology probe*. You're doing something in order to find out. Of course, what's easy then to think about is to treat that as if it was your first prototype – to try and make it better and better and better. The trouble is – if it didn't start good, it might not end up very good at the end, despite iteration. And the reason for that is a phenomenon that's called *local maxima*.

  8. 00:03:32 --> 00:04:02

    So, what I've got here is a picture. You can imagine this is a sort of terrain somewhere. And one way to get to somewhere high if you're dumped in the middle of a mountainous place – if you just keep walking uphill, you'll end up somewhere high. And, actually, you can do the opposite as well. If you're stuck in the mountains and you want to get down, the obvious thing is to walk downhill. And sometimes that works, and sometimes you get stuck in a gully somewhere. So, imagine we're starting at this position over on the left. You start to walk uphill and you walk uphill and you walk uphill.

  9. 00:04:02 --> 00:04:31

    And, eventually, you get onto the top of that little knoll there. It wasn't very high. Now, of course, if you'd started on the right of this picture, near the *big* mountain, and you go uphill and you go uphill and you go uphill and you get uphill, you eventually end up at the top of the big mountain. Now, that's true of mountains – that's fairly obvious. It's also true of user interfaces. *If you start off* with a really dreadful design and you fix the obvious errors,

  10. 00:04:31 --> 00:05:00

    *then you end up* with something that's probably still pretty dreadful. If you start off with something that's in the right area to start with, you do better. So, the example I've put on the slide is the Malverns. The Malverns are a set of hills in the middle of the UK – somewhere to the southwest of Birmingham. And the highest point in these hills is about 900 feet. But there's nothing higher than that for miles and miles and miles and miles.

  11. 00:05:00 --> 00:05:30

    So, it is the highest point, but it's not *the* highest point, certainly in Britain, let alone the world. If you want to go really high, you want to go to Switzerland and climb up the Matterhorn or to Tibet and go up Mount Everest, up in the Himalayas, you'll start somewhere better, right? So, if you start – or on the island I live on, on Tiree, the highest point is 120 meters. So, if you start on Tiree and keep on walking upwards, you don't get very high.

  12. 00:05:30 --> 00:06:04

    You need to start in the *right* sort of area, and similarly with a user interface, you need to start with the *right* kind of system. So, there are two things you need for an iterative process. You need a *very good starting point*. It doesn't have to be the best interface to start with, but it has to be in the right area. It has to be something that when you improve it, it will get really good. And also – and this is sort of obvious but actually is easy to get wrong – you need to understand *what's wrong*. So, when you evaluate something, you really need to understand the problem.

  13. 00:06:04 --> 00:06:31

    Otherwise, what you do is you just try something to "fix the obvious problem" and end up maybe not even fixing the problem but certainly potentially breaking other things as well, making it worse. So, just like if you're trying to climb mountains, you need to start off in a good area. Start off in the Himalayas, not on Tiree. You also need to know which direction is up.

  14. 00:06:31 --> 00:07:03

    If you just walk in random directions, you won't end up in a very high place. If you keep walking uphill, you will. So, you need to *understand where to start* and *understand which way is up*. For prototyping your user interface, you need a *really rich understanding* of *your users*, of the nature of *design*, of the nature of the *technology* you're using, in order to start in a good place. Then, when you evaluate things with people,

  15. 00:07:03 --> 00:07:30

    you need to try and *really deeply* understand what's going on with them in order to actually *make things better* and possibly even to get to a point where you stand back and think: "Actually, all these little changes I'm making are not making really a sufficient difference at all. I'm going around in circles." Sometimes, you have to stand right back and make a *radical change* to your design. That's a bit like I'm climbing up a mountain

  16. 00:07:30 --> 00:08:00

    and I've suddenly realized that I've got stuck up a little peak. And I look out over there, and there's a bigger place. And I might have to go downhill and start again somewhere else. So, iteration is absolutely crucial. You won't get things right first time. You *alway*s need to iterate. So, prototyping – all sorts of prototypes, from paper prototypes to really running code – is very, very important. However, *crucial to design is having a deep and thorough understanding of your users*,

  17. 00:08:00 --> 00:08:05

    *a deep and thorough understanding of your technology and how you put them together*.

 

9. Demonstrate social media integration: Many B2C companies tend to rely immensely on social media for their marketing and customer engagement. So, a portfolio that showcases projects with seamless social media integration can be particularly valuable for B2C contracts. 

10. Feature storytelling and case studies: Detailed case studies in a portfolio can help designers explain their problem-solving process. That’s crucial for B2C projects where it’s key to understand and address consumer pain points. 

A diagram showing how a story arc works for a UX portfolio.

© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0

It’s virtually impossible to overstate the value of case studies in any portfolio. What’s more, it’s vital to show the right ones for the target audience—in this sense, a portfolio becomes a designed solution in its own right. 

Morgane Peng explains vital points about how to craft a portfolio with visual storytelling tools: 

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  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:36

    Most people are really excited about this stage of making their portfolio and indeed it's time to work on the visual identity of your portfolio. I'll introduce here the main visual elements that you need to define and although those elements need to reflect you and your identity, I will also cover the good practices of making your portfolio easy to navigate for your visitors. Fonts and typographic scale are usually made of the following: a heading for your page titles, subheadings for your section titles,

  2. 00:00:36 --> 00:01:00

    lead text for bigger text sizes like in hero areas, your intros or quotes, body text to use for most of your content, and caption text to use as captions for your images or embedded elements. I'd like to mention that it's usually okay to choose one font that is different for your headings compared

  3. 00:01:00 --> 00:01:31

    to your body text, but I would recommend using a standard font for your body text. These fonts are standard for a reason: they are easy to read and you actually don't want to strain the eyes of your reader, especially if they've been looking at portfolios all day long. Colors I use for the following elements: text color, usually black or dark gray, don't go too light as it may make your text difficult to read and not accessible. The reverse applies if you want a portfolio in a dark

  4. 00:01:31 --> 00:02:00

    theme. A dominant color for your main call to actions like buttons and links, a supporting color for your secondary actions, usually less vibrant and less saturated than the dominant color. An accent color, if you're including illustrations or pictures, you can be intentional and choose an accent color and use touches of it for your portfolio. Some background colors, usually a combination of white and grays, to organize your content sections. Again, if you're doing a dark theme, they will

  5. 00:02:00 --> 00:02:30

    be a combination of black and dark grays. And unless you're an expert in visual design, don't go crazy with colors. Use online palette editors to help you choose and calibrate your colors. A grid system. If you're designing your portfolio for the web, you will also need to define your grid system, similar to when you do it for your digital projects. Things to consider are, for example, what's your maximum width? Do you want to center your content on one main column or use

  6. 00:02:30 --> 00:03:02

    layouts and organize content into two or three columns? You can also play with grid offsets to structure your content as long as it's consistent across your portfolio. Responsiveness, again, here for the web, you need to care about how your content is displayed on various screen sizes, usually desktop, tablet, and mobile. You can rely here on the web builder tools that you choose to use and their behaviors, or if you have code knowledge, you can do it with media queries and flex boxes.

  7. 00:03:02 --> 00:03:34

    Accessibility. Your website must be accessible. If your case studies showcase your work on accessibility but your portfolio is not, well, it may constitute a red flag for hiring managers. And finally, a logo. A well-crafted logo can be a big plus for your portfolio's visual identity. However, it is not mandatory at all. If you don't have a strong background in visual design, I would even recommend not to have any logo at all as it can be badly designed and play against you.

  8. 00:03:34 --> 00:03:57

    If you are a UX designer with no visual background at all or maybe a UX researcher with no visual background, then I would actually recommend you to use templates online. Choose one that you can customize, again using palette editors to make sure that your colors are consistent. But you can play around with that and also, as usual, get feedback on your work and iterate from there.

  

11. Showcase gamification elements: Many B2C apps and services use gamification to increase user engagement. A portfolio that demonstrates experience with gamification techniques can be particularly attractive for certain B2C contracts. 

12. Highlight localization skills: For B2C contracts that have their targets on global markets, a portfolio that showcases experience in designing for different cultures and languages can be a great advantage to the designer behind it. 

What Are Best Practices in B2C Design?

Here are several vital ones: 

1. Design for Impulse Purchases

In the B2C model, it’s an essential skill for UX designers to create experiences that encourage spontaneous buying decisions. Here are vital aspects of how to do that: 

  • Clear pricing: When it comes to pricing, clarity is crucial. Customers want to understand the cost of a product or service with zero confusion—hence the need for transparent pricing information. To make pricing clear and appealing: 

    • Avoid hidden fees: Show all costs upfront to build trust. 

    • Highlight discounts: Show savings to give a sense of value.

    • Use simple language: Don’t have complex terms that might confuse customers.

    • Use visual cues: Use color and design to draw attention to pricing information. 

  • Streamlined checkout process: A smooth checkout process is a vital instrument to capture impulse purchases. There’s a  short window of just a couple of minutes in which to guide users through this process, so it means every second counts in the checkout process. To optimize the checkout experience—and help reduce cart abandonment rates: 

    • Minimize form fields: Ask just for essential information to reduce friction. 

    • Offer guest checkout: Let customers purchase as guests so they don’t need to create an account.

    • Provide progress indicators: Show customers how far along they’ve got in the checkout process. 

    • Support multiple payment options: Include popular methods like credit cards and mobile wallets. 

    • Implement autofill: Use browser autofill features to speed up data entry. 

  • Persuasive product descriptions: Well-crafted product descriptions play a crucial role in driving impulse purchases. They serve a dual purpose: one is to inform customers about product details; the other’s to convince them of the product's value. To write compelling product descriptions: 

    • Highlight benefits: Focus on how the product solves customer problems—or improves their lives. 

    • Use sensory language: Pick words that appeal to the senses; it’ll help customers imagine themselves using the product. 

    • Tell a story: Craft a narrative around the product to make it more relatable and memorable. 

    • Use social proof: Include customer reviews or testimonials to build trust. 

    • Make it scannable: Use bullet points, short paragraphs and clear headings for easy reading. 

    • Speak directly to the ideal customer: Use language and terminology that really resonates with the target audience. 

    • Avoid generic phrases: Instead of clichés like "high quality," provide specific reasons as to why the product stands out. 

    • Support claims with facts: To state that a product is the best means it’s vital to back it up with evidence for how it’s the best. 

    • Create a sense of urgency: Use phrases like "Order today to get 10% off" to encourage users to take immediate action. 

Remember, the goal is to make the purchase process as smooth and appealing as possible. 

A screenshot from an Amazon.com product page for a car seat.

Amazon’s product pages, pricing visibility and checkout process show how easily users can make purchase decisions and make good on them, quickly—whether they’ve been thinking for a while about an item or it’s more on the spur of the moment.

© Amazon, Fair Use

2. Build Trust and Credibility

In the B2C model, the role that trust and credibility play in the success of a business is a vital one. UX designers have got to focus on how they can create experiences that build confidence and reliability in the eyes of consumers. Here are some key areas for that: 

  • User reviews and ratings: These serve as powerful tools to build trust and influence users’ purchasing decisions. To leverage user reviews effectively: 

    • Display reviews prominently: Make user reviews easily accessible and visible on product pages. 

    • Encourage feedback: Implement systems that can collect reviews from customers after purchases.

    • Respond to reviews: Engage with both positive and negative feedback to show responsiveness and customer care skills. 

    • Highlight top reviews: Feature highly rated or detailed reviews to give valuable insights to potential customers. 

  • Security features: In an era of increasing cyber threats, it’s never been more important to win and build users’ trust: Robust security features are essential for that. UX designers must make security a priority while they keep a seamless user experience going across all touchpoints in the customer journey. Here are key security elements to consider—and feature in B2C designs: 

    • SSL certificates: Implement SSL certificates to encrypt data transmission between users' browsers and the website server. That will protect sensitive information like personal details and payment data. 

    • Two-factor authentication (2FA): Enable 2FA for an extra layer of security. Users provide a second form of verification—like a temporary code sent to their mobile device, on top of their password. 

    • Secure payment gateways: Integrate trusted payment gateways that comply with industry standards like PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard). 

    • Clear privacy policies: Display easily accessible and understandable privacy policies to tell users in no uncertain terms about data handling practices. 

  • Brand consistency: This plays a crucial role to build trust and credibility across all touchpoints of a B2C business. Designers have got to deliver consistent messaging and stay true to core brand values in every aspect of the user experience. Here's why brand consistency matters—and how to achieve it: 

    • Recognition and trust: Consistent branding helps users quickly recognize and trust a business, and that spans across different platforms and interactions. 

    • Emotional connection: Brand consistency helps build a strong emotional connection with users—something that leads to increased loyalty and engagement. 

    • Cohesive user experience: A consistent brand identity makes for a seamless experience for users—and it makes navigation and interaction more intuitive, something which an effective information architecture helps with immensely as well. 

William Hudson explains important points about information architecture: 

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  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:33

    In a world overflowing with information, how do we find exactly what we're looking for, both online and offline? Enter Information Architecture, or IA: the discipline that helps us navigate through vast data landscapes. Information architecture is the framework of organization and labeling we use to structure and categorize content and data, primarily within digital products to make it easy to understand and navigate. Is like organizing a massive global library so you can find that one book without getting lost.

  2. 00:00:33 --> 00:01:03

    Whether it's grouping Jurassic Period fossils in a museum, or arranging your favorite snacks in the supermarket, IA can guide us through physical and digital spaces alike. At its core, IA focuses on arranging the part of something to be understandable as a whole. In the context of UX design, IA is akin to the blueprint of a building: it lays out the foundation and structure upon which user experiences are built. It operates on the understanding that we perceive information as places

  3. 00:01:03 --> 00:01:30

    made of language: labels, menus, visuals that can be organized for better navigation. Good IA is shaped by the content available, the context in which it's sought and the users seeking it, forming a complex information ecology. For UX designers, this means starting with understanding users needs, which leads to the creation of intuitive site maps, navigation and user flows that make digital experiences seamless.

  4. 00:01:30 --> 00:02:00

    After a designer identifies user needs and content requirements, they will create a hierarchy that aligns with user behavior and psychology. This involves defining how information is grouped, how it flows from one section to another, and how users access it through navigation and search functionalities. Effective IA results in a coherent, intuitive user interface that allows users to find information quickly, accomplishes tasks efficiently, and understand the location within the digital space at any given time.

  5. 00:02:00 --> 00:02:13

    Effective information architecture isn't just an initial step. It's the foundation upon which effective user experience is built, ensuring that every digital interaction is meaningful and easy to navigate.

 

Here are some ways to maintain a healthy level of brand consistency: 

  • Follow—or develop—the brand’s style guide: It’s a comprehensive style guide that outlines visual elements, tone of voice and messaging guidelines for all brand touchpoints. 

A diagram showing 7 customer touchpoints.

These are customer touchpoints—where customers interact with a brand.

© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0

  • Include consistent visual elements: Keep the typography, color schemes and imagery consistent across all digital platforms and marketing materials. 

  • Have unified messaging: Make sure that the brand's core values and messaging stay consistent across all communication channels—and these range from areas like website copy to customer support interactions.  

  • Cross-team collaboration: Involve stakeholders from different departments in the brand consistency process to ensure alignment across the organization. 

UX Designer and Author of Build Better Products and UX for Lean Startups, Laura Klein explains important points about cross-functional collaboration: 

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  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:30

    Cross-functional teams, unlike silos, have all the people necessary to build a specific thing together. Let's look at an example. Imagine you're on a team that is supposed to build the onboarding flow for a new app that helps connect job applicants with jobs. You can't build the whole thing with just designers. Or with just engineers, for that matter. I mean, you probably could do it with just engineers, but it's a terrible idea.

  2. 00:00:30 --> 00:01:00

    A cross-functional team for this onboarding work might include a few engineers, perhaps some for the front end and some for the back end. Might include a designer, a researcher, a product owner or manager, maybe a content writer or a marketing person. In an ideal world, all of these folks would only work on this particular team. In the real world, where we actually live, sometimes folks are on a couple of different teams and some specialists may be brought in to consult. For example, if the team needed help from the legal department to explain some of the ramifications of a specific decision,

  3. 00:01:00 --> 00:01:32

    a cross-functional team would have a dedicated legal expert they could go to. But that legal expert might also work with lots of other teams. In agile environments, the cross-functional team generally sits together or if remote, has some sort of shared workspace. They all go to the required team meetings. They understand the goal of the team and the users. They're experts, or they soon become experts, on that onboarding flow. Contrast this to how it might be done in a siloed environment. In that case, you might have different people assigned to the team depending on need, which can seem really flexible.

  4. 00:01:32 --> 00:02:00

    Until you realize that you end up with five different designers working on the project all at different times and they all have to be brought up to speed and they don't really understand why the other designers made the decisions that they did. Same with the engineers. And do not get me started on legal. Silo teams tend to rely more on documentation that gets handed between groups. And this can lead to a waterfall project where project managers or product managers work on something for a while to create requirements, which they then hand off to designers who work on designs for a while

  5. 00:02:00 --> 00:02:29

    and then they pass the deliverables on to engineering, who immediately insists that none of this will work and demands to know why they weren't brought in earlier for consultation. You get it. By working in cross-functional teams instead, the people embedded on the project get comfortable with each other. They know how the team works and can make improvements to it. They come to deeply understand their particular users and their metrics. They actually bring engineering and even design and research into the decision making process early to avoid the scenario I described above.

 

What Are Risks When UX Designers Work with a B2C Model?

Designers have many considerations to take on board when they work with a B2C model for clients of all types and sizes, including small businesses and larger online retailers. Here are some key concerns: 

  1. Diverse user base: B2C models often cater to a wide range of consumers with varying needs, preferences and technical abilities. This diversity can make it a challenge to create a one-size-fits-all solution that satisfies all users.  

  2. Rapidly changing consumer trends: Consumer preferences and behaviors can change all-too quickly in the B2C market. So, designers have got to stay up-to-date with these trends—and it’s best that they’re prepared to adapt their designs accordingly. 

  3. Balance business goals and user needs: There may be conflicts between what's best for the user experience and what drives business metrics. Designers need to find ways to balance these competing interests effectively—especially important when they discuss matters with stakeholders. 

Author, Speaker and Leadership Coach, Todd Zaki Warfel explains critical points about how to present design work to stakeholders: 

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  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:32

    This new narrative starts with *identifying your audience and intent*. The way you pitch an idea to a client, peer or executive requires an *adjustment to your language and approach*. Client – they're more of an occasional traveler. They don't know the system; they don't know the ins and outs. They're less likely to share your language.  I mean, you're probably speaking design. They speak business and outcomes and results. So, you may need to establish a basic level of understanding.

  2. 00:00:32 --> 00:01:04

    Clients and executives are also less patient  and don't want to waste 20 minutes going through every single detail just to get to the answer. Karen's what you would call an occasional traveler. She expected high-fidelity visual comps and just had a bottom-liner approach. Karen's one of these busy executives. She doesn't have time for – nor does she need to or want to hear – all the details. She just needs to know *why she should care*, *why it matters to her line of business*,

  3. 00:01:04 --> 00:01:30

    and then she can decide to support your proposal ...or not. Now, the last time the team had presented to Karen, they spent the *entire 60-minute meeting* walking  her through *their process* and *justifying their decisions*. If you know anything about executives – a 60-minute meeting; *not* a good idea. Here's the rub. They never addressed the value of the business, and the team didn't come in with a clear ask.

  4. 00:01:30 --> 00:02:02

    In the own words of the team, it was the most grueling 60 minutes of their entire careers at this company. So, what do we do? Well, this time around, we started with audience and intent. We changed the story and wrote a new  narrative and developed a new plan. We started with the *intended outcome* with Karen, shared a few *stories* and then highlighted the *value* that our approach would bring to her business – and quickly gained approval from her. And I'll never forget the moment; it was like eight minutes into my presentation.

  5. 00:02:02 --> 00:02:22

    I actually looked down at my watch to check, when Karen interrupted me mid-sentence and said, 'Okay, Todd – I get it. You've done your homework; you've clearly shown how the solution solves the problem and how it's better than my original idea. What do we need to do to move forward?  What do you need from *me* to deliver this?'

 

  1. Information overload: B2C products often have a great many features and information to convey. UX designers must find ways to present this information without overwhelming users in any way.  

  2. Emotional design challenges: B2C products often need to evoke emotional responses from users. To design well for emotions can be complex and subjective.  

  3. Privacy and security concerns: With increasing awareness about data privacy, UX designers must create interfaces that instill trust and clearly communicate how the brand handles their user data.  

  4. Cross-platform consistency: B2C products need to work across multiple platforms (web, mobile and tablet). It can be a challenge to keep a consistent user experience across these platforms, so designers need the user context in mind as well as how to meet users consistently from screen to screen—and UI patterns are a powerful aid. 

 Frank Spillers explains important points about some common UI patterns: 

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  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:30

    All right, so now it's time to take a  look at some common UI patterns and how to use them. So, we use UI patterns as a way to help users not have to relearn, and there's a really great example here from Down Dog. And in particular, their onboarding, their visual design, their affordances, their contrast, it's all just beautifully executed.

  2. 00:00:30 --> 00:01:04

    It's actually one of the most popular apps for yoga and other types of fitness training. *Gestures* – of course, this is a gesture-based medium. But gestures are classically difficult to  learn. And so, they've kind of become standardized on all mobile operating systems, more or less. There may be some unique gestures, and there are some gesture hints you can give. So, you can say, "Swipe up to begin." So, you can give like a hint like that. But just be familiar with the fact that gestures in the very beginning of mobile

  3. 00:01:04 --> 00:01:33

    had all these different variances across  operating systems and most users just did not learn and did not take the time; they don't care. So, the most basic – you know – tap, swipe. There are some gestures like the Tinder gesture that was made famous, like was it: swipe left, swipe right. The other pattern is *integration*, that if you send them to email to validate and they click on email, it should take them back to the app, hopefully.

  4. 00:01:33 --> 00:02:02

    So, there's a little bit of technology there in terms of opening the container. Some apps do it really well; other apps don't. They send you to a website. Click on another button; then that launches the container. I think that's okay, too, as long as it makes the connection  and the app actually opens. But you should have seamlessness between notifications, the websites or email and the app itself so that if anyone is on any of those touchpoints, they're fluidly able to jump in between.

  5. 00:02:02 --> 00:02:33

    *Back buttons* are important. It's important that the back buttons act like back buttons and a user can go back to previous content or to a previous section, and that they're *not lost*. And that's actually another point about if you're using accordions and the accordion opens up, the user might get lost inside of the accordion menu. So, you want users to be able to control where they left off, especially if it's a lot of content and to be able to go back and kind of have

  6. 00:02:33 --> 00:03:01

    more control over that. There's nothing wrong with accordions – they're great – but they can lose their robustness in terms of lost in navigation. Also remember *contrast and affordance* so that – you know – the open / close, whether it's an arrow or plus minus sign, however you illustrate that affordance, that that's visible as well; unless you're deliberately giving the user some kind of focus where they need to be like on that particular page,

  7. 00:03:01 --> 00:03:30

    it's better if you show navigation and let them quickly bail out because remember you're in that micro  interaction, that clipped attention span. *Hamburger menus* can do without actually the three bars is what the research showed, so a menu with a square around it. And putting that little square or that line around it really helps. Be sure to *test*, of course, to make sure your users can get in there. Be sure to *tag* it from an accessibility standpoint, in other words, so that

  8. 00:03:30 --> 00:04:09

    a screen reader can know that it's a menu that can be opened. *Use search diligently* – in other words, let users search your mobile app or your mobile site, but if you're letting them drill into a search – say that it's for this section, so this is a news search or this is an archive search or this is – you know – so a lot of sites will just use search and just assume that users know, when really it's like a global search. The key to using different UI controls such  as presenting information in a carousel

  9. 00:04:09 --> 00:04:31

    or in a bigger menu like a mega menu for mobile is to give people visibility. Don't make them look at each single item. Let them actually get a glance of it and so that they can go on to the next screen. *Videos*, of course, are popular content, but videos force users to sit and watch them.

  10. 00:04:31 --> 00:05:02

    So, maybe tell them what the video is about and let them scan it quickly, so you might put *markers* in the videos. Make sure those videos are *captioned* for accessibility, for deaf and hard of  hearing users. And the same with *infographics*; if you use infographics, make sure that the infographics have good described by Aria tags. So, Aria is perfect for mobile and can  be used on mobile to make it more accessible. So, it's really important, that customization, personalization.

  11. 00:05:02 --> 00:05:34

    Giving users *control* of their data is a really good idea. Be *careful of random features*.  Make sure that your features   are based on desirability and from  observed user behavior.  Remember *touch target size and placement and tappability signifiers* so that users know they can tap certain objects and *watch out for accidental touches*.

  12. 00:05:34 --> 00:05:56

    You know, you can support undo or you can have good error handling to deal with that. Think about how you can help take a user to their task, give them what they need, build motivation, build momentum and have them, you know, essentially convert or engage if it's not an e-commerce or transactional type of thing.

  

  1. Accessibility issues: Ensuring that the product is accessible to users with disabilities is crucial in B2C models, as the user base is typically very diverse.  

  2. Cultural sensitivity: For global B2C products, it’s important to be aware of cultural differences and design accordingly—to avoid offending or alienating certain user groups. 

Professor Alan Dix explains why it’s important to design with culture in mind: 

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  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:32

    As you're designing, it's so easy just to design for the people that you know and for the culture that you know.  However, cultures differ. Now, that's true of many aspects of the interface; no[t] least, though, the visual layout of an interface and the the visual elements. Some aspects are quite easy just to realize like language, others much, much more subtle.

  2. 00:00:32 --> 00:01:04

    You might have come across, there's two... well, actually there's three terms because some of these are almost the same thing, but two terms are particularly distinguished. One is localization and globalization. And you hear them used almost interchangeably and probably also with slight differences because different authors and people will use them slightly differently. So one thing is localization or internationalization. Although the latter probably only used in that sense. So localization is about taking an interface and making it appropriate

  3. 00:01:04 --> 00:01:31

    for a particular place. So you might change the interface style slightly. You certainly might change the language for it; whereas global – being globalized – is about saying, "Can I make something that works for everybody everywhere?" The latter sounds almost bound to fail and often does. But obviously, if you're trying to create something that's used across the whole global market, you have to try and do that. And typically you're doing a bit of each in each space.

  4. 00:01:31 --> 00:02:02

    You're both trying to design as many elements as possible so that they are globally relevant. They mean the same everywhere, or at least are understood everywhere. And some elements where you do localization, you will try and change them to make them more specific for the place. There's usually elements of both. But remembering that distinction, you need to think about both of those. The most obvious thing to think about here is just changing language. I mean, that's a fairly obvious thing and there's lots of tools to make that easy.

  5. 00:02:02 --> 00:02:31

    So if you have... whether it's menu names or labels, you might find this at the design stage or in the implementation technique, there's ways of creating effectively look-up tables that says this menu item instead of being just a name in the implementation, effectively has an idea or a way of representing it. And that can be looked up so that your menus change, your text changes and everything. Now that sounds like, "Yay, that's it!"

  6. 00:02:31 --> 00:03:00

    So what it is, is that it's not the end of the story, even for text. That's not the end of the story. Visit Finland sometime. If you've never visited Finland, it's a wonderful place to go. The signs are typically in Finnish and in Swedish. Both languages are used. I think almost equal amounts of people using both languages, their first language, and most will know both. But because of this, if you look at those lines, they're in two languages.

  7. 00:03:00 --> 00:03:31

    The Finnish line is usually about twice as large as the Swedish piece of text. Because Finnish uses a lot of double letters to represent quite subtle differences in sound. Vowels get lengthened by doubling them. Consonants get separated. So I'll probably pronounce this wrong. But R-I-T-T-A, is not "Rita" which would be R-I-T-A . But "Reet-ta". Actually, I overemphasized that, but "Reetta". There's a bit of a stop.

  8. 00:03:31 --> 00:04:02

    And I said I won't be doing it right. Talk to a Finnish person, they will help put you right on this. But because of this, the text is twice as long. But of course, suddenly the text isn't going to fit in. So it's going to overlap with icons. It's going to scroll when it shouldn't scroll. So even something like the size of the field becomes something that can change. And then, of course, there's things like left-to-right order. Finnish and Swedish both are left-to-right languages. But if you were going to have, switch something say to an Arabic script from a European script,

  9. 00:04:02 --> 00:04:31

    then you would end up with things going the other way round. So it's more than just changing the names. You have to think much more deeply than that. But again, it's more than the language. There are all sorts of cultural assumptions that we build into things. The majority of interfaces are built... actually the majority are built not even in just one part of the world, but in one country, you know the dominance... I'm not sure what percentage,

  10. 00:04:31 --> 00:05:02

    but a vast proportion will be built, not just in the USA, but in the West Coast of the USA. Certainly there is a European/US/American centeredness to the way in which things are designed. It's so easy to design things caught in those cultures without realizing that there are other ways of seeing the world. That changes the assumptions, the sort of values that are built into an interaction.

  11. 00:05:02 --> 00:05:35

    The meanings of symbols, so ticks and crosses, mostly will get understood and I do continue to use them. However, certainly in the UK, but even not universally across Europe. But in the UK, a tick is a positive symbol, means "this is good". A cross is a "blah, that's bad". However, there are lots of parts of the world where both mean the same. They're both a check. And in fact, weirdly, if I vote in the UK,

  12. 00:05:35 --> 00:06:02

    I put a cross, not against the candidate I don't want but against the candidate I do want. So even in the UK a cross can mean the same as a tick. You know – and colors, I said I do redundantly code often my crosses with red and my ticks with green because red in my culture is negative; I mean, it's not negative; I like red (inaudible) – but it has that sense of being a red mark is a bad mark.

  13. 00:06:02 --> 00:06:33

    There are many cultures where red is the positive color. And actually it is a positive color in other ways in Western culture. But particularly that idea of the red cross that you get on your schoolwork; this is not the same everywhere. So, you really have to have quite a subtle understanding of these things. Now, the thing is, you probably won't. And so, this is where if you are taking something into a different culture, you almost certainly will need somebody who quite richly understands that culture.

  14. 00:06:33 --> 00:06:43

    So you design things so that they are possible for somebody to come in and do those adjustments because you probably may well not be in the position to be able to do that yourself.

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  1. Short attention spans: In the B2C space, users often have short attention spans—whatever the context of use. So, designers need to create engaging experiences that quickly capture and retain user interest—and prove their empathy with their users as human beings. 

 See why empathy is a vital ingredient in design in our video: 

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  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:31

    Do you know this feeling? You have a plane to catch. You arrive at the airport. Well in advance. But you still get stressed. Why is that? Designed with empathy. Bad design versus good design. Let's look into an example of bad design. We can learn from one small screen.

  2. 00:00:31 --> 00:01:00

    Yes, it's easy to get an overview of one screen, but look close. The screen only shows one out of three schools. That means that the passengers have to wait for up to 4 minutes to find out where to check in. The airport has many small screenings, but they all show the same small bits of information. This is all because of a lack of empathy. Now, let's empathize with all users airport passengers,

  3. 00:01:00 --> 00:01:32

    their overall need to reach their destination. Their goal? Catch their plane in time. Do they have lots of time when they have a plane to catch? Can they get a quick overview of their flights? Do they feel calm and relaxed while waiting for the information which is relevant to them? And by the way, do they all speak Italian? You guessed it, No. Okay. This may sound hilarious to you, but some designers

  4. 00:01:32 --> 00:02:01

    actually designed it. Galileo Galilei, because it is the main airport in Tuscany, Italy. They designed an airport where it's difficult to achieve the goal to catch your planes. And it's a stressful experience, isn't it? By default. Stressful to board a plane? No. As a designer, you can empathize with your users needs and the context they're in.

  5. 00:02:01 --> 00:02:33

    Empathize to understand which goals they want to achieve. Help them achieve them in the best way by using the insights you've gained through empathy. That means that you can help your users airport passengers fulfill their need to travel to their desired destination, obtain their goal to catch their plane on time. They have a lot of steps to go through in order to catch that plane. Design the experience so each step is as quick and smooth as possible

  6. 00:02:33 --> 00:03:03

    so the passengers stay all become calm and relaxed. The well, the designers did their job in Dubai International Airport, despite being the world's busiest airport. The passenger experience here is miles better than in Galileo Galilei. One big screen gives the passengers instant access to the information they need. Passengers can continue to check in right away. This process is fast and creates a calm experience,

  7. 00:03:03 --> 00:03:31

    well-organized queues help passengers stay calm and once. Let's see how poorly they designed queues. It's. Dubai airport is efficient and stress free. But can you, as a designer, make it fun and relaxing as well? Yes.

  8. 00:03:31 --> 00:04:02

    In cheerful airport in Amsterdam, the designers turned parts of the airport into a relaxing living room with sofas and big piano chairs. The designers help passengers attain a calm and happy feeling by adding elements from nature. They give kids the opportunity to play. Adults can get some revitalizing massage. You can go outside to enjoy a bit of real nature.

  9. 00:04:02 --> 00:04:30

    You can help create green energy while you walk out the door. Charge your mobile, buy your own human power while getting some exercise. Use empathy in your design process to see the world through other people's eyes. To see what they see, feel what they feel and experience things as they do. This is not only about airport design. You can use these insights when you design

  10. 00:04:30 --> 00:04:39

    apps, websites, services, household machines, or whatever you're designing. Interaction Design Foundation.

  

  1. Personalization expectations: Many B2C users expect personalized experiences—and these can be complex to design and implement effectively. 

  2. Competitive pressure: The B2C market is often highly competitive, putting pressure on UX designers to create standout experiences that differentiate the product from competitors. 

  3. User feedback management: B2C products often receive a high volume of user feedback. It can be overwhelming to manage and prioritize this feedback for design improvement.  

  4. Performance expectations: B2C users typically expect fast, responsive interfaces. UX designers need to work closely with developers to ensure designs can be implemented efficiently. 

  5. Conversion focus: There's often a strong emphasis on conversion rates in B2C models. That can sometimes conflict with creating the best possible user experience. 

A screenshot from Airbnb's site showing windmill accommodations.

Who wants to stay in a windmill? Many guests would love the chance—and Airbnb caters to the context as well as a wide range of vacation property seekers, and delights them with just what they’re looking for.

© Airbnb, Fair Use

Overall, the central idea in business to consumer (B2C) highlights how important it is for designers to create the best digital solutions and experiences for individual consumers—such as websites and apps that are easy to use and appeal to a wide range of customers. Every factor—from the logo choice, color-contrast use, to how customer reviews and security features work—needs to play a part to make the magic of a seamless experience. These are what clients want when they consider hiring a UX freelancer or a B2C web design agency.  

The B2C model—sometimes called the direct-to-consumer model—is indeed all about how to bring the brand directly to the users, to make sure it doesn’t just attract customers but keeps them coming back again and again, too. 

Learn More About the B2C Model in UX/UI Design

Our course Build a Standout UX/UI Portfolio: Land Your Dream Job with Design Director at Societe Generale CIB, Morgane Peng provides a precious cache of details and tips for freelance designers. 

Watch our Master Class, Win Clients, Pitches & Approval: Present Your Designs Effectively with Todd Zaki Warfel, Author, Speaker and Leadership Coach for many valuable insights. 

Read our piece, How to Write Great Case Studies for Your UX Design Portfolio for valuable additional insights. 

Go to B2B vs B2C in UX design by Hugo Del-Negro for important insights into the dynamic of B2B vs B2C UX design and more. 

See How to Design UX for B2C Business Models? by Rashi Desai for valuable additional information. 

Check out 6 Inspiring B2C UX design examples you need to see by Lara Hocheiser for further business-to-consumer model examples and helpful insights. 

Look at 11 Irresistible B2C Website Examples You Want to Steal by Cyphon Digital for additional valuable direct-to-consumer business model examples and points. 

What are the key elements of a successful B2C user experience?

A successful B2C user experience relies on several key elements for interactive designers to get right, so:  

  • Make sure there’s intuitive navigation: That’s so users can find what they need quickly. Simplify the interface with clear labels and straightforward pathways—an effective information architecture is vital.  

  • Create engaging content that speaks directly to users’ needs and interests: It’s wise to personalize the experience; leverage user data to offer tailored recommendations to them.  

  • Maintain fast load times: It’s to keep users engaged and to reduce bounce rates.  

  • Prioritize mobile responsiveness: Many—if not most—users access sites via smartphones. 

  • Provide excellent customer support: Do it through easy access to help resources and live chat options. 

UX Strategist and Consultant, William Hudson explains important points about information architecture: 

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  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:33

    In a world overflowing with information, how do we find exactly what we're looking for, both online and offline? Enter Information Architecture, or IA: the discipline that helps us navigate through vast data landscapes. Information architecture is the framework of organization and labeling we use to structure and categorize content and data, primarily within digital products to make it easy to understand and navigate. Is like organizing a massive global library so you can find that one book without getting lost.

  2. 00:00:33 --> 00:01:03

    Whether it's grouping Jurassic Period fossils in a museum, or arranging your favorite snacks in the supermarket, IA can guide us through physical and digital spaces alike. At its core, IA focuses on arranging the part of something to be understandable as a whole. In the context of UX design, IA is akin to the blueprint of a building: it lays out the foundation and structure upon which user experiences are built. It operates on the understanding that we perceive information as places

  3. 00:01:03 --> 00:01:30

    made of language: labels, menus, visuals that can be organized for better navigation. Good IA is shaped by the content available, the context in which it's sought and the users seeking it, forming a complex information ecology. For UX designers, this means starting with understanding users needs, which leads to the creation of intuitive site maps, navigation and user flows that make digital experiences seamless.

  4. 00:01:30 --> 00:02:00

    After a designer identifies user needs and content requirements, they will create a hierarchy that aligns with user behavior and psychology. This involves defining how information is grouped, how it flows from one section to another, and how users access it through navigation and search functionalities. Effective IA results in a coherent, intuitive user interface that allows users to find information quickly, accomplishes tasks efficiently, and understand the location within the digital space at any given time.

  5. 00:02:00 --> 00:02:13

    Effective information architecture isn't just an initial step. It's the foundation upon which effective user experience is built, ensuring that every digital interaction is meaningful and easy to navigate.

 

Read our piece, How to Write Great Case Studies for Your UX Design Portfolio for valuable additional insights. 

How can I optimize the checkout process for a B2C e-commerce site?

Try the following: 

  • Streamline the steps: Keep the checkout flow as short as possible, ideally no more than three steps.  

  • Offer guest checkout: It’s to avoid forcing users to create accounts. 

  • Make sure the form fields are clear and only ask for essential information. 

  • Provide multiple payment options to cater to different preferences.  

  • Display progress indicators to show users where they are in the process. 

  • Highlight security features to build trust, such as SSL certificates and secure payment badges.  

  • Last—but not least—test the checkout process on various devices to ensure a seamless experience across desktops, tablets, and smartphones. 

Read our piece, How to Write Great Case Studies for Your UX Design Portfolio for valuable additional insights. 

Watch our video on product design to keep some important points in mind in this kind of design: 

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  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:30

    Product design is the process of creating new products that people can use. It's about solving problems and making life easier or more enjoyable through goods or services. Think of anything you use in your daily life: a phone, a chair, a video game. All these items were once just an idea that a product designer brought to life. In User Experience, Product design is about creating digital things that are easy to use, work well and look good by combining user needs with business goals.

  2. 00:00:30 --> 00:00:46

    It involves making the whole journey for users from understanding what they need to making prototypes, testing, improving, and finally launching the product. It's all about figuring out what users want and finding smart ways to give it to them.

 

What role does mobile responsiveness play in B2C design?

Mobile responsiveness plays a crucial role in B2C design. It makes sure that users have a seamless experience, no matter the device they use. As many customers shop on their smartphones, a mobile-responsive site adapts to different screen sizes and provides easy navigation. It boosts user satisfaction by offering fast load times and clear, readable content.  

Mobile responsiveness improves search engine rankings, too. That’s because search engines favor mobile-friendly sites. Ultimately, it leads to higher conversion rates as users can effortlessly browse and purchase products on their mobile devices. So, mobile considerations are massive points to remember for B2C UX/UI designers. 

CEO of Experience Dynamics, Frank Spillers explains important points about responsive design: 

Show Hide video transcript
  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:30

    Now, just to start off by saying responsive is a default. Responsive is not an option – *do it*. And the reason is because that's where the world is at. Everyone expects things to be mobile-optimized, and responsive just means that if I switch from my laptop to my tablet to my phone, the site's going to fit to that resolution; it's going to kind of follow me.

  2. 00:00:30 --> 00:00:52

    And we know that users do that; that's the default. So, by doing responsive design, you're supporting device switching, and that's why it's important. You're also potentially making things a little bit more accessible and SEO-friendly, which is a factor for Google's algorithm that prioritizes responsive sites.

 

Read our piece, How to Write Great Case Studies for Your UX Design Portfolio for valuable additional insights.  

What are the best practices for creating engaging product pages in a B2C context?

Focus on clarity and appeal. It’s wise to use high-quality images to showcase the product from multiple angles. Plus, write concise, compelling descriptions that highlight key features and benefits. Include customers’ reviews and ratings—to build trust and provide social proof. Make sure the page loads quickly to keep users' attention, too.  

Also, add clear calls-to-action, such as "Add to Cart" or "Buy Now," to guide users toward making a purchase. Provide detailed specifications and size guides where applicable. Last—but not least—make the page mobile-friendly to accommodate users on all devices. 

Watch Author, Speaker and UX Writer at Google, Torrey Podmajersky explain interesting points about UX writing: 

Show Hide video transcript
  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:30

    I'm working at the TAPP Transit System; this is a made-up transit system app. And it says, 'Oh, we need a notification for when someone's payment method has expired.' So, first I do the strategic work and I say, 'What's the *point* here?' What's the point for our user, and what's the point for the business or the organization? And what are our *voice concepts* that we want to make sure that we're landing so that it's in our brand?' So, I take it and then I start including *purpose*.

  2. 00:00:30 --> 00:01:03

    And it gets longer and longer. And I just *iterate and iterate*,  and I keep all these iterations. Thank heavens for tools like Sketch and Figma where I just make artboard after artboard after artboard or frame after frame and keep them all. I choose the best of those, and I work on making it *more concise* – more concise and more concise, and you see it's getting shorter and shorter. It gets so short here at the end, it's not particularly usable. So, I'm going to go with the second to the end and go forward.

  3. 00:01:03 --> 00:01:31

    I'm going to make it more *conversational*: is this something a person would actually say? And I make more iterations. And I have my favorite among those. And then I look at all of them together, and I say, 'Here's my best ones,' and that's what I'm going to tell my team about. I'm going to say the original message doesn't follow the  voice and really doesn't meet the purpose. I'm going to say which one I recommend and why and give them another couple of options.

  4. 00:01:31 --> 00:01:42

    The secret here is: *I'm happy with all three of these*; I don't care which ones they choose; and, frankly, I'd prefer to A/B test them against  each other and learn more about the language.

 

Read our piece, How to Write Great Case Studies for Your UX Design Portfolio for valuable additional insights. 

What are effective ways to reduce cart abandonment in B2C e-commerce?

Try these: 

  • Simplify the checkout process. Make sure the steps are minimal and straightforward. Offer a guest checkout option so users don't need to create an account.  

  • Provide clear and upfront shipping costs to avoid surprises at the end.  

  • Use trust signals—like security badges and money-back guarantees—to build customer confidence.  

  • Send reminder emails to users who leave items in their cart—and offer them incentives like discounts or free shipping.  

  • Last—but not least—make sure the site is mobile-friendly, as many, if not most, users shop on their smartphones. 

Watch our video on User Interface Design Patterns for helpful insights: 

Show Hide video transcript
  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:33

    User Interface Design Patterns are recurring components which designers use to solve common problems in interfaces. like, for example, when we think about those regular things that often are repeating themselves to kind of appear in, you know, in complex environments We need to show things that matter to people when they matter and nothing else. Right. it's just really sad what we see. Like, for example, if you look at Sears, right? Sears is just one of the many e-commerce sites, you know, nothing groundbreaking here. So you click on one of the filters and then the entire interface freezes

  2. 00:00:33 --> 00:01:00

    and then there is a refresh and you're being scrolled up. And I always ask myself, is this really the best we can do? Is really the best kind of interface for filtering that we can come up with, or can we do it a bit better? Because we can do it a bit better. So this is a great example where you have galaxies and then galaxies, you have all this filters which are in rows. Sometimes they take three rows, sometimes four or sometimes five rows. That's okay. Show people filters, show people buttons if they important show them.

  3. 00:01:00 --> 00:01:32

    Right. But what's important here, what I really like is we do not automatically refresh. Instead, we go ahead and say, "Hey, choose asmany filters as you like", right? And then whenever you click on show results, it's only then when you actually get an update coming up in the back. Which I think is perfectly fine. You don't need to auto update all the time. And that's especially critical when you're actually talking about the mobile view. The filter. Sure, why not? Slide in, slide out, although I probably prefer accordions instead.

  4. 00:01:32 --> 00:02:01

    And you just click on show products and it's only then when you return back to the other selection of filters and only when you click okay, show all products, then you actually get to load all the products, right? Designing good UI patterns is important because it leads to a better user experience, reduces usability issues, and ultimately contributes to the success of a product or application. It's a critical aspect of user centered design and product development.

 

What are the common mistakes to avoid in B2C UX design?

In B2C UX design, avoid cluttered interfaces that overwhelm users. Keep navigation intuitive to help users find what they need quickly. Don't ignore mobile optimization; it’s imperative to make sure your site works well on all devices.  

What’s more, don’t have long and complicated checkout processes—they’ll likely lead to serious cart abandonment rates. Make sure that buttons and calls-to-action are clear and prominent, too. Don’t use technical jargon—it may confuse users. Last—but not least—don't overlook how important fast load times are; that’s because slow pages can frustrate users and drive them away. 

Watch our video on User Interface Design Patterns for helpful insights: 

Show Hide video transcript
  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:33

    User Interface Design Patterns are recurring components which designers use to solve common problems in interfaces. like, for example, when we think about those regular things that often are repeating themselves to kind of appear in, you know, in complex environments We need to show things that matter to people when they matter and nothing else. Right. it's just really sad what we see. Like, for example, if you look at Sears, right? Sears is just one of the many e-commerce sites, you know, nothing groundbreaking here. So you click on one of the filters and then the entire interface freezes

  2. 00:00:33 --> 00:01:00

    and then there is a refresh and you're being scrolled up. And I always ask myself, is this really the best we can do? Is really the best kind of interface for filtering that we can come up with, or can we do it a bit better? Because we can do it a bit better. So this is a great example where you have galaxies and then galaxies, you have all this filters which are in rows. Sometimes they take three rows, sometimes four or sometimes five rows. That's okay. Show people filters, show people buttons if they important show them.

  3. 00:01:00 --> 00:01:32

    Right. But what's important here, what I really like is we do not automatically refresh. Instead, we go ahead and say, "Hey, choose asmany filters as you like", right? And then whenever you click on show results, it's only then when you actually get an update coming up in the back. Which I think is perfectly fine. You don't need to auto update all the time. And that's especially critical when you're actually talking about the mobile view. The filter. Sure, why not? Slide in, slide out, although I probably prefer accordions instead.

  4. 00:01:32 --> 00:02:01

    And you just click on show products and it's only then when you return back to the other selection of filters and only when you click okay, show all products, then you actually get to load all the products, right? Designing good UI patterns is important because it leads to a better user experience, reduces usability issues, and ultimately contributes to the success of a product or application. It's a critical aspect of user centered design and product development.

 

How can I leverage data analytics to enhance B2C user experiences?

To start, track user behavior on your site. Analyze which pages users visit most and where they drop off. Use this data to improve navigation and content placement.  

Then, personalize the user experience—by recommending products based on past behavior and preferences. Monitor customer feedback to find pain points and areas for improvement. Test different design elements through A/B testing to see what works best. Last—but not least—regularly review analytics to stay updated on trends and adapt quickly to changing user needs. 

UX Strategist and Consultant, William Hudson explains crucial aspects about A/B testing: 

Show Hide video transcript
  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:32

    A/B testing is all about changes in behavior. We present people with alternative designs and we look to see how much that alters their subsequent response. So in the simple A/B case, we show them design A, we show them design B, and we measure typically a completion goal, which a lot of subject areas in user experience we refer to as conversions.

  2. 00:00:32 --> 00:01:04

    So signing up to a newsletter, adding an item to a shopping basket, making a donation to a charity. These are all things that are important to their respective organizations. And typically for the interactive technology that we're working on. So websites and and apps, for example. So these are the things often that we're measuring, but they're not the only things that we can measure. We can measure really straightforward stuff like time spent on page, time spent in the site and also bounce rates.

  3. 00:01:04 --> 00:01:33

    For example, we'll be looking at some of those a bit later on. Just a reminder that because A/B testing is done very late in the day with live sites and large numbers of users, you really want to make sure that your solution is sound before you get this far. You're not going to be able to test everything that is possibly worrying you or possibly causing problems to users. It's just too long involved and potentially expensive in terms

  4. 00:01:33 --> 00:02:00

    of user loyalty and also the amount of effort you'd have to put into it. So we are looking at using A/B testing to basically polish the solution rather than to rework it. Bear that in mind and make sure that you've done adequate testing up to this point. Also, bear in mind that A/B testing tends to be focused on individual pages, so it is possible to have multi-page tests, but

  5. 00:02:00 --> 00:02:30

    it's a more complex area than we're going to be looking at in this lesson. So experiments have research questions that basically the things that you're trying to answer and because A/B testing focuses on changes in behavior, the research questions are going to be centered on defined goals. And as I've mentioned already, typically conversions. So will as an example, moving the add button above the fold improve sales conversions? I would imagine it would actually do something. I always find people

  6. 00:02:30 --> 00:03:01

    are making the mistake of getting too talkative on the first screen of the page and the actual “buy this” or “add to basket” button gets pushed further and further down until users actually don't even see it. Will a more clearly worded charitable purpose increase donations? If people have a better understanding of what your charity's about or where this money is going, would that improve conversions for those users? So both of these can be A/B tested by using goals that you almost

  7. 00:03:01 --> 00:03:30

    certainly have already defined in your analytic solution. So these are very good candidates for A/B and multivariate testing. But I'll give you some examples of bad questions too. So obviously I will repeat the words “don't ask this” when I've mentioned them because they're not meant as examples that you should be taking away. Conversely, research questions that are not directly related to improved goal completions tend not to be suitable for AB testing.

  8. 00:03:30 --> 00:04:02

    And a kind of vague question like “will better product photos reduce questions to customer service?”, don't ask this, is the sort of thing that you simply cannot effectively test in A/B testing. And the reason is that there are all kinds of channels to customer service and only some of them are through the website and only some of them can be effectively measured as goals. So it's just not a suitable scenario for A/B testing. There is a related question you could ask though,

  9. 00:04:02 --> 00:04:30

    which might be just as good, although not exactly equivalent, and that would be: “Will better product photos improve sales conversions?” Because if it reduces queries to customer service, it's almost certain that people are going to be much more confident about placing orders, adding those things to their basket. So that is a very easily measured outcome in terms of A/B testing, and that is the kind of question that A/B testing is very good at.

  10. 00:04:30 --> 00:04:43

    So simply rewording or rethinking the question in terms of defined user and business goals is one way of getting to a satisfactory conclusion, even if you have a slightly squiffy question to start with.

 

How do I design a seamless onboarding process for a B2C service?

To start, create a clear and simple sign-up form. Just ask for essential information to avoid overwhelming users. Provide a step-by-step guide to help users understand how to use your service. Use visuals and tooltips to highlight key features and functionalities. Offer a quick tutorial or walkthrough for first-time users.  

Make sure the process works smoothly on both desktop and mobile devices—and remember more users access digital solutions through handheld devices. Personalize the experience by addressing users by name and tailoring content to their preferences. Last—but not least—provide easy access to support if users have questions or need assistance. 

Watch our Master Class, How To Attract Users Through Great Onboarding Experiences with Wes Bush, Founder and CEO, Product-Led Institute and Author, Product-Led Growth

How do I handle internationalization and localization in B2C UX?

First, design your site to support multiple languages and regions. Use a flexible framework that allows easy translation of text and adaptation of formats like dates, times, and currencies. Hire native speakers to ensure accurate translations that capture cultural nuances.  

What’s more, adapt visuals and symbols to suit different cultural contexts. Different cultures around the world tend to view such items as color and other elements of visual and graphic design in different ways. So, test your site with users from various regions to identify and address any usability issues. Provide customer support in multiple languages to assist users from different backgrounds. Then, regularly update content to reflect local trends and preferences. 

Watch as Author and Human-Computer Interaction Expert, Professor Alan Dix explains why it’s important to design with culture in mind: 

Show Hide video transcript
  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:32

    As you're designing, it's so easy just to design for the people that you know and for the culture that you know.  However, cultures differ. Now, that's true of many aspects of the interface; no[t] least, though, the visual layout of an interface and the the visual elements. Some aspects are quite easy just to realize like language, others much, much more subtle.

  2. 00:00:32 --> 00:01:04

    You might have come across, there's two... well, actually there's three terms because some of these are almost the same thing, but two terms are particularly distinguished. One is localization and globalization. And you hear them used almost interchangeably and probably also with slight differences because different authors and people will use them slightly differently. So one thing is localization or internationalization. Although the latter probably only used in that sense. So localization is about taking an interface and making it appropriate

  3. 00:01:04 --> 00:01:31

    for a particular place. So you might change the interface style slightly. You certainly might change the language for it; whereas global – being globalized – is about saying, "Can I make something that works for everybody everywhere?" The latter sounds almost bound to fail and often does. But obviously, if you're trying to create something that's used across the whole global market, you have to try and do that. And typically you're doing a bit of each in each space.

  4. 00:01:31 --> 00:02:02

    You're both trying to design as many elements as possible so that they are globally relevant. They mean the same everywhere, or at least are understood everywhere. And some elements where you do localization, you will try and change them to make them more specific for the place. There's usually elements of both. But remembering that distinction, you need to think about both of those. The most obvious thing to think about here is just changing language. I mean, that's a fairly obvious thing and there's lots of tools to make that easy.

  5. 00:02:02 --> 00:02:31

    So if you have... whether it's menu names or labels, you might find this at the design stage or in the implementation technique, there's ways of creating effectively look-up tables that says this menu item instead of being just a name in the implementation, effectively has an idea or a way of representing it. And that can be looked up so that your menus change, your text changes and everything. Now that sounds like, "Yay, that's it!"

  6. 00:02:31 --> 00:03:00

    So what it is, is that it's not the end of the story, even for text. That's not the end of the story. Visit Finland sometime. If you've never visited Finland, it's a wonderful place to go. The signs are typically in Finnish and in Swedish. Both languages are used. I think almost equal amounts of people using both languages, their first language, and most will know both. But because of this, if you look at those lines, they're in two languages.

  7. 00:03:00 --> 00:03:31

    The Finnish line is usually about twice as large as the Swedish piece of text. Because Finnish uses a lot of double letters to represent quite subtle differences in sound. Vowels get lengthened by doubling them. Consonants get separated. So I'll probably pronounce this wrong. But R-I-T-T-A, is not "Rita" which would be R-I-T-A . But "Reet-ta". Actually, I overemphasized that, but "Reetta". There's a bit of a stop.

  8. 00:03:31 --> 00:04:02

    And I said I won't be doing it right. Talk to a Finnish person, they will help put you right on this. But because of this, the text is twice as long. But of course, suddenly the text isn't going to fit in. So it's going to overlap with icons. It's going to scroll when it shouldn't scroll. So even something like the size of the field becomes something that can change. And then, of course, there's things like left-to-right order. Finnish and Swedish both are left-to-right languages. But if you were going to have, switch something say to an Arabic script from a European script,

  9. 00:04:02 --> 00:04:31

    then you would end up with things going the other way round. So it's more than just changing the names. You have to think much more deeply than that. But again, it's more than the language. There are all sorts of cultural assumptions that we build into things. The majority of interfaces are built... actually the majority are built not even in just one part of the world, but in one country, you know the dominance... I'm not sure what percentage,

  10. 00:04:31 --> 00:05:02

    but a vast proportion will be built, not just in the USA, but in the West Coast of the USA. Certainly there is a European/US/American centeredness to the way in which things are designed. It's so easy to design things caught in those cultures without realizing that there are other ways of seeing the world. That changes the assumptions, the sort of values that are built into an interaction.

  11. 00:05:02 --> 00:05:35

    The meanings of symbols, so ticks and crosses, mostly will get understood and I do continue to use them. However, certainly in the UK, but even not universally across Europe. But in the UK, a tick is a positive symbol, means "this is good". A cross is a "blah, that's bad". However, there are lots of parts of the world where both mean the same. They're both a check. And in fact, weirdly, if I vote in the UK,

  12. 00:05:35 --> 00:06:02

    I put a cross, not against the candidate I don't want but against the candidate I do want. So even in the UK a cross can mean the same as a tick. You know – and colors, I said I do redundantly code often my crosses with red and my ticks with green because red in my culture is negative; I mean, it's not negative; I like red (inaudible) – but it has that sense of being a red mark is a bad mark.

  13. 00:06:02 --> 00:06:33

    There are many cultures where red is the positive color. And actually it is a positive color in other ways in Western culture. But particularly that idea of the red cross that you get on your schoolwork; this is not the same everywhere. So, you really have to have quite a subtle understanding of these things. Now, the thing is, you probably won't. And so, this is where if you are taking something into a different culture, you almost certainly will need somebody who quite richly understands that culture.

  14. 00:06:33 --> 00:06:43

    So you design things so that they are possible for somebody to come in and do those adjustments because you probably may well not be in the position to be able to do that yourself.

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What are some highly cited scientific articles about B2C UX/UI design?

Li, L., Xue, C., & Tang, W. (2022). Emotional experience design of B2C website based on emotion recognition. INDIN 2022, 275-279.  
This paper presents an innovative approach to enhancing user experience on B2C websites through emotion recognition technology. The study introduces a feedback system designed to recognize and respond to user emotions in real-time—aiming to improve Emotional Experience (EE) during Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). By integrating Baidu’s facial expression recognition service, the authors adjust the aesthetics and usability of a website to influence user emotions. The system provides visual feedback using color symbol expressions and prompts relaxation suggestions when negative emotions are detected.  

This research is influential as it explores the intersection of emotion recognition technology and user experience design—and offers novel insights into how emotional feedback mechanisms can boost user engagement and satisfaction on commercial websites. The findings suggest that such systems are effectively applicable to B2C platforms—paving the way for more personalized and emotionally aware web interactions.

What are some popular books about B2C UX/UI design?

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Literature on The Business-To-Consumers (B2C) Model in UX/UI Design

Here's the entire UX literature on The Business-To-Consumers (B2C) Model in UX/UI Design by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Learn more about The Business-To-Consumers (B2C) Model in UX/UI Design

Take a deep dive into Business-To-Consumers (B2C) Model in UX/UI Design with our course Build a Standout UX/UI Portfolio: Land Your Dream Job .

“Your portfolio is your best advocate in showing your work, your skills and your personality. It also shows not only the final outcomes but the process you took to get there and how you aligned your design decisions with the business and user needs.”

— Morgane Peng, Design Director, Societe Generale CIB

In many industries, your education, certifications and previous job roles help you get a foot in the door in the hiring process. However, in the design world, this is often not the case. Potential employers and clients want to see evidence of your skills and work and assess if they fit the job or design project in question. This is where portfolios come in.

Your portfolio is your first impression, your foot in the door—it must engage your audience and stand out against the hundreds of others they might be reviewing. Join us as we equip you with the skills and knowledge to create a portfolio that takes you one step closer to your dream career.

The Build a Standout UX/UI Portfolio: Land Your Dream Job course is taught by Morgane Peng, a designer, speaker, mentor and writer who serves as Director of Experience Design at Societe Generale CIB. With over 12 years of experience in management roles, she has reviewed thousands of design portfolios and conducted hundreds of interviews with designers. She has collated her extensive real-world knowledge into this course to teach you how to build a compelling portfolio that hiring managers will want to explore.

In lesson 1, you’ll learn the importance of portfolios and which type of portfolio you should create based on your career stage and background. You’ll discover the most significant mistakes designers make in their portfolios, the importance of content over aesthetics and why today is the best day to start documenting your design processes. This knowledge will serve as your foundation as you build your portfolio.

In lesson 2, you’ll grasp the importance of hooks in your portfolio, how to write them, and the best practices based on your career stage and target audience. You’ll learn how and why to balance your professional and personal biographies in your about me section, how to talk about your life before design and how to use tools and resources in conjunction with your creativity to create a unique and distinctive portfolio.

In lesson 3, you’ll dive into case studies—the backbone of your portfolio. You’ll learn how to plan your case studies for success and hook your reader in to learn more about your design research, sketches, prototypes and outcomes. An attractive and attention-grabbing portfolio is nothing without solid and engaging case studies that effectively communicate who you are as a designer and why employers and clients should hire you.

In lesson 4, you’ll understand the industry expectations for your portfolio and how to apply the finishing touches that illustrate your attention to detail. You’ll explore how visual design, menus and structure, landing pages, visualizations and interactive elements make your portfolio accessible, engaging and compelling. Finally, you’ll learn the tips and best practices to follow when you convert your portfolio into a presentation for interviews and pitches.

Throughout the course, you'll get practical tips to apply to your portfolio. In the "Build Your Portfolio" project, you'll create your portfolio strategy, write and test your hook, build a case study and prepare your portfolio presentation. You’ll be able to share your progress, tips and reflections with your coursemates, gain insights from the community and elevate each other’s portfolios.

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