How B2B Sales Help Us Better Understand Our Role as UX Designers — Smashing Magazine

Maybe this is a controversial statement, but I hate it when UI and UX designers are referred to interchangeably. In my opinion at least they are different roles, with the clue in the names.

User interface designers design the interface, while user experience designers are concerned with the entirety of the user’s experience.

In most cases, that experience extends beyond a single interface, encompassing many touch points, both online and offline. Nowhere is this more evident than in a business-to-business experience.

In this article, I want to explore some of the unique features of a B2B sales experience and hopefully highlight how a UX designer will consider the entirety of the experience, not just the interface elements.

Let’s start by exploring what makes B2B sales experiences an interesting challenge for us as UX designers.

Why B2B is an interesting UX challenge

Although we must be careful about generalization, in many cases B2B experiences are more complicated than B2C.

This complexity is born from the nature of B2B. Transactions between businesses tend to:

• Higher in value.
• Engage more stakeholders.
• Take longer.
• Involve more interactions between parties.
• More highly regulated.
• Often...