If the year 2020 taught us anything, it was that things can change quickly. However, it’s worth noting that what we’ve seen in the last year isn’t necessarily a departure from pre-Covid trends. Rather, it is an acceleration of those trends, including the need for brands to work faster than ever before toward digital transformation.
Because customer expectations and behaviors are changing faster than ever, brands must revisit digital strategies and learn to deliver great experiences at unprecedented speed. Consider the following recent trends:
A Need for Speed
As consumers place an increasing emphasis on quick interactions, the speed, and ease of use of any B2B product are becoming increasingly important — if the experience of researching, testing, and onboarding a product is time-consuming, few customers will stick around to use the product itself. According to a recent Frost & Sullivan survey commissioned by our company, 92% of users expect to find answers in 10 minutes or less, indicating that they have high expectations and little patience when troubleshooting issues.
This means that anything happening slowly on a webpage can harm sales or retention and that something as innocuous as users struggling to access the documentation required to choose, buy, and onboard a B2B product can have an impact on a company’s bottom line.
Good Content Makes Users Happy
All of this is not to say that product-led growth is a meaningless aspect of B2B business strategy. However, it is frequently easier (and more beneficial) to modify the usability of content and interfaces rather than the product itself. Even if a product isn’t inherently intuitive, providing it with intuitive content can help to bridge the usability gap.
One of the simplest and most important ways to bring B2B UX up to the standards of B2C counterparts is to ensure that the content surrounding a product is navigable and intuitive and that it provides quick solutions to users’ problems.
How can this be accomplished? A good place to start is by collecting metrics on what content works and what does not. For example, if a particular search term is frequently used but produces few results (or produces results that are then ignored by users), it indicates a problem with the accessibility of content that is useful for users attempting to solve simple, recurring problems. Another strategy is to ensure content consistency. When listeners have a question about playlists not syncing between devices, Spotify does not refer them to a third party. That is also something your product and its associated website should not do.
Executives in B2B industries who follow the unified content model honed by B2C products will be miles ahead of the competition. Currently, only 35% of users believe that B2B technical documentation is simple to find and implement as they seek self-service.
They will come if your product content is easy to find and use. And they will remain. And encourage others to do the same – 90% of regular B2B product users concur.
Conclusion
The attractiveness of a B2B product is no longer equated with the attractiveness of a product that will retain loyal users. And, when it comes to attraction vs. retention, B2B companies must prioritize the latter through seamless product content, or they will have attracted customers in vain.
The speed and ease with which users can self-serve are more important than ever before for an enjoyable B2B user experience. To meet these rising user experience standards — and thus improve user retention — B2B enterprises must align their product and service with both their own business needs and customer expectations.
Product content is ultimately the face of a company to users. Presenting this face to your customers in a way that encourages seamless and efficient usage will reap significant benefits for your company’s bottom line. Customers and investors alike will be grateful.