The uncanny valley of B2B UX
There is no more B2B in user experience design. Or is there?
When it comes to user experience design, the lines between B2B and B2C are getting increasingly blurry. We’re starting to recognize that business buyers are also everyday users of consumer products. This leads to 8 out of 10 business buyers expecting the same experience that they get from their personal digital use.
The B2C rush
The industry’s answer is a constant push for the inclusion of B2C best practices within the B2B experience design. And this is especially true for marketing campaigns, dotcoms and landing pages. We’re looking at techniques to build an equal level of trust, add moments of delight and social interactions, and build empathy through research and testing.
But while UX is evolving, many industries are not. The truth is that B2B organizations are often stuck in bureaucracy, hierarchical decision-making and all sorts of organizational complexity. The result? A lot of UX best practices get dialed down. Ambitions are cut back. Internal politics and risk aversion take over. And so the products we end up with are often a strange hybrid of B2B and B2C.
We often end up with a hybrid that is not quite as delightful as end consumers are used to, but also not as rigorous as a traditional B2B website or product would be.
Some might argue that this hybrid is still welcome as a step into the right direction. But I call it the Uncanny Valley of Corporate UX.
What is uncanny valley?
The concept dates back to 1970, when the robotics professor Mahasiro More identified an unusual correlation between a robot’s resemblance of a human and the observer’s emotional response. Human-like characteristics in an object are generally well perceived, but robots that are extremely close to resembling a human yet not 100% there bring up a feeling or eeriness or revulsion. In other words, we like our robots to be either clearly robots, or exactly like humans, but not in-between.
What does this have to do with B2B UX?
Just like robot creators constantly strive for human-likeness, B2B organizations aim to bring the playfulness of B2C into their marketing pages and dotcoms. The ambition is often strong enough to push the product from the de facto state of “professional business talk” and even from the“human but professional” tone. But the organizational complexities and politics often stop the product from getting into the “playful consumer-oriented”area. The result is a website stuck in between: a sort of middle-aged mid-life crisis man trying to be hip and young. An Adam Sandler comedy if you will (no offense to middle-aged men, blame Adam Sandler for making this metaphor so relatable).
What makes the middle ground so eery?
- Expectations setting
When you take a typical B2B website and start infusing it with B2C playfulness, delight, and maybe even a little bit of craziness, you heighten customer expectations. You’re basically promising them this will be nothing like what they’re used to in the corporate world. And when you don’t follow up on this promise — your customers will be disappointed.
2. Tradeoff
Bringing in delight into B2B often means simplifying — reducing pages full of text, rational arguments, and corporate buzzwords. You’re removing an abundance of information. But this abundance is what traditionally used to bring customer trust — they could read everything about your B2B product or service, understand the full offering and make an informed decision. When removing this overly detailed information, you need to replace it with something equally good at building trust, like thoughtful UX down to every detail. If you’re removing one without replacing it with the other, you end up with poor UX that is not quite “delightful” but also not as thorough in the provided information. And so you basically end up with no trust.
The takeaway
I wish I could offer a simple no-nonsense solution to avoiding the uncanny valley in UX. But the truth is there is no easy solution. Finding the right balance between information and delight, professionalism and entertainment, persuasion and emotion — this does not have and cannot possibly have a straightforward solution.
There is, however, a reliable recipe. And that recipe is commitment. Recognize and acknowledge the fact that a meaningful shift from the B2B to B2C UX mindset requires organizational support and dedication, whether it's in the form of time, budget, internal politics adjustment, or even organizational courage.
If you're committing to a B2C-like experience, commit fully. It won't be easy but it will be worth it.
Oh, and one more thing.
You didn’t really think I would let you leave without some real-life examples, did you?
But let’s end on a positive note…
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