I recently transitioned from an enterprise product design role to a consumer product design role. Before joining the new company, I was curious as well as anxious about what to expect from the new switch. I did a thorough search on the internet and came across multiple articles that talked about the transition from consumer to the enterprise but hardly there were any that talked about the opposite. So, I had decided long before to write about this transition and here we are. Having said that, if you are currently working at an enterprise company and looking for a consumer product design job? Or, if you have already got an offer from the consumer company and thinking about what to expect in the new role?; you are at the right place.

Quick disclaimer: This blog will be based on my exposure to the B2B, B2C products and personal experience of previously working at an enterprise company and my transition to the consumer product. To give more context, I transitioned from Sprinklr in India to Trivago in Germany. Sprinklr provides an enterprise software solution to some of the world’s largest clients Nike, Microsoft, etc. to improve their social customer experience. On the other hand, Trivago is a global accommodation search that empowers more than 120 million travellers every month. I acknowledge that your transition experience might not be the same. However, this will give you some idea of what to expect for your next career path.

Problem space and approach

1. B2C products tend to focus heavily on the small section of a page.
If you look at a consumer-facing app like Uber, Paypal you will notice that you can navigate through the entire product offering within minutes. However, for enterprises, it can easily take up hours or even days. That also implies, as a designer you will be looking after a less number of screens in the consumer app and most of the time you may end up solving for the small yet impactful component of the app. Talking about my experience, In Sprinklr, I would have easily worked on more than 100+ screens but in Trivago, my work revolves around 15 screens (and that is also because I am involved in redesigning the entire mobile web app). With lower screens to deal with, you might feel that it would be like a cup of cake, right? Well, that’s not the case. More about it, in the subsequent points.

2. B2C products focus a lot on hypothesis creation and experimentation.
In enterprise, we wouldn’t go deep into testing each component of a flow but in consumer, we tend to ensure that the major component on the screens is verified to generate maximum revenue and user value. With that, a fair share of the time is invested in re-iterating a feature, and component and testing it with the users. And it may happen, that the hypothesis you generated wouldn’t work out and that would imply furthermore iterations around that components. For instance, here is a case study of redesigning the OYO Hotel Details Page. You will notice a strong emphasis is done on playing with the image sizes, transition, etc. But in the enterprise, we usually wouldn’t go into so much depth of experimenting since the users are already the trained professionals and having small changes wouldn’t necessarily impact the click-out rate for them.

Research work for problem identification

3. B2C products tend to be more proactive in research work.
Undoubtedly, research work will be required for both the enterprise as well for the consumer for the right problem identification. However, in my experience, I see consumer products people are more proactive in the whole user research process (Honestly, it’s high a time that it should change). One of the reasons though is because clients are often in direct contact with the sales or the support team, so they can easily raise their voices for any concerns around the products. However, on the consumer side, if they are facing challenges with any particular feature or didn’t like any aspect of the product, they can simply jump to the competitor’s product.

To give some more context, in my current company, We have continuous discovery sessions every week to connect with users. Secondly, we also have the biweekly session by the UX researchers wherein they highlight some key findings, usability issues, etc. Thirdly we have another session with the Data Analytics team wherein they share the test update for the past releases and if we see any major discrepancies in the data, it gets a priority.

User base and expected outcome

4. B2C products often cater to a diverse user base
The user base for the Consumer-facing app tends to be significantly much higher than the enterprise user. They also come with varied ages, skill sets, internet usage, etc. compared to the B2B users that often have a very high degree of uniformity in their professional roles.

With a diverse user base, one important consideration for B2C is to make the website simple and easy to use. However, for the enterprise, the priority tends to go towards the functional aspect rather than making it simple to use. In an enterprise, users can spend 8–10 hours a day in their daily work life, so it becomes crucial to make the flow efficient rather than working to improve the look and feel of the site.

Collaboration and design refinement

5. In B2C products, multiple designers may be running different experiments on a single page at a time.
It goes without saying that collaboration is the backbone for product success whether it be enterprise or consumer products. However, one thing I have experienced differently is that in the consumer multiple designers tend to work on a single screen. For instance, if you would look at the Medium Home page, there could be one team running some experiments on the “Recommendation topics”, one team on the “Search section” and another team driving more users to use “Upgrade features” (Just realised they changed the homepage copywriting to “Get unlimited access”. Interesting!). And since all the different sections are present on the same page, changing one section might affect the placement of one another. Hence, the other team members should be looped in so that they are aware of the tentative changes.

6. In B2C products, the design critique session can get quite exhaustive.
In an enterprise, the problem space is typically complicated. So, for the individuals, they would need to have a proper understanding before providing useful feedback. However, on the consumer side, everyone can be a user of the product and designs sessions can get quite overwhelming. I have written a separate article on the tips for presenting designs to stakeholders. You can find it here.

Design Acceptance

7. In B2C products, Data hugely drives decisions rather than designs principles.
In the enterprise, it’s hard to measure the direct impact on the revenue, bounce rate, etc. due to design changes. Hence, the designs principles somewhat form the guiding light for defending the design decisions. However, for the consumer, most of the decisions are based on data. Data forms the crux for making any changes. So even if one feels that the designs are significantly better than the previous one, considering design principles, but if there is no improvement in data metrics, it becomes hard to justify the proposed designs.

In the enterprise, I also felt that the leadership team have more potential to influence concepts. Again, because it’s challenging to see a direct impact on the revenue due to design changes. Like in my prior company, we need to get approval from the leadership team to handover the designs to the developers but here in my current company, we don’t need approval from the leadership team, it’s more like getting in some feedback from the leadership team, finalise upon one-two concepts, based upon feedback, run test, analyse results and ship accordingly.

Shipment and Design Impact

8. One can expect rigorous testing before releasing any features or redesigning the consumer product.
Remember the Snapchat redesign in 2018 and how it lead to the extreme downfall of the revenue and the user base. No company would want to land up in the same situation. One of the ways to avoid that is the A/B testing. So, consumer products in general tend to have rigorous A/B tests for the design to be qualified. And if it caters to the audience worldwide, the designs will be first tested somewhat for 20% users, then 50% users and finally 100% users. The whole process can easily take time in months depending upon the scope and the design updates. On the other hand, rigorous A/B testing doesn’t make much sense in enterprise difference since the clients’ users are trained professionals and they are bound to act in a certain way.

9. Small changes can boost significant revenue in the consumer product.
Compared to enterprise, the user base of the consumer products is much higher in number. So any design changes can impact the way those millions of users will interact with the website/ app. With that, even a small change like playing around with the shadow or line stroke to bring something in emphasis can prompt to click on it which could lead to a significant boost in the revenue.

10. It is easier to see the design impact on the consumer product.
While working on the enterprise product, I couldn’t explicitly see the impact of the designs on revenue for the majority of the cases. There would be some requests from the clients and once the request are designed and developed, tickets are closed. We wouldn’t necessarily analyse the data to see the impact of the design. On the other hand, if one is working on a new feature for a consumer product, the feature wouldn’t go live unless it would generate a substantial increase in revenue or other KPIs. And since mostly A/B tests are carried out before release in the consumer products, it becomes easy to see the impact due to design changes.

That’s all!! Again, the points mentioned are based on my personal experience. If there’s something that I missed or you have a different opinion, let me know in the comment section :)