Consumer e-commerce puts B2B web sites in the shade

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen says business web sites should take lessons from consumer providers

Nielsen: B2B sites lag years behind

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen has warned business-to-business providers that their web sites are years behind those serving the consumer market, and that underinvestment in online services will harm future profitability.

Speaking to IT Week while in the UK to present at the User Experience Conference 2006 in London, Nielsen said, “A lot of business to business sites are five to six years behind the curve of the consumer sites.”

Of these consumer sites Amazon.com was singled out for special attention. “Amazon has very good product information and is very smooth - I especially like its good use of follow-up emails. But on business to business sites – where much more money is being spent – customers get a very poor service,” Nielsen argued.

In order to ensure that a site is usable and offers a good customer experience Nielsen advocates that large firms employ a full time usability expert who can oversee each page as it is loaded onto the site.

Firms with smaller budgets should test their web sites and intranets internally, which would be a cheaper alternative. Nielsen said, “Then it is simple, you just walk around grabbing a few people from the office and getting them to use the application. That can be all you need to do to find problems.”