But B2B lives in a different universe. Here, design doesn’t trend. It doesn’t get talked about in the same breath as a campaign launch, and yet - in its own quiet way - it matters far more. Because in B2B, thoughtful design is fundamental to great user experience. It isn’t about creating delight for delight’s sake, but about building infrastructure.

And the thing about infrastructure is this: when it fails, it doesn’t explode dramatically. It doesn’t produce headlines or screenshots that go viral. It just… slows things down. Quietly, invisibly, relentlessly. Every task becomes harder, every process takes longer, and over time, that hidden drag becomes the difference between a business that grows confidently and one that constantly feels like it’s fighting against itself.

Complexity That’s Been Earned Over Time

No B2B organisation stumbles into complexity by accident. It’s not incompetence. It’s the result of legacy systems and decisions.

Years of contracts create sprawling price books. ERP systems embed rules that once made perfect sense but now live on as immovable artefacts. Fulfilment logic is written and rewritten to satisfy a dozen unique customer arrangements. Even the language itself becomes layered with history: “net” can mean five different things to five different people in the same business.

This is the story of growth. Complexity is the evidence of a business that has scaled, adapted, and fought for its position. It’s hard-won, but it’s also why, when modernisation finally arrives, UX is the first thing to get compromised.

The site is rebuilt, the backend is upgraded, the interface gets a fresh coat of paint, but the experience? The actual logic of how customers move through the system? That rarely changes. Which means the customer ends up shouldering the burden. They’re expected to understand the business from the inside.

They have to know that “Trade Express” and “Click & Collect” aren’t the same thing, even if they sound like they might be. They have to accept that if they idle in checkout, the session will expire, because the system doesn’t tolerate hesitation. They have to learn the company’s internal jargon just to get through a form.

That’s the quiet failure of B2B UX: what feels natural to the business feels alien to the customer, and every time the customer has to stop and translate, confidence slips away.

UX Debt: The Invisible Drag

Technical debt is something most organisations understand instinctively. If you patch and patch without addressing the core, the cracks widen. Everyone has a budget line for “tech debt.”

But UX debt? That’s slipperier. It’s harder to capture in a spreadsheet and much easier to ignore. It shows up as filters that don’t reflect how customers actually shop, as product pages where vital spec data is hidden three clicks away, and as mobile experiences that collapse under layered pricing logic.

Nothing breaks outright. The system still functions, but it functions badly, and that friction doesn’t stay small - it compounds. It compounds over weeks and months, across customers, across teams, across every interaction, until the invisible drag of bad design becomes a silent cost centre in its own right.

The Mistake of Treating B2B Like DTC

One of the most common errors in B2B digital projects is the assumption that design logic is universal. What works in DTC, surely, must work everywhere. But it doesn’t.

In DTC, you can obsess over motion graphics and micro animations. In B2B, the buyer just wants to reorder 32 types of fixings and check lead times across four depots. They’re not here for theatre. They’re here for efficiency.

Good B2B design isn’t about chasing minimalism or prettiness. It’s about hierarchy, clarity, and respecting the weight of the task.

And crucially: it doesn’t live in the UI alone. True B2B UX is structural and it lives in how systems interconnect, how data is presented, and how workflows reflect the actual jobs people need to get done. It’s not a frontend exercise. It’s connective tissue, bridging departments and systems so the customer doesn’t have to.

How We Approach It at GENE

When we take on a B2B UX project at GENE, we don’t start in Figma. We don’t sketch out glossy mock-ups for the homepage.

We start deeper.
We open Jira to see where support tickets cluster.
We dive into analytics to trace where customers abandon tasks.
We sit with customer service teams, who hear the complaints in unfiltered detail every single day.

Because to design B2B properly, you have to understand not just what the system is supposed to do, but what it’s actually doing. Where the blockers live, who feels the friction and what it costs.

From there, we ground ourselves. We talk to users, we benchmark flows against best practice, we mine support logs for patterns and we run A/B tests - not to show off numbers, but to reduce risk and validate reality.

Only then do we design. And the goal isn’t just usability. It’s navigability, operability and confidence. Confidence that when a customer logs in, their catalogue is ready. That when the site updates, pricing holds steady. That they don’t need to call anyone to finish an order.

And then we test again. We listen and we refine, because good B2B UX is never finished. It’s not a launch moment but a process of continual alignment - a conversation between what customers need and what the business can sustainably deliver.

Precision Over Reinvention

It’s tempting to think the only way forward is a rebuild. Tear it down, start fresh, reinvent.

But some of the most impactful changes don’t come from revolution. They come from precision.
From layered navigation logic tuned to account types.
From simplifying a product configuration flow so that complexity doesn’t overwhelm.
From surfacing real-time pricing where it matters most.
From building reorder paths that work beautifully on mobile, for tradespeople in the field.

These aren’t showpiece redesigns - they’re incremental iterations. They’re the kind of changes we deliver constantly through Unlimited Support - one precise improvement at a time, transforming experience without ever halting operations.

In B2B, precision is everything.

A Final Word

There’s no trophy for elegant code if the buyer can’t find the right bolt. No applause for shaving milliseconds off a checkout page if customers are still emailing their orders. No growth in digital if the entire journey feels like admin in disguise.

B2B UX isn’t glamorous. It’s rarely even visible, but when it’s done right, it transforms everything, not with noise, but with quiet, compounding brilliance.

When complexity is handled with care, it turns into clarity, and in B2B, clarity is the foundation of trust.

Ready to turn complexity into clarity?

We help B2B businesses remove the hidden drag of bad UX and replace it with flows that work for customers, for teams, and for growth.

If your digital experience feels more like admin than advantage, let’s talk about how we can fix it.