Industry UX Research

B2B Electronic Components & Machinery E-Commerce UX Research

A large-scale research study on how to optimize the User Experience for B2B Electronic Components & Machinery e-commerce sites

At Baymard Institute, we have a whole research topic devoted to e-commerce UX and usability, specifically for the B2B Electronic Components & Machinery industry selling products through a B2B e-commerce website.

Through our 150,000+ hours of large-scale UX research, we’ve identified 280+ in-depth User Experience guidelines that are particularly important to B2B component & machinery e-commerce sites.

As the sites are geared towards specialists and industry professionals, our participants were all B2B industry professionals experienced in engineering, purchasing, or manufacturing electronic components and machinery.

The research focused on U.S. and global manufacturer and distributor websites offering electronic components and machinery:

Manufacturer sites: Analog Devices, Microchip Technology, Microchip Direct, STMicroelectronics, STMicroelectronics eStore, TDK Corporation, and TE Connectivity.

Distributor sites: Arrow Electronics, CoreStaff, Digi-Key Electronics, Farnell/Newark/element 14, Future Electronics, Mouser Electronics, RS Components, Ltd., and TTI, Inc.

Note: Baymard’s B2B research also includes other B2B e-commerce sites within pharma, chemicals, and construction industries.

B2B Electronic Components & Machinery UX Insights from Baymard

The research is based on more than 168 qualitative user/site usability test sessions following the “Think Aloud” protocol (1:1 remote moderated testing).

During testing the users encountered 1,100+ medium-to-severe usability issues. Throughout the test sessions participants repeatedly ran into difficulties with the layout, content types, or features on the test sites.

These issues have subsequently been analyzed and distilled into the 280+ UX guidelines found within our B2B Electronic Components and Machinery research study.

The 280+ guidelines cover most aspects of the online exploration and purchasing of electronic components and machinery, at both a high level of general user behavior as well as at a more granular level of specific issues users are likely to encounter.

This page provides you with a brief overview of Baymard’s B2B Electronic Components & Machinery UX research. Full access to all of our B2B UX research is available as part of Baymard Premium.


B2B Electronic Components & Machinery Website UX Performance

 

We’ve conducted a UX benchmark, assessing 12 B2B electronic components and machinery sites across 430+ research-based UX parameters relevant to B2B Electronic Components & Machinery websites. You can view the B2B sites’ UX performance in the graph above, which summarizes 4,800+ weighted UX performance scores.

Each theme and topic in the graph above can be expanded for an in-depth view of the ‘current state’ of B2B Electronic Components & Machinery website UX performances. (scroll down to access the in-depth case-studies for each site)

This is a subset of the full benchmark which includes 251 e-commerce sites.
View our full UX benchmark


12 B2B Electronic Components & Machinery E-Commerce UX Case Studies

You can explore our in-depth UX case studies of the below 12 B2B electronic components and machinery e-commerce sites. In total, these contain 4,800+ UX performance scores and 3,600+ best practice examples from electronic components and machinery sites.


Articles on B2B Electronic Components & Machinery Website UX

FREE RESEARCH CONTENT

We’ve released a small subset of the 280+ Premium UX research findings for B2B electronic components and machinery sites for free in these articles:


Get Full Access to our B2B UX research with Baymard Premium

PAID RESEARCH CONTENT

With Baymard Premium, you get access to 280+ B2B relevant UX guidelines, 4,800+ UX performance scores, and 3,600+ Best Practice examples from B2B electronic components & machinery sites. On top of this, you also get access to 175,000+ best practice examples and 275,000+ UX performance scores from other industries - sometimes the best designs and ideas come by looking outside your own industry.

Learn more about Baymard Premium


B2B UX Audit

IN-DEPTH REVIEW OF YOUR SITE’S UX PERFORMANCE

If you don’t want to read all of the research findings, but “just want the results”, then have Baymard’s team of researchers audit your B2B components and machinery site.

The audit provides you with a detailed external review of your B2B electronic components or machinery site’s UX performance across 430+ UX parameters, as well as a detailed UX performance comparison against other electronic components and machinery sites, along with other ‘State of the Art’ implementations outside of your industry. The UX audit provides you with 40 prioritized suggestions for UX improvements, each with best-practice implementation examples.

Learn more about B2B UX audits


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Cat Brunson UX Manager at Columbia Sportswear
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Wendy Bonnstetter UX Director at Hallmark Cards, Inc.
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David Polanco UX Lead at Carnival Cruise Lines
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Linda Bustos Director of E-commerce Research at Elastic Path
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Colleen Kersting eCommerce Marketing at Harley-Davidson
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Jill McDonald UX Architect at Room & Board
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Really good rundown on all these thing. I definitely think we got a lot of value out of it, and we’re excited to get it all in and do some A/B testing on this.
Greg Dalby Director of E-Commerce at Purch
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We implemented the majority of your checkout recommendations and a/b tested most of them, in every instance your recommendation provided the catalyst for us to make an improvement. Your approach and methodology has proven itself to be valuable. Now, when a new report comes out from your office we just buy it right away.
Chris Hall President of RepairClinic.com
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You guys help us, our clients (and our clients’ users), in delivering a better user experience through your research. I really appreciate it.
Fernando Valentini Managing Partner at eNe Solucoes
I wanted to write you a note to tell you how much I’ve gotten out of the Usability Benchmark I bought this Summer. We often get asked to for help with checkout usability and I often refer people your way. Keep up the great work!
Mike Arsenault Co-founder of Rejoiner
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This is without a doubt the most important eCommerce training I’ve ever done. Knowing the right approach for converting the average user puts us massively ahead of the competition.
James Gilbert CEO at Solutionists
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Love Baymard’s Checkout Usability Report. A must read for E-Comm UX teams.
Chau Hong Pham @chauhongpham
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Greg Woods UX & UI Design and Research Manager at John Lewis
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Victoria Rönning UX Designer at PriceSpy
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Kenneth Avnsted CEO at Anodyne
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We implemented this [1 of the 15 audit suggestions] and since then we’ve had a 20% increase in warranties added and a pretty healthy average order increase because of that. That was a great suggestion, it hit our bottom line immediately.
Justin French Director of E-commerce at Fast Growing Trees
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Jesse Davies Design Manager at Retail Express
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Axel Giæver Senior UX Designer at Dekode
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Daniel Kohn Founder of AbandonAid
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We implemented these guidelines on a client’s website and our e-commerce conversion rate increased 18.7% across the board. Most importantly our mobile conversions increased from 0.89% to 1.9% – we doubled our mobile revenue.
Rober Coorey Author of ‘Feed A Starving Crowd’
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Barry Prendergast Senior Product Designer
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Geoff Jensen Head of UX at Wrench Inc.
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Test Methodology

This UX research on B2B Electronic components & machinery sites is part of Baymard Institute’s full 150,000+ hours of large-scale research catalog, which is based on:

  • Usability Testing: 25 rounds of qualitative usability testing with 4,400+ test participant/site sessions following the "Think Aloud" protocol (mainly in-person 1:1 moderated lab usability testing). This includes manufacturer sites (Analog Devices, Microchip Technology, Microchip Direct, STMicroelectronics, STMicroelectronics eStore, TDK Corporation, and TE Connectivity) and distributor sites (Arrow Electronics, CoreStaff, Digi-Key Electronics, Farnell/Newark/element 14, Future Electronics, Mouser Electronics, RS Components, Ltd., and TTI, Inc.)
  • Manual benchmarking: 54 rounds of benchmarking the world’s 251 top-grossing e-commerce sites across 650+ UX guidelines (175,000+ implementation examples and 275,000+ UX performance scores). The sites include DigiKey, Avnet, Mouser, TTI, Schneider Electric, Norgren, Maxon, MSC Direct, Hitachi, Arrow, Bossard, and Fastenal – along with other B2B e-commerce sites within pharma, chemical, and construction industries.
  • In-lab eye-tracking testing.
  • Quantitative studies: 12 studies with a total of 20,240 participants.

Baymard’s research methodology is described in detail here.