The work of a product designer can greatly differ depending on what type of company the role is for.  I'll go over how the design culture differs at B2C, B2B, or even a B2B2C, while including the pros and cons. By the end of this article, you’ll understand the differences.

What is B2C?

B2C means business to consumer, meaning the product is sold directly to the end user. Think Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, and even physical products like Lululemon and Chanel. My former employers, Tempo and Nextdoor, are all B2C because they sell physical or digital products (like app subscriptions) directly to the consumer. 

Requirements for a B2C Product Designer

B2C roles typically demand high visual skills and prototyping skills. You’ll also need decent interaction design skills, though typically not as deep as B2B. You’re optimizing for the best user experience and sometimes that means making incremental changes, like how the menu bar looks or adding another step in a flow.

Pros

In my experience, there are a lot of benefits to the B2C model for product designers.

• B2C tends to have more visibility in the design world. The most well-branded product designers typically made their mark in B2C. For example, practically all the product designers featured in InVision's documentary were B2C. Those flashy case studies with all the measured metrics? Pretty much universally B2C.
  
  

• You are able to test your product directly with consumers. For example, a company like Airbnb can run A/B tests and growth experiments right away.
  
  

• Pay tends to be better with B2C. For example, big tech brands like Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Airbnb, Netflix, and Google have business models that primarily serve individual users.
  
  

• Anyone could use the product, so there is potential for your design to have a positive global impact with millions of users.
  
  

• There is a lot of B2C design inspiration available (like on Mobbins) because there are a lot of competitor products.
  
  

• Higher standard for user experience, think grade A and beyond, because users can choose to cease using your product at any time.
  
  

Cons

Of course, there are some downsides to the B2C model for product designers as well.

• When you are selling directly to the consumer, the consumer can decide to leave at any time. If they don't have a good experience with your app, they can simply jump to a competitor.
  
  

• Overall, there tends to be less work-life balance in B2C because of the pressure to deliver the best experience, push out new features quickly, and increase metrics.
  
  

• The attention to detail has to be high as the more external visibility of your work (like designing for the front page of YouTube), the higher internal visibility. Your work has to pass the approval of many stakeholders (from product, engineering, data, marketing, sometimes C-suite and so on). This means it’s often nitpicked apart relentlessly.
  
  

• Projects can constantly change direction, especially if your designs negatively impact metrics. Hence the irony—the longer users are used to something, the less likely they will react positively to change. That’s why Linkedin looks the same after all these years.
  
  

• Employees are typically more replaceable because projects tend to involve less complexity (with the exception of some specialized, niche fields like AI or VR)

A head of design at Dropbox told me it is typically easier to move from B2C to B2B than vice versa, because B2C companies have a higher reputation for quality design.

What is B2B?

B2B means business to business, meaning the product is sold to management of end users. The company makes the decision of what software their employees use. Like how you are forced to use JIRA.

Companies like Google, Microsoft, Zoom, Adobe have B2B products which are their enterprise plans they sell for office use. The end-user doesn’t have much choice whether they use a B2B product or not because their company made that decision.

However, if the end customers make enough complaints, management can decide to switch software because a poor user experience causes a loss in worker’s productivity and efficiency.

At one of my previous roles, people cheered when it was announced we were switching from Microsoft suite to Google suite.

Pros

• Designers can create tools, dashboards, and products that have a longer shelf life, meaning though less users there is more longevity in usage. B2C features can be retweaked and replaced often.
  
  

• There tends to be better job stability, which also allows designers to accrue more specialized knowledge in a particular sector.
  
  

• B2B models tend to be more resistant to economic downturn, and therefore experience fewer budget cuts and layoffs. Enterprise customers usually have contracts they are locked into for over a year.

Cons

• Not as sexy as B2C, in terms of public appeal (less bragging rights to friends and family)

• It can take many years to ship features, so you may need to make a long-term commitment to a company to see your project come to life.
  
  

• There is less contact with end-users and almost no A/B testing. For example, it can be impossible to measure the effectiveness of a new email composition tool for workflow because it is hard to track and define the metrics.
  
  

• These models tend to have more conservative designs without anything splashy. For example, Microsoft Office has not changed much over the years because they tend to sell to slow-moving sectors like the government and schools.
  
  

• Since it can take so long to ship, it can be hard to see the long-term impact of product improvements.
  
  

• B2B companies tend not to pay as well as B2C (which is not to say that they don't pay well, they just don’t pay AS well). However, this is changing as companies (like Atlassian/JIRA ironically) are trying to attract better talent (and they know they’re not Discord or Airbnb, so have to pay more).
  
  

• Whereas B2C is about optimizing for the best UX, trying to reach grade A or beyond—B2B is more about providing adequate functionality so a grade B can pass.

What is B2B2C?

B2B2C is a hybrid model that describes businesses that are a combination of B2B and B2C, such as companies like Microsoft and Adobe. B2B2C tends to be similar to B2B because companies still have to sell to the individuals making the buying decisions. Therefore, this category generally falls under the B2B umbrella.

Conclusion

I hope this helps explain the difference between B2B and B2C for product designers. If you’re searching for a new job or choosing between two offers, knowing how to strategize your next step is crucial.

Video

For the video version of this article, watch here.