User experience (UX) is how easy and satisfying it is to get something done on your site. The user interface (UI) is what people see and touch along the way: layout, type, color, buttons, and forms. On a business website, both serve one question: can the right visitor find what they came for and take the next step without friction?

We first published this guide in 2023. This version is shorter and more practical, and it reflects two changes since then: Google’s updated performance measures and the newer accessibility standard, WCAG 2.2.

Find out what visitors are trying to do

Most UX problems come from designing around the company’s org chart instead of the visitor’s task. Before changing anything, collect evidence:

  • Talk to the people who talk to customers. Sales and support know the questions buyers ask and the things they cannot find.
  • Read the data. Your analytics show where people enter, where they leave, and what they search for on your site. Search Console shows the queries that bring them.
  • Watch real sessions. Free tools such as Microsoft Clarity record anonymized sessions and show heatmaps, rage clicks, and dead clicks.
  • Run five usability tests. Give five people from your audience a realistic task, such as “find out whether they work with companies like yours,” and watch without helping. Five sessions usually surface the biggest problems.

Write down the top three to five tasks your site must support. Every later decision gets checked against them. Personas are optional; a clear list of tasks is not.

Organize content the way visitors think

Information architecture is how your content is grouped, labeled, and linked. On most B2B sites, visitors look for what you do, who you do it for, proof that you have done it before, and how to get in touch.

  • Use labels your visitors would use. “Solutions” and “Offerings” hide what is behind them; “Web development” does not.
  • Keep the main navigation short, and make sure every important page is reachable within a couple of clicks.
  • Link related pages to each other: a service to the industries it serves, a case study to the service behind it.
  • Add site search once you have enough content, and review what people search for. Searches that return nothing are a to-do list.

Card sorting (asking people to group your topics) and tree testing (asking them to find things in a text-only menu) test a structure before anything is designed.

Write and lay out pages to be scanned

People scan before they read. Each page should answer its main question near the top, then support it.

  • Lead with what you do and for whom in plain language, not a slogan.
  • Use descriptive headings so the outline of the page makes sense on its own.
  • Keep body text readable: at least 16px on most sites, line length around 60 to 80 characters, and generous line spacing.
  • Give each page one primary call to action, and make secondary actions look secondary.
  • Keep components consistent. A button should look and behave like a button everywhere.

Make forms easy

Forms are where interest turns into a lead, and where many sites lose it.

  • Ask only for what you will use. Every extra required field costs completions.
  • Put labels above fields, not inside them as placeholder text that disappears.
  • Show errors next to the field, in words, and keep what the person already typed.
  • Use the right input types so phones show the right keyboard, and support autofill.
  • Tell people what happens next and how quickly you will reply.

Design for phones and test on real ones

Many B2B buyers first meet a vendor on a phone, then come back on a laptop. Responsive design should mean the phone version is complete, not cut down: the same content, tap targets large enough for a thumb, no sideways scrolling, and menus that open and close predictably. Test on an actual mid-range phone, not only in a desktop browser window.

Make it fast

Speed is part of UX. Google’s Core Web Vitals measure three things from real visitors’ browsers:

  • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): how quickly the main content appears. Aim for 2.5 seconds or less.
  • Interaction to Next Paint (INP): how quickly the page responds when someone taps or clicks. Aim for 200 milliseconds or less. INP replaced First Input Delay as a Core Web Vital in March 2024.
  • Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): how much the page jumps around as it loads. Aim for 0.1 or less.

PageSpeed Insights shows your field data and what to fix. The usual culprits are oversized images, too many third-party scripts (chat widgets, trackers, embedded video), and fonts or ads that push content around after it loads.

Make it usable by everyone

Accessibility is good UX for everyone, and increasingly a legal requirement. The current standard is WCAG 2.2, published by the W3C in October 2023. Level AA is the usual target. A few checks catch many problems:

  • text contrast of at least 4.5:1 against its background, and color never the only way information is shown;
  • everything usable with a keyboard alone, with a visible focus indicator that is not hidden behind sticky headers (a new WCAG 2.2 requirement);
  • tap and click targets at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels, or with enough space around them (also new in 2.2);
  • meaningful alternative text on images, captions on video, and proper headings and form labels;
  • sign-in that does not depend on memorizing or retyping (2.2 asks you to allow password managers and paste).

The legal picture keeps moving. U.S. businesses face ADA lawsuits over inaccessible sites. The Justice Department’s rule for state and local governments requires WCAG 2.1 AA, with compliance dates now set for April 2027 and April 2028, which matters if you sell to the public sector. The European Accessibility Act has applied to many consumer-facing products and services sold in the EU since June 2025. Automated scanners find only part of the problems, so pair them with keyboard and screen reader testing.

Change, measure, repeat

Treat UX as a cycle, not a project. Fix the biggest problems on your top tasks first, measure the result (completion rate, form submissions, time to find key pages, support questions), and then test again. On busy pages, A/B tests settle debates; on quieter B2B sites, a before-and-after comparison plus a few usability sessions is usually more practical.

Where we come in

Our web development team handles UX research, information architecture, design, accessibility, and performance as one job, on new sites and on improvements to existing ones, along with mobile apps. If you know your site is underperforming but not why, ask us for a review.