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


What our Clients Are Saying

Infinite Electronics Logo
Exceptional audit with actionable points and excellent examples.
Kimberly Wells Sr. Product Owner at Infinite Electronics
GE Healthcare Logo
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The Baymard E-commerce Usability reports have proven to be a valuable resource for UX teams within our organisation both at group and operating company level. The reports contain precise, actionable insights and recommendations which are backed up by extensive research and data. The severity and frequency ratings have helped our development teams to prioritise which areas to improve first. The most recent improvements we’ve recommended from the Ecommerce Search report have been extremely well received by senior stakeholders and have already been fed into the backlog.
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Colleen Romero Digital Marketing Director at SiteOne Landscape Supply
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Semion Lapin UX Designer at Deloitte Digital
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Will Close Director of A/B Testing at Nike.com
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Bryan Trogdon Director of User Experience at Office Depot
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Tiziana Collova e-Commerce Marketing Specialist at Microchip
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Marc Ulrich Associate Director of Web Usability at Bell Canada
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Dean Rizzuto UX Director at Integer Group
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Geoffrey Laux Digital Product Owner at Capital One
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Jim Rampton UX Architect at MRM McCANN
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Cary Moody Usability Researcher at Hallmark
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We implemented “E-Commerce Checkout Usability” guide for all our stores and saw doubling of checkout conversion rates. We will soon work on implementation of other usability guidelines. Thank you Christian and Jamie for your excellent work!
Sergey Vorozhtsov CEO at S3 Stores, Inc.
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Some time ago we purchased the Ecommerce Homepage & Category report - the research and insights are extremely useful to us and help us a lot in our work!
Eliza Savov CX Research Team Lead at Clicktale
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I’m an avid user of your reports and recommendations. I have leveraged your articles and findings throughout my career in B2B, B2C, and hospitality.
Jenny Urban User Experience Director at Ace Hardware
Columbia Sportswear Logo
This was indeed very helpful guidance and a very well-documented roadmap for us to fix, validate, organize, collectively understand and continually improve our ecommerce foundation.
Cat Brunson UX Manager at Columbia Sportswear
B&H Photo & Electronics Corp. Logo
I can confirm that the list was fully implemented. Every time we put up a change we either A/B test or we watch it very closely to determine that it’s doing better and not the opposite. So I can confirm that these fixes have improved our checkout. Thanks for everything.
Abraham Berkowitz B&H Photo
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I can not tell you how much help your benchmark studies have been for our company, e-commerce and UX teams. We have used and continue to use these reports for baseline benchmarks as we build test protocols or eye tracking scripts etc. in lab.
Catherine Brunson Customer Experience Strategist at Belk
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Leah Kaufman Senior UX Research Manager at Lenovo
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Ryan Finley Site Search Professional at Kohl’s Department Stores
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Nicole Papp Merchant Success Manager, Shopify
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This #ecommerce checkout guide is worth every penny. Highly recommended. #cro
Steve Johnson @johnsonstevec
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Thank you very much for the 7 usability audits of our country-specific sites. The audits have provided us with specific and actionable advice, allowed us to prioritize development resources, and enabled us to compare UX performance between the 7 different country-specific sites, and against State of the Art implementations. The audit itself is done really professionally, and the recommendations contain actionable and insightful information.
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Alex Wright Director of Research at Etsy
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Great UX report on shopping cart checkout forms/process we have used in a few audits recently.
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Jason Greene UX Design Lead at ClickBank
I am just thrilled by this study, it’s helped me in the construction of my online store checkout. All points in this study make incredible sense, and I cannot help but incorporate all of these suggestions. Incredible.
Rick Lange Owner of StudioStreet
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Tara Costa Senior Manager at Jarden Consumer Solutions (FoodSaver, Breville, etc.)
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Josh Shaw Web Manager at Keurig Green Mountain
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The recommendations in our audit were awesome - well prioritized, actionable and helped us focus on what to optimize. This audit, along with the e-Commerce Reports & Benchmark Databases, are my go-to resources for thorough, insightful information. Thank you!
Erin Straub UX Design Manager at Nutrisystem
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Aaron Henig Operations Manager at Epicenter Consulting, New York
Smashing Magazine Logo
This is very, very useful! Let me check what we can do to improve the usability in the Smashing Shop.
Vitaly Friedman Editor in Chief of Smashing Magazine
StickerMule.com Logo
Wow, this is great! Just reviewed it with the team. It’s a huge help and we’re excited to fix these issues.
Anthony Thomas UX responsible at StickerMule.com
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The walkthrough today was great. The report was very, very well done and loaded with great opportunities for us to improve our business. I wanted to again express my appreciation for working with us on such a condensed time frame last month. You and your team have been amazing partners to us and we very much appreciate the work, expertise and partnership.
Wendy Bonnstetter UX Director at Hallmark Cards, Inc.
Carnival Cruise Lines Logo
We like what we are reviewing from the audit - great analysis and feedback.
David Polanco UX Lead at Carnival Cruise Lines
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We have worked with a number of third party companies before on various projects/audits, and I can certainly say that working with Baymard was not only a pleasure; but you delivered on time; to the level of depth we wanted; addressing important issues; and answering all our questions; and you did all this for a great price. A big THANK YOU on behalf of N11.
Efe Yaman Program Manager at n11.com
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Baymard’s real-user research is invaluable for ecommerce marketers. It leaves no stone unturned, and with the guideline checklists provided, you’ll be well equipped to optimize your mobile presence.
Linda Bustos Director of E-commerce Research at Elastic Path
Harley-Davidson Logo
We found the audits extremely helpful and validated a number of changes we have been wanting to make or are in the process of making, so thank again for all the great insights.
Colleen Kersting eCommerce Marketing at Harley-Davidson
Room & Board Logo
The Baymard reports have proven to be an invaluable resource for us. Comprehensive, pragmatic and actionable. We have redesigned our checkout process and made changes to our category pages based on usability guidelines in the reports.
Jill McDonald UX Architect at Room & Board
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[Wanted to] say thanks, because we had a meeting yesterday everyone’s really excited about this. It’s really got everyone motivated and interested in what we’re going to tackle next so it’s been really invaluable, I think.
Phil Losty QA Manager at Joybird
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Josh @ Digital Darts @digital_darts
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Jan Jursa Curator of IATV and the MobX conference
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I love the information that you guys provide and have bought a couple of reports. Love them.
Karen Kysar Site & Search Optimization Lead at iProspect
Purch Logo
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
RepairClinic.com Logo
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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Nikki Orsborn VP of Creative at Branding Brand
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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
Solutionists Logo
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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The Baymard team has been a delight to work with on the JohnLewis digital platform audit. They responded to the brief very well, have been very accessible for ongoing clarification and queries and Rebecca was excellent in the recent team share, articulately presenting findings in an engaging walk-through with the wider team which will really support driving engagement and a robust response. Many thanks for all the effort and focus folks.
Greg Woods UX & UI Design and Research Manager at John Lewis
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If you are a User Experience Designer and have not read this report on check out form usability, than you should #UX
Jonathan Shariat @DesignUXUI
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Jillian Crudo Product Design Manager at Boxed
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Victoria Rönning UX Designer at PriceSpy
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designing a checkout experience? This is one of the coolest resource I’ve seen
Max Ciccotosto @maxciccotosto
Anodyne Logo
I’m very impressed! Not about our site’s performance, quite the opposite, but about your work. Very detailed and packed with great and tangible advice. This was exactly what I dreamt about, but sometimes you just have to be careful dreaming.
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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after benchmarking checkouts for a couple of hours last week… this resource is magical
aquazie @aquazie
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Truly a great learning experience about almost every aspect of eCommerce and the steps you need to take to improve the shopping experience for your users. Everyone working with eCommerce should attend this course. Absolutely worth the investment!
Axel Giæver Senior UX Designer at Dekode
I really enjoy what you guys do. I bought your guide over a year ago to help a large website I consult to improve their checkout.
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’
I wanted to pass on some praise to the Baymard team. I’m doing some desk research at the moment into best practices for navigation, search and filtering, and I’ve been using a lot of Baymard reports. Even though we’re not in the e-comm business, the insights you provide have been invaluable and inspirational to my project. It’s really really great work. I’ve previously grazed the content before out of interest, but now that I’m actually putting it into practice, I’m really feeling the value of this work. Thanks for making it available so that the whole community can benefit.
Barry Prendergast Senior Product Designer
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I just wanted to let you know that I think your site is the best thousand bucks I’ve ever spent. I wish I found you years ago.
Chris Lambrinides Partner at Window Cleaning Resource
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Robert Knoerk CEO at Binary Minds
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Baymard has helped so much: UX was a brand new role at my company when I was hired. I was researching, planning, and designing UX & UI for 5 different products, all by myself. After showing real-world, bottom-line results from a UX centered approach to our products, we have expanded our UX team and greatly improved our UX-to-product process. Baymard’s research database was a critical component to my (and my company’s) success. Thank you!
Geoff Jensen Head of UX at Wrench Inc.
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We have recently tested some of your recommendations for the Avast checkout and got some great wins!
Tomas Janu E-Commerce Director at Avast

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.