BH e-Commerce Portal
Redesigning a complex B2B industrial marketplace to simplify workflows and improve conversion across five product lines.
Baker Hughes e-Commerce Portal
Baker Hughes is a leading energy technology company. Their e-commerce platform serves as a critical marketplace enabling channel partners and direct customers to explore and procure specialised industrial equipment.
Outcome
Problem, Objective & Challenges
Problem Statement
Customers across multiple product lines faced inconsistent user experiences and usability challenges within the portal. Users struggled to find the right products and access relevant information, leading to lower portal engagement and impacting online sales growth.
Objective
Improve usability, product discoverability and consistency across a complex multi-brand platform to create a seamless e-commerce experience that increases customer engagement and drives online sales.
Challenges
Being a legacy one-stop e-commerce platform for 5 different brands,
- Each brand had their own flows of handling products.
- Various user roles across global customers (B2B and B2B2C).
- Not all products can be treated the same way for online sale.
- Complex product data mapped with multiple hierarchies and variant configurations.
- Customers were more accustomed to manual purchase order processes than placing orders online.
Approach
The project began with significant ambiguity across user needs, workflow definitions, product hierarchy, and technical dependencies. Early discovery focused on aligning stakeholders, identifying operational constraints, and establishing clarity around the end-to-end customer experience.
Research
Stakeholder Envisioning
Before engaging stakeholders, developed a structured interview framework and targeted questionnaire. I then identified and connected with key stakeholders across all product lines, including product SMEs, sales, marketing, customer care, and channel management teams.
User Interviews
Conducted interviews with stakeholders and users (B2B and B2B2C) to identify key user challenges focused on efficiently navigating the site, while understanding clear visibility into the end-to-end business requirements across multiple product lines.
Insights Consolidation
Gathered all information and consolidated them under different buckets representing business goals, key products, challenges, competitors and more.
Persona Development
Sales data revealed approximately 90% of portal users are Channel Partners who interact daily, while fewer than 10% are direct users. This shaped two clear personas: a Channel Partner (admin or order placer) and a general end-user.
Pain Points
Key Insights
Information Architecture
After extensive analysis and discussions, I developed a high-level user flow and a comprehensive Information Architecture that served as the planning reference for the entire design and development team.
Simplified complex, data-heavy product listings and configurations by restructuring the information hierarchy, enabling users to quickly find and access the right products.
Wireframing
Post stakeholder sign-off, I initiated user interviews with the same rigour. First-cut wireframes were used in sessions to test alignment with users' mental models.
User sessions surfaced important nuances. Observing day-to-day workflows yielded invaluable qualitative data that drove further wireframe iteration.
Visual Design
Product Detail Page
Product descriptions redesigned to surface stock availability, pricing breakdowns, and estimated ship dates at a glance. Product image takes 50% width for maximum visual impact.
Checkout Page
Simplified a complex multi-page workflow into a streamlined 5-step guided experience
- Created a clearer sense of progress throughout the journey
- Reduced cognitive load with structured and focused interactions
- Increased form completion rates through a more intuitive flow
Order Management
Role specific dashboard for logged in users with clear status on their orders, quotes, equipment, service tickets and cases.
Users can track individual items with different delivery dates. A "Repeat order" CTA was introduced to improve convenience and drive repeat purchases.
Credit Card Payment
Previously disabled due to business constraints. After a targeted discussion with the Head of Product and weighing multiple factors, the feature was approved with financial limits — directly contributing to a measurable sales increase.
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