Different businesses. Different pressures. Same need to be convincing

A business buyer does most of the work before you know they exist. They read, compare, forward a link to a colleague and build a shortlist — all of it without speaking to anyone. By the time an enquiry arrives, the decision is largely made.

So the site has to do the convincing on its own. That means saying what you actually do in the first screen, making a complicated offer legible without flattening it, and giving somebody enough evidence to put your name in front of their own boss.

• Manufacturers
• Industrial suppliers
• Logistics
• Consultants
• Professional services
• SaaS

When the site is the sales channel, every design decision has a number attached to it. A product page that answers the wrong question, a filter that hides half the range, a checkout that asks for an account too early — each of those is measurable, and each is a design problem before it is a marketing one.

The other half is difference. Most storefronts are built from the same handful of themes, which makes the ones that feel like a brand rather than a template disproportionately memorable. That is where the identity work and the commerce work stop being separate jobs.

• Fashion
• Sportswear
• Cosmetics
• Homeware
• Food and drink
• Subscription

New companies have a harder version of every problem on this page. There is no category to sit inside, no reputation doing the work in the background, and often no obvious comparison to explain the thing against. The design is carrying the credibility on its own.

What that needs is a system rather than a set of screens: an identity that will still hold in a year, a product that can grow without being redrawn, and components that survive the pace of a team shipping weekly. It is the work we are closest to, for reasons that are probably obvious.

• Tech startups
• Apps
• SaaS
• New consumer brands
• Funded ventures