What is the difference between B-side and C-side?

Differences: 1. C-side products serve individuals, while B-side products serve organizations; C-side products focus on user experience, while B-side products focus on information flow; 2. The transfer cost of C-side products is much lower than that of B-side products; 3. C-end products rely on traffic to obtain revenue, while B-end products obtain revenue through paid customization.

#The operating environment of this article: Windows 7 system, Dell G3 computer.

I won’t go into the specific definitions of C-side and B-side. Here I want to talk about the difference between C-side and B-side.

Some thoughts on the difference between B-side and C-side:

The fundamental difference is the difference in service objects: individual groups VS organizational groups

C-side products serve individuals, B-side products serve individuals End product service organization. The fundamental differences between the two user groups have resulted in two different product forms on the B side and C side.

1. Different usage scenarios lead to demand differences: demand point VS demand surface

The usage scenarios of C-side products and B-side products lead to Differences in needs.

C-side products solve the pain points of users’ needs in life scenarios. Although user needs are complex and diverse, covering basic necessities, housing, transportation, food, drinks and entertainment, when implemented into C-end products, they often solve a specific need. In different life scenarios, users will use different software to meet their needs. In these scenarios, collaboration with others is rarely involved. Users care about themselves. For example, when you are hungry and want to eat, you use a takeout app to place an order. For example, when you go out and have no direction, you use a map app to navigate. Just like most products on the market, C-end products occupy users’ minds with specific functional points to solve the life needs of individual users. Few products are packaged to solve user needs as soon as they are launched. Most products first establish their own product positioning and value, and then slowly optimize and enrich product functions. What C-end products need to meet is the personal life needs of millions of individual users.

Personal needs:

##B-side products serve the organization, and the organization’s needs are not Starting from a single user demand point, it is a connection and extension of production relations. Under different organizational structures, B-end products must solve the information flow needs inside and outside the department and between various levels. In this context, B-end products pursue the improvement of efficiency and effectiveness. It solves all the demand points inside and outside the organization in the work scenario. These demand points are connected together to form the demand surface.

Organizational chart:

2. Product design differences: experience VS information flow

From a product design perspective, C-side products focus on user experience, while B-side products focus on information flow.

C-end products pursue how users can achieve their goals and meet their needs in the shortest time, the shortest path, and the lowest cost. By looking at the first screen of C-end products (APPs), you can roughly know their product value and positioning. The first screen of WeChat is the chat interface, which meets the needs of communication, followed by the address book, and the circle of friends that users are addicted to is only ranked The third TAB (and can also be customized and hidden), the first screen of Weibo is the information flow. Users use Weibo to obtain information that may be of interest to them, followed by information from strangers (popular, hot searches ). As for the music APP, I originally thought that their product definition was to be a music player for users. According to this logic, their first screen should be the user’s own playlist (based on the product definition of the player), but in fact it is not. It is some music information and push, which shows that they do not position themselves simply as a music player, but want to be a traffic entrance for content distribution. In this way, if you understand a certain need that a product wants to solve, you can roughly understand its information navigation architecture.

For B-side products, what needs to be solved is mainly the collaboration and communication needs of different production relationships. Under a centralized organizational structure, B-side products need to meet the needs of collaboration and communication at different levels, both inside and outside the organization. In this context, B-side products will consider functions such as permission design, role assignment, and operation data display to improve production efficiency while maintaining stable functions.

3. Transfer cost difference: low cost VS high cost

The transfer cost of C-end products is much lower than that of B-end products.

The low transfer cost and lightweight of C-end products are determined by the internal and external environment. In terms of the value positioning of the product itself, there are not many core needs that C-end products need to solve, and they can be solved through rapid iteration. , sort out priorities and get quick updates and upgrades. Externally, if a C-end product is not easy to use and the experience is not good, users can easily switch to other products without any loss to the users. After all, C-side needs are open and everyone can do it.

The transfer cost of B-end products is much higher in comparison. Consumers and direct users are not the same group of people. For direct users (users), their usage scenario is in the work environment. Even if the product is difficult to use, users will still use it in order to complete their work. Many times you have no choice and are not allowed to choose. For consumers (enterprises), the cost of building a system is high, time-consuming, and difficult to update and iterate frequently. In addition, most B-end products do not directly generate profits, and the motivation of enterprises is not high, so the requirements are also It's just "make do, as long as it works." Various reasons have resulted in higher transfer costs for B-end products.

4. Differences in business models: economies of scale VS paid customization

C-side products rely on traffic to obtain revenue, while B-side products rely on Pay for customization to gain revenue.

Most C-end products are free. They do not charge individual users directly. Instead, they obtain user traffic on a free basis through new recruitment, retention, activation and other means, and then use a small part of it. users receive benefits. For example, WeChat, which has nearly 1 billion monthly active users, has not yet had a project that directly charges users. Anyone can download it for free without spending a penny to use the program. Even if some C-end products have some paid items, it does not affect the use of their basic functions. Users can still use them to meet their basic needs. It can be said that the business model of most C-end products relies on traffic to obtain revenue. The larger the traffic base, the greater the revenue. There is an exponential relationship between the two.

As for the B-side products for organizations, because of the natural "closed" characteristics of the organization, they do not need to obtain a large amount of external traffic. They only need to meet the needs of the internal and external production relationships of the organization. The business and The architectures are all different. Compared with the C-side "one-size-fits-all" approach, B-side products need to be customized according to different production relationships. In addition, users and consumers of B-end products are not the same group of people, that is, the products are not paid directly by users, but by companies, and companies also accept that products do not directly generate revenue. These reasons determine that B-side products mostly obtain revenue through paid customization.

Through a rough comparison, we can understand some things during product development. As far as developing a B-end product is concerned, the focus that needs to be paid attention to is the transmission of basic information flow, so the focus is to sort out the business flow and logic. In the chain, the needs for social networking, sharing, and user experience are not so high priority. For C-end products, meeting basic functions is only an entry-level requirement. To do well, a better user experience is needed, and we must consider how to allow users to meet their needs in the shortest path and in the fastest time.

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