"You have to create an environment where people are prepared to challenge, but feel safe enough to do it".
Tim McIver’s role at Magnet Kitchens placed him close to the realities of supporting trade customers and partners where engaging and supporting kitchen fitters is central to commercial success. Working closely with trade audiences and digital partners including UX design agency Biglight he has seen first-hand how understanding customer needs and designing around them can influence behaviour confidence and recommendation.
This episode of The B2B Experience with Steve Borges from London-based digital transformation agency Biglight explores how insight-led digital products services and UX design can drive recommendation and advocacy.
In his conversation on The B2B Experience Tim focuses on the importance of recognising kitchen fitters as a critical customer group rather than simply a route to market. Fitters play a decisive role in which brands are specified and recommended yet their needs are often misunderstood or deprioritised in digital initiatives.
Tim explains that the starting point for the work was insight. Before designing anything it was essential to understand how fitters actually work what pressures they face and where existing tools and experiences fell short. Assumptions about what fitters wanted were replaced with direct research and observation.
Customer journey mapping played a key role in this process. By mapping the end-to-end fitter journey the team could see where friction existed and where opportunities lay. This included interactions with digital tools services and the website. The journey view created shared understanding and helped prioritise what to address first.
One of the clear outcomes of this insight was the opportunity to create new digital products and services specifically designed to support fitters in their day-to-day work. Rather than relying on incentives or marketing messages the focus shifted to enablement. Helping fitters do their jobs more easily became the primary driver of engagement and recommendation.
Alongside these new services the Magnet Kitchens website was identified as a critical touchpoint that needed improvement. The existing experience was not optimised for trade users. Tim describes how the project included a complete UX and UI redesign of the site with a new creative look and feel grounded in usability and clarity.
The goal of the redesign was simple but significant. Make the website easier for trades to use. This meant clearer navigation more intuitive journeys and content structured around what fitters needed rather than how the organisation was structured internally.
Tim speaks positively about working with Biglight during this process. The combination of customer insight journey mapping and experience design helped keep decisions grounded. Rather than subjective debates the work was guided by evidence of what fitters valued and where they struggled.
UX and UI design were treated as strategic tools rather than surface-level polish. Design choices were made to reduce friction increase confidence and make information easier to access. The creative look and feel supported usability rather than distracting from it.
Another important theme in the episode is execution. Tim reflects on how moving from insight to delivery requires collaboration and discipline. Ideas only become valuable when they are implemented in ways that customers can actually use. The partnership approach with Biglight supported this transition from thinking to doing.
Incremental improvement was also central. Rather than attempting to transform everything at once the focus was on delivering practical improvements that could be adopted quickly. Each improvement built trust internally and externally and reinforced the value of an experience-led approach.
Tim highlights the impact this work had on confidence. When fitters feel supported they are more likely to engage recommend and advocate for the brand. Digital products services and a usable website became enablers of that relationship rather than barriers.
The episode also touches on how this approach aligns marketing and digital transformation. Instead of separate initiatives experience design provided a common thread. Insight informed design design supported enablement and enablement drove commercial outcomes.
Trade audiences should be treated as customers in their own right. Understanding their needs requires research and journey mapping. Digital products services and websites must be designed to support real work. UX and UI design play a critical role in adoption. And recommendation is earned through value rather than persuasion.
Experience-led digital design grounded in customer understanding can drive advocacy and growth in B2B environments where partners play a decisive role.
Topics connected to this episode
Understanding trade customers and their needs
Customer insight and journey mapping
Designing digital products and services for partners
UX and UI design for B2B websites
Redesigning websites for ease of use
Experience-led digital transformation
Driving recommendation through enablement
Working with Biglight as an experience design partner
Understanding customer needs in B2B
Customer journey mapping
UX and UI design for B2B websites
Experience design for trade customers
Digital product and service design
Partner and channel experience
Experience-led digital transformation
Designing websites for ease of use
Insight-led UX design
Driving recommendation through value
Why customers always know what they do not want
How to understand customer motivations across segments
Lessons from working with Biglight to unlock customer first thinking
Why culture and mindset can accelerate or block transformation
How to shift organisations from project led to product led ways of working
Moving from credit risk to digital transformation
Introducing self service ticket machines before customers trusted them
Why River Island’s cultural clarity drove fast change
How Biglight helped challenge assumptions at Hobbycraft and Magnet Kitchens
The critical role of product leadership in modern B2B organisations
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