Bowens Wins Best B2B UX Design at 2025 APAC Industry Awards

Bowens, one of Australia’s most respected suppliers of timber and building materials, has taken home the Best B2B User Experience Design award at the 2025 APAC B2B eCommerce Industry Awards.

At a time when digital adoption is steadily accelerating across the construction and building supply sector, Bowens stood out, not by being first, but by being exceptionally thoughtful in how it approached the customer experience.

Their award-winning platform delivers on a challenge many in the industry know well: how to serve field-based professionals who are busy, mobile, and under pressure to get jobs done. The UX isn’t just sleek, it’s built for utility, speed, and reliability.

Designed for the Job Site, Not Just the Office

From day one, Bowens committed to a mobile-first, customer-centric approach. It’s clear the design wasn’t built in a vacuum.

• 70% of traffic now comes from mobile devices, a result of prioritizing small-screen usability across every touchpoint.
  
• Trade-first taxonomy ensures that builders find what they need fast, using terms and logic that reflect how they work.
  
• Full feature parity across devices means customers never have to choose between convenience and capability.
  

Whether on a job site, in a ute, or at the branch, the experience is consistent, and frictionless.

User Research That Went Beyond the Screen

Bowens’ success wasn’t luck. It came from doing the work.

They invested in on-the-ground research with customers, trade experts, and internal teams to map real-world workflows and frustrations. The platform’s site architecture, product ranking, and terminology were all pressure-tested in the field.

This is what separates a good experience from a great one: design is driven by how people actually work, not how a product team thinks they should.

Proof That Thoughtful UX Drives Growth

Bowens’ digital journey began in late 2020. Since then, their platform has seen 30 – 40% year-over-year growth in eCommerce revenue. That growth isn’t just about digital maturity. It’s about usability and trust.

Customers come back to tools that make their jobs easier. And Bowens has proven that even in a complex category like building materials, a well-designed platform can deliver strong results without compromising on pricing, contracts, or business rules.

A Win That Reflects the Momentum in the Sector

Plenty of businesses across the building industry are making smart digital investments and collectively, they’re raising the standard for what buyers now expect.

What makes Bowens’ win notable is how clearly they’ve centered the user in every decision, balancing the complexity of construction commerce with the need for speed and simplicity.

For manufacturers and distributors looking to optimize their platforms, Bowens offers a clear takeaway:

Great UX in B2B doesn’t mean sacrificing functionality. It means removing friction.

Congratulations to the Bowens team for building something that works and wins.