Streamlining Business Negotiations with User-Friendly Feature Design

“Nagano Happy Business Matching Site” (NAGANO), operated by Nagano Prefecture, is a B2B platform designed to connect producers of food, traditional crafts, and other local products with buyers such as restaurants and retailers across Japan. Launched in the spring of 2020, when face-to-face business became difficult due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the platform saw explosive growth in membership. For producers who had not previously leveraged the web, it provided a new avenue for sales and significantly contributed to regional DX (digital transformation) initiatives. The platform includes numerous features to streamline negotiations, such as a one-line order function that allows buyers to easily specify desired products, a chat feature for exchanging quotes, photos, and sample requests, and special pages highlighting seasonal products and business meeting information. In addition, a detailed classification system enables searches not only by category and keyword but also by specific attributes like “rare ingredients,” “regional foods,” and “original varieties,” allowing users to quickly access the products they need. The platform also includes FCP sheet functionality for creating, registering, and managing product characteristics, quality, and transaction conditions, ensuring accurate and efficient information sharing for negotiations. Within six months of launch, registered businesses increased from 550 to 800, the number of listed products surpassed 1,200, and site traffic quadrupled. Negotiation cases exceeded 500. These results also supported online business meetings and web-based trade events, strongly promoting the expansion of sales channels for Nagano products.