If you’re a B2B company, you’ve heard a lot of the same things a B2C company hears when it comes to your website…It’s the face of your business and likely the first thing a potential customer is going to see, so it has to look nice and make a great first impression. But there are differences between a B2B and a B2C site as well, and it’s vital to know what they are before spending the time and energy to launch yours.
At Brainstorm, we’ve developed hundreds of B2B website designs, and have learned a lot in the process. Here are our best practices for making your website more attractive, engaging and setup to generate more leads and sales.
1. Know Your Audience
Your website design should connect directly with your audience, and that’s why it’s essential to know who exactly that audience is. You can estimate who your visitors will be according to industry or demographics, like location, job role, age, profession, etc. Your selection should be modeled after your best customers or the ideal users of your products or services.
So, make sure that you understand your buyer personas before you start redesigning your website. When you know your customer and prospect needs, you will develop the right content that speaks to their pain points, resulting in more engagement and conversions.
2. Define Your Value Proposition
A value proposition shows the solutions that your business offers to your customers. It stresses more on the value of your services than the outstanding features of your business.
Your value proposition statement is the key to gaining a competitive edge and articulating why customers should buy from you and not from other businesses.
Since customers need help from your business, a strong statement on value proposition will increase both the quantity and quality of your website visitors.
3. Focus on User Experience
Now that you have a defined audience and value proposition, you need to plan on what actions you would like the visitors to take when they visit your website. Would you like them to fill out a form? Download your content? Or just scroll to see your products?
Only 58% of B2B website designs have successful user experiences. You should put yourself in the client’s shoes and implement what will make customers want to revisit your website.
One great way to improve the user experience is to create an easy-to-navigate website, one with a fast load time and less clutter and disruptive ads and pop-ups. You should also make your website responsive so users will enjoy a quality experience whether they’re on their smart phone or any other device.
4. Choose Simple Design
Don’t fear white space. Sometimes less is more! Choose strong images from a photographer if possible. Filling in some gaps with stock photography is fine too. Iconography is also a great way to communicate features and benefits while making them quick for the reader to identify.
Do you have a style guide to follow? Standardize colors, fonts and styles. You would be surprised how many websites we see with dozens of different fonts, multiple button styles and ten variations of a company color!
5. Create a Keyword Strategy
Think of the keywords a prospect would search for when trying to find your products or services. For example: “Inbound Marketing Agency New York,” accurately describes our business. You can also get keyword ideas from your competitors ‘content or by using tools such as Google Ads Keyword Planner, SEMRush or Ahrefs. Using these tools, make a spreadsheet of these potential terms with the number of searches per month and competition. Then narrow down the list to your select terms. Ideally, you have the best chances of ranking for terms with the highest number of searches and the least competition. Each page you create on your website should be focused on one or two of your select keywords.
6. Create a Conversion Strategy
What do you want people to do once they visit your website? You should have a clear and concise CTA so that your visitors can contact you, call you, make a purchase, request a quote and so on. If you’re using HubSpot marketing software, creating CTAs is simple. They can be text- or image-based and the performance of each CTA can easily be tracked.
7. Optimize Your B2B Website Design Regularly
Review your website analytics monthly or quarterly to see your highest and lowest performing pages. If visitors stay for long on certain pages, it will be evident that your content (text, graphics, videos) is engaging. By contrast, if you notice some pages have very low time on page, or bounce rate is more than 70%, it’s most likely not engaging to your audience and you should take the necessary actions.
Website development and design is a journey. At Brainstorm, we never take a design-and-sit approach. We are constantly monitoring your site and finding new ways to optimize and improve it. And as a HubSpot-certified partner agency, we have the latest tools and analytics to ensure it’s reaching the right audience and delivering the right messages. Contact us today to learn more about out web design and other digital marketing services!