Your B2B website should be at the core of your business marketing strategy. How users perceive your brand is heavily influenced by your website, namely it’s design, performance and substance.
B2B buyers only spend around 5% of their time, on average, with a sales rep (Gartner, 2019).
This is why getting your B2B website right is of utmost importance.Having a solid B2B marketing strategy is vital in all industries in order to rise above competition.
These essential features can help you to solidify your position as an industry leader.
What is a B2B website?
A business to business (B2B) website is a site designed to supply products and services to other businesses.
As B2B and B2C companies have different target audiences, their websites need to differ in order to be best optimised for search and to promote sales.
Your website is essentially the core of your marketing strategies - it encompasses your branding,
your products or services and it’s often where your customers first come into contact with your business.
What makes a good B2B website?
To drive traffic and boost B2B lead generation, your site has to incorporate a set of elements that promote positive user experience, push your company up in search engines and prove your worth.
A good B2B website will be engaging and encourage site visitors to stick around. Then, the goal is to get those visitors to perform a particular action, whether that be filling out a contact form, signing up for a trial or purchasing a product or service.
Below is a list of 5 features that are essential in creating and promoting an effective B2B website.
5 essential features for an effective B2B website
- Clear messaging for first impressions
Your B2B website needs to clearly articulate what you offer, what problems you solve and through what solutions.
If it isn’t obvious that you could help somebody or provide them with something that they want, it’s unlikely that they are going to stay on your site, let alone convert.
Your branding and web copy needs to:
- Promote a great first impression
- Answer questions and solve problems
- Offer solutions
- Excite and engage
70% of buyers define what their needs are on their own before they engage with a sales representative (CSO Insights, 2020).
This is why having a clear message is so crucial to retaining interest and proving your worth.
- Industry advantage
This element will work closely with the above. Once you’ve clearly established what you do, what you offer and how you can help someone, you need to set yourself apart from other competitors that offer the same.
Consider what makes your business different from the others. This is where those great first impressions are backed up and people are more likely to convert.
If you can’t offer anything unique, and there are competitors in your industry that are already well-established, you’re likely to lose out to them.
Your unique selling point (USP) doesn’t have to necessarily be a basic product or service, but can be the way that these are sold. There are so many areas that are important when it comes to being an industry leader.
From price points to branding, online presence, offers and deals, you’ll need to make sure that you pick your angle and promote it.
- High-quality, optimised content
9 out of 10 B2B buyers say that online content has a moderate to major effect on their purchasing decisions (CMO Council, 2020).
Clearly, content is integral to any B2B business strategy and it comes in many forms. Interesting and engaging content drives traffic, informational and promotional content generates conversions and all high-quality, search optimised content increases a site's visibility in search engines.
A B2B website won’t work without great content. This could be in the form of:
- Landing pages
- General engaging web copy
- A high-quality blog or news section
- Guides, how-to’s and step-by-steps
- Case studies
- CTA’s, contact forms and reviews
These different areas of content are crucial to generating inbound leads and driving conversions. They aim to filter people through the sales funnel by leading on from one another in a clever, multi-step format aided by purposeful web design.
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is so important for B2B businesses. If you’ve spent time creating a business, putting a strategy in place and invested a lot of money into making it work, you’ll want it to be visible to your target audience. Investing in SEO services will help your B2B website to be found organically, which in turn will boost traffic that hopefully turns into qualified leads.
Almost every element of a B2B website can be optimised. From ensuring that all content targets relevant keywords and building quality links to your site, to maintaining a well-functioning site that loads quickly and is easy to navigate, SEO is hugely important.
Specialists in SEO will be able to delve into your B2B site and make suggestions based on what you already have. Once your base content and site are optimised for search, you can move forward with professional support and maintain this essential optimisation in all areas.
- User friendly
The way a site looks and performs forms around 80% of a user's opinion about the brand. Ensuring that your site looks good but functions properly, is a hugely essential feature for a B2B company.
There are a lot of ways a site can be made user friendly. Continuing to update your website is crucial, ensuring that it is:
- Easy to navigate
- Formatted clearly with a well designed site map
- Mobile friendly
- Responsive
76% of B2B buyers say that site design is the most important factor that affects their buying decisions (Zfort, 2019).
Clearly, ensuring that your website looks great and performs well is key.
Web design and development go hand-in-hand and should be a fundamental part of a B2B site strategy.
With a user-friendly website, you should see lower bounce rates and increased traffic.
By working on a B2B site with these 5 elements in mind, you give yourself the best chances of generating qualified leads through an increase of website traffic.
By focusing on the most influential aspects of your site, you put the user first and create that all important, positive first impression and boost your online presence.
A B2B website will often differ from a B2C site due to the user's transactional intent, so keeping up with these 5 elements will really help to push your B2B site to the next level.