There are best practices. And then there are BEST PRACTICES. The former are important. The latter are vital. And on today’s digital landscape where the population has long since exceed (cue “Dr. Evil” voice) one billion websites, in order to stand out and get remembered for all of the right reasons, B2B businesses need web design BEST PRACTICES.
And so, we’ll stop shouting (sorry) and dive right into three elements that make or break a successful B2B website:
B2B Website Design Best Practice #1: Clearly Defined Brand Story and Value Proposition
“Why am I here?”, “Why should I care?” and “Why should I stick around?” are the three fundamental — and often subconscious — questions that visitors ask when they first arrive on a business website (and this is even true if they surfed to it directly by typing the URL into their browser, or clicked an email link or a PPC ad). In the precious little real estate that exists on a home page, businesses must answer these questions.
Of course, businesses can (and usually should) expand on this elsewhere on the website, such as in an “About Us” or “Why Us?” section. But the framework must be quickly, clearly and convincingly established on the home page. Remember: this isn’t about selling anything. It’s about establishing relevance and generating engagement.
B2B Website Design Best Practice #2: Outstanding and Intuitive UX
Business visitors have less time to browse websites than their consumer counterparts who are shopping for airline tickets, a tennis racket, or a beautiful cubic zirconia that looks just like a real diamond to give to their beloved who will never know the difference (hint: don’t do this). What’s more, business visitors typically have less tolerance for a confusing user experience, since they figure that if things are frustrating at the very beginning, then they’re unlikely to get smoother after a sale.
To avoid losing qualified leads to arguably less capable competitors who nevertheless have a better digital property, businesses need to make sure that their website features outstanding and intuitive UX. This means that information must be structured for maximum impact, extremely easy to navigate, and of course, the esthetics and production values must be world-class (you don’t have to be Google or Apple to look like Google or Apple).
And although this should go without saying, we’ll add it here just in case some businesses out there have been, or are about to be, misled by some smooth-talking yet shockingly incompetent web designers: responsive design is an absolute must. That means if the website doesn’t display and function flawlessly on tablets and smartphones, then it’s a liability instead of an asset.
B2B Website Design Best Practice #3: Offer High-Quality Top-of-Funnel Content
We routinely come across business websites that (more or less) do a good job on the first two best practices, but swing and miss when it comes to this piece of the puzzle — which is unfortunate, because it’s a massive missed opportunity.
While each business is different, all B2B website should offer at least one — but often several — high quality, top-of-funnel pieces of content, such as ebooks, white papers, reports, checklists, and so on. There are few reasons for this:
- It makes a website stickier and increases time-on-site, which is important. The longer that visitors stick around, the more likely they are return and/or take some other small, but meaningful step forward on the buyer’s journey.
- It demonstrates thought leadership, which is in most marketplaces the most important position for vendors and service providers to hold. Yes, product selection, price and other factors matter. But all else being equal, B2B buyers will lean towards choosing businesses that they deem to be more qualified and competent, even if they are more expensive and offer less selection.
- In return for downloading an ebook or other asset, leads share their name an email address (usually at the top of the funnel, that’s all that can and should be asked for). Businesses can then launch outreach campaigns to nurture leads into prospects, and then funnel them over to sales who can strive to close the deal and make it rain.
Learn More
At Leap Clixx, all of the websites we build for our customers capture all of these B2B website design best practices — just as our own website does. To learn more, contact us today. We can either build you a high-performance business website from scratch, or we can work with what you have by strengthening what’s working, and fixing what isn’t. Your consultation with us is free.
For more information on website design best practices and how to make your website a lead generation machine, download our FREE eBook:
Topics: SEO
