What makes a great B2B website? When you’re serving other businesses, you might consider throwing up a site similar to ones that target consumers. However, B2B is a unique niche, and there are many things you must offer to persuade a savvy business person to try your product.
TrustRadius’ B2B Buying Disconnect report for 2021 shows buyers are younger than in the past, and companies must factor in the ways they do business. Researchers estimate about 60% of tech buyers are now millennials. As a result agility becomes critical and streamlined operations essential.
Your website must reflect the tech-savviness of the majority of buyers. You also need to get across how you make their lives easier. Show you understand agility and its impact on your product or service.
To create a trendy, high-converting B2B website that meets the news of high-tech buyers, you must both embrace old design principles and incorporate new technologies. Here are the top things to do to improve conversions on your site.
1. Start With the Basics
If you want to grab the attention of site visitors the minute they land on your site, you must stick to the basic rules of excellent design. First, choose a pleasing color scheme. Every hue taps into a different emotion, so choose those most closely related to what you wish to evoke.
Keep clutter to a minimum. Only add things to the page that move the user toward the goal you have for each touchpoint. Make sure each element on the page works. Click all links and access from both a desktop and mobile device.
A nicely designed site doesn’t distract users. You’ll reduce your bounce rate, which may also boost your conversions.
2. Speed Up Your Page
A Deloitte study showed a mere .1 second improvement in site speed resulted in 8% higher conversions. People want everything at this instant. We live in a world with fast food, rapid mobile connectivity and a hyperspeed life pace. If your site doesn’t load in milliseconds, you risk losing visitors.
Invest in the best web hosting company you can afford, compress images and reduce scripts. Also, run your site through Pingdom or other site speed checkers to get feedback on how well it runs. You’ll receive a grade and tips for decreasing load times.
Pareto Health loads at lightning speed. They’ve already hit many other positives with their landing page, such as the main benefits of choosing their service and a beautiful design.
The company uses data illustrations to highlight percentages and the results they bring. Everything is kept simple but works together to move the user from the first stage of the buyer’s journey to the next.
3. Know Your Audience
You can’t sell something to people without knowing who they are. To increase conversions, you must understand your target audience. So, dig into the analytics of who buys from you and why.
Look at both demographics and psychographics for your typical customer. Then, come up with a buyer persona or two to represent each segment of your client base. Once you have a better understanding of the things that make your customers tick, you’ll be able to choose the language they relate to.
Think about each aspect of your B2B website. Do your headlines grab the user? Can you word things to match better the search terms your customers utilize? Where can you reach your audience? Do they hang out on Facebook or TikTok? The more honed in you are on a particular segment, the more likely they’ll be interested in what you’re selling.
4. Reduce Friction
Your page doesn’t need to be everything to everyone. When business owners land on your page, they should see a clear path from Point A to Point B. If you add many stops along the way and try to serve all their needs on a single page, you risk losing them.
Instead, choose a single goal for a landing page. Add enough information for the user to make a decision. Then, offer a call to action (CTA) button so they can move through the sales funnel rapidly.
5. Focus on Solving Their Pain Point
What is your typical client’s pain point? What problem do they face that drives them to seek a solution such as you offer? Once you understand the issue, you can ascertain the emotion behind it.
For example, if you sell light fixtures for businesses, people’s pain point might be that their office is dark. What is the emotion behind the pain point? Perhaps they fear their employees won’t be as productive, and it will impact productivity and profits.
Dig deeper and figure out what truly drives your typical client to come to you. Once you understand the pain point and its emotions, it’s much easier to present the product benefits users care most about.
WeWork provides solutions for startups and small businesses who need office space but might not be ready to invest in a full-scale building of their own. Their headline reads, “Reimagine your workspace.” A new setting is what most people who land on their page want.
WeWork then uses the following line to explain they have flexible solutions to meet your needs. If you scroll down the page, you’ll see they offer everything from contained office space to open workstations. They even have meeting venues.
6. Create Content for Each Stage
The buyer’s journey has a series of stages. Most people start with awareness. They know they have a problem, and they start looking for a solution. Then, they move through the information stage toward decision-making and finally buying from you.
Know where your site visitors are in each stage of the journey. Create separate landing pages for those who’ve never heard of what you offer to those who are already familiar with your product and need the final push to buy.
On each page, create a call to action, moving the buyer to the next phase of the journey. It’s essential not to skip steps in the sales funnel or risk the potential lead bouncing away.
7. Offer Incentive
Give users a reason to share their personal information with you. You already know their pain points. What if you offered a guide, webinar or free book outlining how to solve part of their problem?
Companies inundate people with marketing emails, text marketing and advertising. You can stand out by giving them something in exchange for their name and email. What would your audience be most interested in?
If one offer doesn’t work, add another. Finding the things your audience desires sometimes takes trial and error.
8. Simplify Forms
Scale down your forms, so you require only a few snippets of things to sign up. The shorter your form, the more likely people will take the time to fill it out.
Consider how many of your site visitors use mobile devices. Tap into third-party applications to autofill as much information as possible. For example, Facebook and Google allow you to use their system to collect data with the user’s permission.
Liongard offers a free ebook covering a topic their users would be interested in perusing. The form to receive the offer has four quick input fields and a CTA button. The user can fill in the request in less than a minute and continue through the site.
Keeping your forms short means more people convert into leads. Someone on a mobile device could also fill in this form quickly.
9. Gain Their Trust
Business owners have no reason to trust you’ll provide what they need. They may have heard about you through a colleague, but they also may have come to you via a search engine results page. It’s up to you to gain their trust once they land on your website.
Start by adding trust factors, such as emblems showing which professional associations you belong to. Next, sprinkle in some customer testimonials to show how happy their peers are with your service. Finally, list any guarantees or policies and use clear language free of legalese.
10. Include Contact Information
Are you excited about doing business with a company with no toll-free number or an easy way to get in touch? What happens if there is a problem with the product and you need help? If you can’t get in touch with a live person before you buy, the likelihood of gaining access after is dismal.
Make sure you list your contact information, so it is easy to locate. Customers expect to see a button to the far left of your navigation bar for contact data. Include your toll-free number in bold font at the top of your page. Include features such as live chat and support tickets.
The more ways a customer can access you, the more likely they will share their data. If you want to convert customers, you must show them you are a good communicator and intuitive to their needs.
Run Tests
The best way to improve your conversion rate on your B2B website is by gaining feedback. Run A/B tests and try different CTA button placement, swap colors for new ones, change your headline, and move things around.
You should also survey your customers and ask what they’d like to see changed on your landing pages. Pay attention to what your competitors do and go one step more. Look for any small way to gain just one additional customer each day. Before you know it, your conversions will exceed industry standards.
