More and more B2B buyers are online and relying on digital channels to make their purchase decisions. In fact according to Gartner - When buyers are considering a purchase, they spend 27% of their time online researching independently. They spend 17% of their time meeting with clients. And when it comes to meeting and comparing multiple suppliers, time spent is only 5% or 6% with each sales rep. So needless to say, if you are a startup, having a website is the first step but ensuring that you have an effective one is key to growing your revenue and business.
Here are 8 steps for a good B2B eCommerce website -
Website messaging
Using Buyer’s language
High Quality Relevant Content
Mobile First
Navigation
SEO Optimization
Call to Action
Measure Performance
1.Website messaging matters - While your website must share who you are and what your product offerings are, it is imperative that it does not just simply broadcast or come across as a one sided conversation. Your prospective wants to learn about you but the purpose they are there on your site is so they can find solutions to the challenge they are facing. They may be at different stages in their buyer’s journey, so they are looking to be educated, informed and helped along the process. Is your copy precise and clear? Is it simple to understand or is there too much unnecessary jargon? Are you only talking about yourself, your executive team, vision, mission statements or making it conversational thereby making your buyer more involved?
2.Use Buyer’s language - An effective website must take into consideration their buyer’s objectives and outcomes and preferably speak their language. This helps the buyer connect easily and in turn instills confidence that you understand their business, their industry, their challenges, what they are hoping to accomplish and that you may be the supplier they should consider looking into. Does your website talk about your buyer’s goals and objectives? Are you using terminology that they use so they can relate and don’t have to translate?
3.High Quality Relevant Content - Providing relevant information in simple, relatable terms helps move buyer’s along their journey, instills credibility, resulting in high quality sales. So your website should provide them with ebooks, case studies, white papers, customer product reviews and a blog to read through. Think about enabling your buyers, what are they there to do on your website and what can you provide to help them along? All these would enable your buyers in their research, give them the advice and support they need in moving forward and completing their buying job.
4.Mobile First - According to BCG Research, 80% of B2B buyers use their mobile phones throughout their journey, so ensuring that your website is responsive and optimized for mobile is critical. It should look great not only on the desktop but on the mobile as well.
5.Navigation - Simple and easy to navigate website where the visitor is able to quickly find the information they need is critical for a great user experience. Improved user experience will help them stay longer on your site and improve retention. It will also help them come back.
6.SEO Optimization - You want your website to be search engine optimized, so it shows up in search results when your buyers key in what they are looking for. Unique titles, meta descriptions, relevant keywords, ensuring quick load times across all devices, alt text for images are all SEO essential best practices to follow. No need to cram lots of keywords, look more at the Relevance, how your pages have relevant content in context of the user queries.
Since the SEO best practices keep changing, It's best to have a professional company that specializes in web design and SEO on board. This is ofcourse if you do not have in-house talent.
7.Call to Action - If your prospect decides to contact you, can they find your contact details easily? If they wish to subscribe to your newsletter, can they find where and how to do so? If they want to download your ebook or white papers, can they easily find out how to do that? Clear call to action buttons are essential, so your buyers know how to do what they want to do.
8.Measure Performance - Performance is key to measuring how effective your website really is. You want relevant data on your visitors, where they come from, how long they stay, which pages they visit, what actions they take etc. Google Search Console can provide you all the data that you need to determine your next course of action.
If you are just getting started or in the process of redesigning your website, following the above steps should put you well on your way to creating an effective website.
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