Cater to what your buyers want when designing your B2B website homepage content. 79% of B2B website visitors say that websites play a “critical role” in their supplier decisions.
The right B2B website features will gain you customers. In contrast, 15% of B2B buyers say they will switch sellers due to poor websites.
Not sure what you need to have on your B2B website? Here’s our research-based guide to optimizing your website to attract and retain customers.
Let’s take a closer look . . .
Surveyed B2B website visitors weighed in on which content most influences their purchase decisions. Here’s what the research found with our recommendations on what it means for industrial manufacturing companies.
What B2B website visitors want most is “Answers to questions.” Do you know what questions your website visitors want answered?
If you’re not sure, then it’s time to revisit your buyer personas with your marketing and sales teams. You can learn more about B2B buyer personas in our Make Customers guide.
You and your team know your way around your B2B website, so you’re not the best judges of how easy it is to navigate.
To find out whether your site meets navigation expectations, consider a high-tech user experience analysis. These tools monitor and record user behavior and plot it on heat maps.
User experience research shows you actual user behavior on your website. Then, you can make changes based on what you learn.
Tap into members of your network who are unfamiliar with your site but knowledgeable about your industry. Ask them to browse your site and give you feedback on the experience. Better yet, see if they will screen share their browsing experience with audio commentary via a video conferencing app.
In addition to highly functional menus, B2B website visitors want search boxes (69%), live chat/chatbots (45%), and dates on blog articles (24%) to help them navigate your site.
However, be careful when offering search boxes and chatbots on your B2B website. If done poorly, these website features will do more harm than good. Also, they can make it harder for you to guide the buyer’s journey on your site.
B2B buyers need and expect expert advice and industry insights on your website.
What kind of expert content do they want? Here’s how surveyed B2B website visitors rated the most common expert content.
Be careful not to lock all the useful content on your website behind lead forms. Marketers value gated content that requires email addresses in exchange for access, but only 13% of B2B visitors value it.
However, there’s hope for lead forms yet!
The trick is figuring out what content feels worth it to them.
Consider asking your sales team about the top pain points your prospects and customers face. Industry networking groups in-person or on social media can be another source of information about customer priorities.
Social proof overall rated lower than other B2B website features. However, this seems contradicted by the finding that visitors highly value reviews and testimonials.
As shown above, reviews and testimonials rated as the most useful B2B website content, with 59% of B2B website visitors rating this type of social proof content as most useful.
It may come as a surprise to you that telling a your B2B brand story matters more than beautiful design, videos, and visuals.
It’s not that visual appeal doesn’t matter. It’s just that buyers mean business. They need to know about your brand to achieve their job goals. Tell them what they need to know about your company to build trust and confidence to close the sale.
As you think about your B2B website homepage content, keep your content goals in focus.
When you design your B2B website around meeting your visitors’ information needs, you make their jobs easier. That will keep them coming back to your website. Ultimately, good content translates to not only more customers but also more loyal customers.
If you have website ideas or questions, get in touch. You can also connect with us on LinkedIn or Tweet us.
—parin
Managing Partner
Image credit: MarketingCharts
With over two decades of experience, Parin leads an expert demand-generation agency, StratMg, that helps industrial manufacturing clients achieve unambiguous and quantified organic sales growth across the US, EMEA & APAC.
Parin has built & positioned StratMg to be a value-added marketing services provider that strives to create a culture of quantified sales-driven marketing initiatives leading to sustained business growth through channel management, diversification, new customer acquisition and retention strategies and tactical execution.
