A truly great B2B website takes into account state-of-the-art web design trends, best practice for online marketing such as search engine optimisation (SEO) and lead generation - with a goal to create a website that’s modern, unique, and most importantly, gives your users what they need.
You may be thinking - “We already have a website, why would we need to go through the effort of redesigning?”.
Well, the reality is that many B2B business websites simply aren’t fulfilling their potential - and if you can relate to anything on our list below, your site is one of them. By redesigning your website with the following points in mind, you open up the door to truly great growth for your business, as you watch your visitors and leads roll in.
Your website should be able to attract visitors, convert them into known quantities and help close them, turning them into customers. Below, we've highlighted our top 6 reasons why - in the year of our lord 2021 - this might not be happening and why you may need a B2B website redesign.
Are you simply not appearing in Google search results? Maybe you’re not in the top spot when you want to be, or you don’t appear on the front page for some searches. This is a warning sign that a website redesign with SEO in mind may be required.
Many businesses have been using the same website for a number of years. This is a problem.
Often, over time businesses develop goals, objectives, and targets different to than when their website was first designed and implemented. This means that their website is likely outdated when it comes to search engine optimisation, or even worse, SEO might have not been considered in the first place!
Why is SEO so important?
Because if you're not ranking for anything you expect your customers to search for, how will they find you? If you can't attract prospects with issues you can solve then your B2B website is failing at the first hurdle.
By redesigning your B2B website with SEO in mind, your business can focus on what type of people you want to target and how, which allows you to concentrate on getting your new website to the top of Google when people search for your targeted keywords.
This, of course, leads to not only increased website views, but more views by the right people, which can then result in more leads.
Perhaps your website is getting good traffic, but is struggling to actually convert visitors.
Getting thousands of website visitors a day is great… but without an effective conversion strategy, those visits are going to waste. By redesigning your website with conversion rate optimisation (CRO) in mind, you ensure that visitors are actually interacting with your site and turning into contacts by filling out forms, clicking your Call to Actions (CTAs), or simply contacting you.
Ultimately, by considering SEO and CRO during your redesign, and allowing them to feed into each other, you’ll not only attract more of the right people to your site - you can convert them into valuable contacts that can be nurtured into customers. To find out how to turn your B2B website into a finely tuned lead generation machine - check out our blog on the topic.
Of course, you can't just think about what you want your website visitors to do. What’s most important at the end of the day is what they want, and if they’re getting it. The most critical aspect of your B2B website redesign has to be a buyer-centric approach. Simply, the best way of attracting and converting leads is to provide the information they want and need, while positioning your brand as the answer to their challenges. If your current website isn’t performing, it’s possible that it hasn’t been designed to provide this for your current target audience.
This doesn’t just mean your changing your homepage, but your entire site structure. Giving your target audience what they want means creating a site that offers your visitors valuable content that answers their questions, and can even provide information and advice they weren’t even aware they needed yet. Your site needs to be genuinely useful.
To do this, your site needs to be purposefully designed to account for your visitors natural user journey - how they navigate through your site, what information they’re looking for, and how easy it is to find. Once you’ve got that planned out, you can begin converting.
The wild world of web design moves fast, much faster than most can keep up with. New best practices are constantly being found, and if your website isn’t keeping up, you’re missing out. Basically, even if your website is only a few years old, chances are it’s already outdated in some way.
There are so many things to consider when it comes to website functionality, from user experience (UX) and design, to responsiveness, features, and website speed. Any one of these elements can be a deal-breaker for many potential leads, so you need to be sure you’re on top of your website’s overall functionality to make sure the people who are visiting your website are impressed and, ultimately, convert into potential new business.
So you’ve focused on SEO to the point where you’ve managed to crack the top spot on Google for your target keywords - that’s great! But you can’t forget that there are still other results on the page - more likely than not, your competitors. In the natural process of searching around for options, your website will naturally be compared to your competitors. The reality is that if they have better B2B websites than yours, they’re going to be taking your traffic, your leads, and ultimately, your business. Working on your web rankings is a Sisyphean task. You have to keep pushing that boulder [your website] up the hill [Search Engine Results Page [SERP]].
By redesigning your B2B website, you can take your competitors sites into consideration and really start to determine how you can be better. A website redesign is a great starting point to get a leading edge over competing sites, allowing your site to be the one that stands out and gets the most leads.
In short - if your competitors have already conducted a recent redesign, you’re likely already a step behind them, and if they haven’t, that’s a perfect opportunity for your business to really stand out from the competition and position your brand at the top of your industry.
One of the biggest sins businesses commit when it comes to website design is building a site with no real future plans in mind - so many businesses simply build a website in isolation with no strategy in mind, then wonder why they’re not getting the results they want. Your B2B website is just one part of your online marketing strategy. It needs to fit into a larger plan.
By redesigning your website with a long term plan in mind, you can make the most out of your investment and really start driving activity on your new site. This means creating a site with content in mind - blogs, case studies, news, downloads - a redesigned B2B site with this kind of strategy in mind can be a truly invaluable asset when it comes to generating leads online.
Sticking with a B2B website that simply isn’t performing as well as it could be doesn’t just mean you’re missing out on potential business, it means that in the long-term, your business isn’t achieving the level of growth that it potentially could. By investing in a great redesign, your website can begin functioning as the true growth engine that drives your business to new heights.
If a number of these challenges resonate with you, it may be that a website redesign is the best option for your business.