As Tim Cook, CEO at Apple, once stated: “Most business models have focused on self interest instead of user experience.” And in 2016, the focus in the B2B business world is right where Tim Cook thinks it should be: on user experience.
So it’s high time that B2B businesses realize the importance of their users. In fact, they’re the reason that their businesses have survived in the first place.
With that in mind, we’ve put together this list of eight B2B website best practices that will enhance your user experience.
1.) Focus on great web design
The proper use of colors, animations, widgets, media, layout, and typography will convince your website’s users to take a closer look.
Your website’s design should be appealing and user-friendly. Using the right colors for your audience will draw their attention to select elements, while a chaotic mix of colors while drive people away. Avoid clutter, and don’t be afraid of white space.
Don’t try to make everything jump out. Using flash animations, animated backgrounds, and, background music all send the wrong signals. Only use media and animations that support your content.
Create a clear layout and a clean navigation structure. Make your content easy to find, or your visitors might get frustrated and look elsewhere.
2.) Maintain consistency
Keep the elements of your website—such as colors, sizes, and layouts—consistent from page to page. Your site’s navigation tools should remain in the same location across your website. And make sure your site has a good flow from page to page.
As for layout structure, most websites have a three kinds of pages: a homepage, content pages, and form pages. For example, your homepage will have a different layout than your landing pages for a PPC campaign. Keep the elements within these categories consistent to prevent your visitors from feeling lost.
3.) Make it accessible
Make sure that anyone visiting your website can view it on whatever browser or web application they use. Your site needs to be compatible with numerous browsers and devices to gain significant traffic.
With the growth in mobile phones and tablet devices, more people are surfing the Internet than ever before. Get some of this traffie by allowing everyone to view your site, no matter what kind of system they run or browser they use.
4.) Provide customer service
Offering spot-on customer service is a big plus. Help solutions such as live chat, FAQs, pricing tables, and microcopy (little words or phrases) enhance the subscription or buying process and help reduce users’ resistance to taking action.
5.) Implement SEO
Optimize your website so that it makes sense to search engines and makes your site the most relevant search result for your products or services. Include relevant keyword phrases, meta tags, default banners, navigation, customer testimonials, and call-to-action buttons.
Use Google Webmaster Tools to monitor your site’s performance, leveraging the data to increase traffic and produce more relevant content.
Your website’s structure and design are the means by which you accomplish your website’s ultimate goal—getting the right information to the right people and eventually converting them into buyers.
6.) Update your content regularly
“When creating content, be empathetic above all else. Try to live the lives of your audience.”—Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz.
There’s nothing worse than coming to a site to find the last blog post is three months old, or that certain hyperlinked pages don’t exist.
Remember that “content is king.” Great content generates traffic, establishes thought leadership, and provides value to your customers.
Update and maintain your content at regular intervals. It will help you grow awareness, drive consideration, and generate more sales.
7.) Include social sharing buttons on your blog posts
Include social sharing buttons to bring more traffic to your website and improve your website’s SEO ranking. Whenever visitors or readers share your content, more people will see it.
Make sure you have a good set of social media networking site buttons. Facebook and Twitter are the most popular these days, but you can added YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and many more. This will allow you to reach a wider set of people once people share your content on these social networking sites.
Display share buttons in an easily accessible location on your website: mostly on the top, the bottom, or along the side.
9.) Put call-to-action buttons on your landing pages
Landing pages (where you want your visitors to land to in order to take action) play a critical role on B2B websites, and more specifically, lead generation.
According to gorilla76, a good landing page allows you to segment the various audiences your company is targeting and put the most relevant information in front of each of them.
The call-to-action (CTA) button is the star of B2B websites. It is the culmination of your site’s carefully laid-out information architecture and clearly mapped-out goal: to get visitors to your site and turn them into customers.
Great B2B websites have a CTA on every page. Set up your CTA buttons so that consumers have a clear path to click their way to where you want them to go, and create an offer strategy that highlights which CTA will be placed on a given page, and why.
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