5 rules and 4 life hacking to create an effective website for a B2B business
In the realities of the fact that sites have long been one of the key business tools, many are interested in two questions: “How to make a really working website?” And “Have I made a good website?”. Especially these issues are relevant in the field of B2B.
Today we are talking about the rules for creating an effective B2B site and the subsequent work with it.
5 rules for developing a useful website for B2B business
The first. Decide on opportunities
This is not only about the budget. It is important to understand that to work with the site, just like to open a new outlet, you need to think a lot of things. Before you start creating a website, you need a complete business plan.
So that it does not happen that something is done, and why it is done and how to commercialize it is not clear.
Therefore, to begin with, answer the following questions: what should be the site, how to promote it, how to integrate it into existing business processes, how the resulting site is generally related to the company’s overall marketing strategy, why do you need a site at all, what is its purpose.
In many cases, specialized systems, such as CRM, are required for working with clients. Often there is a question about the integration of the site with 1C, etc. etc.
With all this, it is also worth deciding at the very beginning. Therefore, it is correct to go from the goals of the business. The first question you should ask yourself before creating a site:
What tasks the site should solve
Form a business goal of the company’s presence on the Internet. In essence, you should just understand what should get better after launching a site in your business:
It may be:
Expanded coverage. The site will help to cover new regions or expand the dealer network.
Reduced customer service costs. The site will easily answer frequently asked questions, provide comprehensive information to users.
Work on the brand (will work to increase awareness, loyalty, trust).
Increasing sales of a certain type of product (usually there are no problems for this purpose, everyone calls it). However, you should clearly consider how the site will help with this. To whom you will sell and how many sales per month you should receive from the site, how many people will be needed to service this process.
It is not enough to set tasks, it is necessary to understand how much profit the site should give and what expenses you will incur.
Analysis and segmentation of the target audience
Despite the fact that the B2B sphere involves working with organizations, in fact people make the decision. Most often, in the B2B sphere, several people are involved in this process – this may be a secretary or a procurement specialist who monitors the market, and the CFO or owner of the company makes a purchase decision. In this case, it is worth describing the portrait of each of them.
Who are your potential customers: who makes a purchasing decision, who influences a purchasing decision, who initiates what time to make a purchase (gender, age, social status, etc. of each participant in the process).
What problems they have.
How your product / service will help solve them.
What objections make it difficult to make a deal, how the site should help to remove these objections.
What is the target action to take the client.
More information about the analysis of the target audience, we wrote in the article “Target audience: where to aim and how to get.”
Analysis of the audience helps to identify whether the demand for a product / service is formed, how to sell it better (which pain points you can put pressure on with content and which should be avoided), how users should behave on the site (think over the site’s layout and architecture), etc. d.
And here the option “yes, I sell everything” is not suitable, because people of different segments have different needs, desires and objections. The site, as a business tool, must be configured to meet the needs of each segment separately.
Therefore, before developing the site, we thoroughly study and literally terrorize the customer until we achieve a clear understanding of the target audience.
Once you have decided on your target audience, answer another important question:
What makes you different from competitors (USP)
Unique Sales Offer is also a topic for a separate conversation. Every second our client mistakenly considers expressions like: “a favorable price-quality ratio”, “only professionals work for us”, “a huge selection of goods”, “work of any complexity”, “individual approach” by their USP. Remember, this is not UTP!
A unique selling proposition for something UNIQUE that no one else has it. For B2B this is especially important. And now this is the most difficult, because the market is just full of offers. But without UTP, you will be like everyone else, and it is unlikely that you will get a queue after the creation of the site.
Read more about how to develop your UTP, read the article. And until you decide on your sales offer, put off the idea of creating the site until better times.
Another action that will help determine the capabilities of the B2B website is the analysis of competitors.
