You know a guy. He’s somehow related to a business partner, and you’ve heard he builds websites on the side. You’ve noticed that your business partner’s site looks pretty good, and your startup budget is tight. You think, why not? We’ll tell you several reasons why not, and they all have to do with pitfalls of a poor B2B website design.
Websites are a far cry from the early 2000s when they were meant to be a sign of life, with a listing of your logo and contact information and an “about us” page for the overachievers. Now your B2B website design makes or breaks your marketing strategy, serving as a hub for your brand. Here are several ways it can go wrong:
User Flow: You need extensive familiarity with how your visitors will use your site. Where will they go first, and how will they progress through the site? Just like a store that weaves you through a maze of promotional aisles before they let you get to the think you actually want, a site that meanders can be frustrating. Visitors tend to leave for a site that makes more sense to their journey.
Intuitive Navigation: Make navigation easy to eliminate as much frustration as possible. This means clear calls to action, product lists that are organized in a way that makes sense for your audience and content that’s displayed to draw your audience in.
Load Speed: As a society, we are not patient people. If your site isn’t loading quickly, you may need to do some work to pare down certain elements or you’ll lose visitors. You may have a slow web hosting service, or it could be some of the images or videos on your site slowing things down. This one is not just about customer satisfaction (which is enough), but also about how you’ll fare on search rankings.
Mobile-First: If you’re not prioritizing mobile, stop reading this and get moving on it, already. You know that people are not waiting until they sit down at a desktop to look at your website, so get it mobile-ready.
Color Scheme: Good B2B website design takes into account how colors show up on all kinds of devices, so if your colors are in any way garish or making your text hard to read, it’s time to switch things up.
Don’t hire some guy to create your website. Work with a company that applies cohesive design strategies to your entire marketing plan, including your B2B website design. At SJC Marketing we know what a great website design can do for your business.