Diane Peters
From the December 2006 issue of PROFIT magazine
Business-to-business websites often present flashy animation and a well-crafted blurb on the company's history — the kind of stuff that makes the site's owner proud, but hardly inspires people to buy. Moreover, these points of pride often receive attention at the expense of things that actually do promote sales.
So, a couple of questions for you:
- Does your business-to-business(B2B)site make it easy for your customers to find out what they want to know?
- Or do you frustrate them with mystifying lingo, unhelpful information and hard-sell techniques?
Look closely and you might discover your site is making mistakes that are costing you sales. "The state of B2B websites is under par," says Hoa Loranger, a "user experience" specialist with Web-research firm Nielsen Norman Group in Fremont, Calif. "They're not as well designed, in terms of usability and visual appeal." A recent study by Loranger found that people using B2B sites accomplish what they set out to do just 58% of the time, substantially less than the 66% success rate for consumer-oriented sites.
If potential customers visiting your site can't find what they want, get a bad impression of your company or feel you're wasting their time, then click!, they're gone. Website experts say they see the same mistakes on B2B sites again and again. The good news is that it's easy to fix these classic blunders and turn your site into what it's supposed to be: a business-builder.
Blunder #1: Omitting essential product information "There's an assumption out there that products should sell themselves on a B2B website," says Gerry McGovern, head of The Gerry McGovern Partnership in Dublin, which specializes in Web content management. He sees product information that's heavy on technical specs, but light on the real-life benefits. That's a big problem if your visitor is a non-techie sussing out purchases — and it often is. Loranger's research also found that product descriptions are frequently unhelpful and photos too small. But the worst sin: omitting prices. "Even if it's a great site, if the pricing information isn't there, people will go elsewhere," says Loranger.
The fix: Layer your product and service information. The top level can list the benefits and uses, while a click rewards a serious — or technically minded — buyer with details such as size and compatibility. If your prices vary, anecdotally mention what your product or service has cost previous customers doing small, medium or large installations.
Blunder #2: Making the site a chore to navigate Pretty home pages loaded with Flash animation or overly busy ones stuffed with industry news don't help potential customers, says Dmitri Buterin, president of BonaSource Inc., a Toronto-based company that creates custom Web applications. "Your home page should be a directory of your website," he says. And a transparent one: avoid having directory items that visitors must roll over to read. If your prospects get confused or can't find what they want via the directory on your home page, they'll simply leave. As well, Buterin objects to online content such as product-information sheets being loaded onto PDFs. People don't have time to download these, nor do they want to read anything long.
The fix: Simplify your site's design so everything is easy to find. Find out how your customers label your products and organize things accordingly. Convert any PDFs into HTML, and condense your written information into short chunks and bullet points.
Blunder #3: Patting yourself on the back "Solving tomorrow's problems today." "It's our 50th anniversary serving you!" McGovern can't stand self-promotional lines like these. "The customer couldn't care less," he says. Rushed customers don't have the time to sift through marketing puffery or read about how great your firm is. As well, although your company's name or logo should be a standard visual element on every page, many sites go too far, weaving the firm's name into every paragraph of the text "like it's a brochure someone would pick up at an exhibition," says McGovern. Remember: if someone is on your site, they're inside your virtual store already and don't need a constant reminder of who you are and what you do.
The fix: Clean up your site's language to peel out self-congratulatory phrases and replace them with concise, useful information about your company's products, services and policies. If you've uploaded content directly from a loquacious paper brochure, go through it and edit out the fluff.
Blunder #4: Forcing visitors to register Many sites require visitors to fill out registration forms — complete with their name, phone number and e-mail address, as well as more detailed information about the reason for their visit and their company — before deigning to grant them access to pricing, product photos and detailed company information. "It's a very pushy marketing tactic that doesn't work," says Loranger. "People are really turned off." Yes, your sales staff may want that contact information for leads, but it's more likely that you'll lose the lead altogether.
The fix: Open up your site, but leave opportunities for serious visitors to contact you or supply contact information as they move through the site. If you do want visitors to register, Loranger suggests that you ask them to do so in exchange for something valuable, such as access to a white paper on how to save money using products in your category.
Blunder #5: Failing to speak the customer's language. "It's not just B2B sites, it's everywhere," says McGovern. "Websites are organization-centric, not customer-centric." For instance, your site may alienate visitors by organizing information based on what you call it, instead of what your potential customers do, or by leaving essential questions unanswered, such as "What does it do?" or "How long will it take?" McGovern says the source of this problem is that Webheads rarely hear about what customers want because they don't deal with them directly and sales staff often hoard customer information.
The fix: Put your website under the microscope. You could hire a Web-usability consultant to conduct a usability test with a group of people. Another option is simply to have a consultant spend half a day doing an expert review of your site, comparing it with best practices. Or, for next to nothing, you could get anyone from a staffer who is not involved in your site to your 10-year-old niece to sit down and try a few tasks. Watch what they do and ask them how the experience was. Use your results to spruce up your site's language, as well as the navigation and content.