Why Does Website Performance and Health Matter to B2B Businesses?
Imagine going into a store that is messy, outdated, and cluttered. The experience may make you feel confused, or even bored. A worst-case scenario is the store is dingy and makes you feel unsafe. You would not want to stay in that store for long.
The same is true for your website. Your website visitors want to explore freely. They want good vibes, updated decor, and to find what they are looking for in a way that not only makes them feel compelled to stay a while but makes them want to come back time and time again.
Why Do Businesses Treat Their Website Like an Expense Instead of an Asset?
Unless you have an advocate for your website within your company, it’s likely your website becomes forgotten after a while. Without an advocate or an agency to show you how your website drives revenue, the short-term, upfront cost of a website redesign or custom build can be a big ask.
The other reason websites aren’t updated regularly is because certain B2B industries, such as manufacturing, are still slow to adopt digital. Those who have been in business for a long time and own a good part of the market share are happy to maintain the status quo. So long as the competition follows suit, businesses aren’t inspired to innovate. If their website has worked for them, why change it?
So Why Should You Care About Your Website?
Consumer behavior is changing with or without you – and it’s not just for B2C businesses. Website visitors are perusing the internet 24/7/365. Anyone from anywhere has the opportunity to come across your business on the internet, and if you’re not grabbing their attention or helping them in some way during those first pivotal moments they land on your pages, they’re gone and potentially finding what they’re looking for on your competitors’ websites.
The digital ship has sailed for those in the B2C industry. If you don’t have an online presence, you don’t exist. Luckily for those in the B2B industry, there’s still time to pivot and improve your digital presence. As the saying goes, the early bird gets the worm. We’ve seen this with our own manufacturing clients who have been able to improve their website traffic by over 75% and increase their goal conversions by over 600%.
If these stats sound nice, let’s look at how exactly a healthy, high-performing website can improve your bottom line.
A Good Website is Your First Impression
First impressions are everything. Let’s remember that store analogy we talked about earlier. If your store is chaotic, confusing, or downright not visitable, they’ve lost your business. As a B2B business, you’re probably not concerned with having an enjoyable brick-and-mortar experience for your customers. This just means your digital presence should be an even bigger priority.
A Good Website is Free Marketing
You’re no stranger to the fact that if you want something to be seen nowadays, it’s a pay-to-play world out there. But the best part about a website is that you don’t can’t pay Google and other search engines to crawl and rank your website. The internet is free marketing. Take advantage of that organic search opportunity.
A Good Website Will Make Sure Your Marketing Budget Doesn’t Go to Waste
If you’re investing in paid advertising, social media, email marketing, blogging, or basically any other type of marketing effort with a bad website, you’re wasting your marketing budget. Your website is the foundation of your marketing efforts. If you have a bad foundation, it will trickle down to your marketing as well.
A Good Website Will Attract More Visitors
A healthy website will increase your search engine rankings and thus your organic search traffic. Once a website visitor has a positive experience on your website, they are then likely to return, especially if you continue to provide new content and resources they are interested in.
A Good Website Will Convert Visitors Into Leads
When we think of website performance, we may automatically think about the website’s UX/UI experience. While a user-friendly website will help mitigate things like bounce rates, a conversion-optimized website will help convert visitors into leads by strategically placing forms throughout the website, personalizing the nurture process based on visitor interest, visitor engagement, and individual page goals.
A Good Website Will Qualify Leads for You
Imagine being able to support your sales team time by weeding out unqualified leads from qualified leads before they even speak. With sales and marketing alignment, a good website can do this automatically saving your team time and allowing them to spend more time on leads likely to convert.
Bonus: A CRM and Marketing Platform integration will tell your sales team at the contact level which pages your leads have been on, giving your sales team a better idea of how to tailor conversations around their interests.
A Good Website Will Shorten Your Sales Cycle
B2B buyers are 57 – 70% through their buying research before contacting sales. This is the consumer behavior we warned you about. Our job is to facilitate this with a website that gives them the answers to the questions they’re looking for. If your website is doing its job, your sales team will find they are having more productive conversations sooner, which in turn will shorten your sales cycle.
Bottom Line: A good Website Will Help YOUR Bottom Line
More qualified leads going through a streamlined marketing-sales alignment process means more sales and revenue opportunities for your business. And it all starts with your website, which as we’ve said, is worth investing in every so often.