B2B Tech Marketer’s Guide to Website Design

1. You need 4 skills2. Read this book3. Decide what your website is for4. Know your audience5. Site structure6. Page layout7. Build for search8. Convert your visitors9. Analytics10. Principles

Contents

1. You need 4 skills

Marketing

Online Marketing

Design

Build

1. You need 4 skills

• How to communicate your value proposition.

• How to promote your products and services successfully to your target customers.

• How to differentiate from competitors.

• How ensure your target customers find you online.

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

• Online advertising / paid search.

• Social Media.

• Conversion and Lead capture.

• How to build the website.

• Database and content management system (CMS) – Wordpress / Joomla / Drupal …

• Support video, social media

• Lead capture from landing pages.

• Online sales / eCommerce

• How to make your site attractive, useful and usable for target customers.

• Structure and layout of pages.

• Colours and fonts.

• Use of graphics.

2. Read this book

•Explains how to make sites more usable.•Helps you avoid basic errors.•Main message - when we look at a web page it should be obvious, self-evident. Don’t use text, graphics or layouts that cause unnecessary delays or confusion.

•If you follow Steve Krug’s advice you have a better chance of steering visitors to what you want them to do and see.

3. What is your website for?

Answer: •To generate sales leads •To generate sales

Source: DemandBase and Focus.com 2011 Survey of B2B IT and marketing professionals

3. What is your website for?

• The purpose of your website is to (a) generate sales leads and (b) help you sell products and services.

• Focus your website on bringing in new prospects – people who don’t know your business yet.

• This means describing what you do clearly and compellingly.• Balance your goals (sales) and the visitors’ goals (information, service,

support).• Make it easy for visitors to find information quickly.• Design your website to encourage those prospects to take an action –

register for something, buy something, download something …• ‘Convert’ those visitors – registration or sale.

4. Know your audience

• Understand your target audience – who are you trying to attract online?• Do all potential customers come from the same sector, or different industries? • If a visitor from one of those industries comes to your website, how will they

recognize you are targeting them?• Do the people you target all have the same kind of role, or do you sell to multiple

buyers? • Use “design personas” to model each of these buyers. Usually a maximum of 3 or 4.• For each persona, ask what goals they will have when arriving on your site – to find

information, download a report, ask for help, read a case study, watch a product demo …

4. Know your audience

• Create “Design Personas” for your top 3 target customers• They are “archetypes” representing 80% of your target visitors• Use them as way to describe and understand those customers

OscarRole: Sales managerOrganization: SMEAge: 45Goals: have easy access to prospect information 24/7; get better quality leads; better pipeline

NoraRole: Marketing managerOrganization: multi-nationalAge: 32Goals: manage multiple channels; drive awareness of the company; produce more and better quality leads.

LiamRole: IT managerOrganization: SMEAge: 31Goals: reliability and availability; simplified architecture; security; cloud-based infrastructure

5. Site structure

• Design your new site structure like an “org chart”• Use your “personas” as a guide – what goals do they have when they get to

your site? What information do they need?• Keep the number of levels in your org chart to a minimum, ideally 3 or 4• If you have an existing site, map from old pages to new to ensure you are

keeping everything that is essential.

About usProduct Services

Home

Contact

5. Site structure

87%Description of service/products

Which Industries You Serve

Success stories / case studies

Professional website design and presentation

About us / biographies

Client list

Online resources/content (white papers etc.)

News items

Podcasts or audio content

Top 10 Website Elements – rated “Important/Extremely Important

87%

Video or online presentations

78%

73%

69%

64%

64%

60%

57%

47%

40%

Source: “How clients buy 2009 Benchmark Report”, RainToday

6. Page layout

Develop ‘wireframe’ designs for home page and internal pagesUse the ‘personas’ to guide the wireframes – base them on the personas goals

(e.g. find information) and your objectives (e.g. get visitor to register for download)

Drive your visitors to take an action – the “Most Wanted Action” – on each pageProvide downloads and prominent ‘buy now’ offersMake good use of page structure, text to explain what you doMake most of the page ‘clickable’ to lead visitors to further actions /

information.

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6. Page layout

• Have plenty of “bait” on your site • If you are business to business (B2B)– offer documents, videos, presentations, content that

people will want to download • Ask for their email address in exchange for the download• If you are business to consumer (B2C) – promote special offers, “buy now”

6. Page layout

• Make as much of each page “clickable” as you can – especially all graphics.• Use photographs of real people instead of stock photography where possible.• Be careful about using very large graphics – heatmaps indicate visitor’s eyes

tend to skip past and around them.

Source: MarketingSherpa B2B Website Homepage Design Research Study 2008

6. Page layout

“Outside In” – make sure your website and your page layouts reflect your target customers. Will they quickly recognize you are targeting them?

Is your Value Proposition clear on each page? Is it easy to find information – clear menus and links, search option? Are there “Calls to Action” – CTAs – on each page? Trust – do you make it clear you are trustworthy e.g. through customer and

partner logos, quality marks, security certifications? Evidence – do you provide proof that you can do what you say you do? Have you designed for Search – clear page structure, clear readable URLs, page

tags, headers? Have you designed for Mobile – responsive design? Have you designed for Social –links to social accounts, share options?

Checklist

7. Build for search

Most people (64%) click on the first 3 results on Google page 1•42% to the first result•12% to the second•9% to the third

Less than 10% click on pages beyond page 1

Source: SEOBook and SEOMoz

• 85% of business buyers find what they want via search engines• When people search, they usually don’t go past page 1 of the

search results

7. Build for search

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Paid Search are your tools to ensure you are found Decide which search terms you want to get found for, based on current search patterns

from Google keyword tool – keyword analysis and selection Configure pages so they target those selected keywords – the URL, page description, page

title tag, header tags and any graphics Create content – blog posts, graphics, video, text, documents – that targets those keywords Ask other sites to link to your site Link your website to your social media accounts, encourage sharing, follows / likes / +1s ...

8. Convert your visitors

You convert visitors by bringing them to Landing Pages – specially designed pages with a clear call to action and a corresponding registration or download form

Rule #1: Avoid unnecessary distractions – push visitor to your “Most Wanted Action” Be consistent with the ad or email that brought your visitor here, including keywords,

logos and other images Spell out your Value Proposition and the benefits of this particular offer and have a

clear call to action Remove any unnecessary navigation Try to keep registration fields to a minimum e.g. Name and email “A/B” test 2 versions of landing page to see which works best Use Google Analytics to monitor conversions

9. Analytics

Set up Google Analytics on your website so you can monitor traffic. Set some goals for the website e.g. Overall traffic, traffic from particular regions,

ranking for search terms, lead generation goals. You can use Google Analytics to monitor conversions across your website e.g.

graphically track downloads and landing page registrations over time. Can link this through to Google Pay-per-click campaigns i.e. monitor which ads and

keywords generate the most landing page registrations. There are additional tools like CrazyEgg , KissMetrics, Mouseflow and Clicktale to

monitor and analyze visitor behaviour on your website.

9. Principles

1. User-centric – think about your target customers and their needs.

2. Beautiful – a beautiful site doesn’t cost any more than an ugly one. Don’t tolerate ugliness. Make your site as attractive as possible.

3. Usability – make your website easy to use and navigate for your expected visitors. Use icons, words, menus and graphics that are natural to users.

4. Simplicity – make your website is as simple as possible.

5. Structure – structure your home page and internal pages in a meaningful way. Items that are related should be grouped together. Unrelated items should be separated or otherwise distinguished.

6. Measure – setup Google Analytics on the site, monitor performance.

9. Principles

7. Consistency – consistency in the appearance and behaviour of the website makes it easier to use.

8. Conventions – conventions (such as placing the logo on the top left) help reduce the effort for visitors. Stick with them where possible.

9. Conversion – Remember what your website is for – generating leads and sales. Make calls-to-action noticeable, clickable. Don’t use the word “submit” – try ‘Download’ or ‘Register’ or ‘Get your white paper now’

10. Test – test your website with real people (not your staff) – watch them as they use (or try to use) your site to achieve some goals.

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About Motarme

Motarme is an easy-to-use enterprise Marketing Automation system. Motarme is specifically designed to help business-to-business (B2B) companies in the technology, software and industrial sectors generate sales leads online. In addition to our web-based Marketing Automation product we provide consulting, web marketing and lead generation services. Our customers include Siemens, Mergon Group, SF Engineering and mid-size and early stage technology companies.

Web: www.Motarme.com.

Clients

“ We have seen for ourselves how a solid strategy has helped to drive traffic to our

site and generate sales leads.”Caolan BushellBusiness Development ManagerMergon Group

Barry RooneyChief Operations OfficerSiemens ITSS

“The system delivered real, measurable results in a short

timeframe – sales and contacts from our target audience at Tier 1

companies.”

Joe LynchGeneral ManagerIMEC Technologies

“Generating leads online is now a central part of our sales strategy.”

About Motarme

Thank You

Automated Marketing That Drives Sales

michael.white@motarme.com

@michaelgwhite

www.motarme.com