B2B Web Design

Best Practices for B2B Web Design

Design for Conversion

With our thorough understanding of the quintessential B2B customer and their unique buying habits, we understand that merely displaying a flashy interface and beautiful product shots (bolstered by catchphrases) simply does not work. B2B customers want to first vet the B2B service provider based on high-level information from a website to support the referral that leads them on the website in the first place. Ultimately, once they have a reasonable understanding of the product or service offering, they want to speak to another human. To satisfy this need in the buying process, we use elegantly designed, straightforward web forms.

Web forms, in general, can become a bit of a black hole. There is widespread fear or distaste for web forms because we’re asking people to provide us with their highly-valued personal information, and asking them to trust that we’ll keep it private and safe. Much of this concern is deeply rooted in internet privacy, which has become a worldwide epidemic. The web form design should reassure users that the company will not use their information market something the user is not interested in, or worse yet, sell their personal information to another party.

The key to creating successful B2B web forms that convert starts well before building the webform page design itself. A B2B web form supported both by professional web design, and explicit, concise web content will convert with a higher success rate than those that do not comply with these practices. When married together, the two elements work to build trust in the user ensuring that they’re more comfortable sharing their personal information with the B2B company.

A cardinal rule at our Toronto web design agency for designing web forms in a B2B website is to advise our clients to only ask for essential personal information that is mission-critical in the early stage of new customer relationships. Requesting too much personal information early on is likely to create a divide between the business and customer, ultimately eroding the trust we’ve worked hard to develop throughout the user experience design leading the user to the B2B form page.

With initial leads, it’s best to seek only the necessary personal information, such as a customer’s name, email, and phone number. It’s important to first connect personally with the lead and establish a conversation along with a personal level of trust. Only then can you begin to ask for supplementary information from the customer to build a more robust customer profile.

At this stage in the lead nurturing process, the goal is only to make contact with a qualified lead, and not push for an order or start filling up their inbox with marketing material they may not want or might find annoying.

Impress Your Target Audience

An assumption we hear all too often in relation to B2B web websites is that designers approach all web design projects in the same way. In terms of the fundamental website design process, this is generally true for any business. However, before embarking on any design project, it is crucial not only to understand the target audience we are designing the website for but how they interact and consume the content, products and messaging — understanding the target audience can mean the difference between success and failure for your company.

Traditionally, the focus has been on B2C website design (business-to-consumer) and how best to communicate with the customer. With the rise of B2B services online, this same approach was applied to B2B web design (business-to-business) for a long time without fully understanding the difference in how each type of user interacts with a website interface design and how the most successful way we can market products and services to them.

One of the fundamental differences between the best website design for B2B companies compared to B2C companies is that B2B website visitors are much less likely to make an impulse buy based on the web design examples alone. B2B businesses are inherently taking much more risk, investing more time and money, and relying on the products or services to perform like a well-oiled piece of their business’ marketing machine. B2B customers typically prefer to make contact with an actual person before they make this commitment as opposed to merely adding a product to the shopping cart and checking out.

For more than a decade our Toronto web design company has been fine-tuning best practices for B2B website design. To better understand these tools and how they’re applied within our web design process for B2B websites we’ve compiled the following list.

Best Practices for B2B Web Design

Design for Conversion

With our thorough understanding of the quintessential B2B customer and their unique buying habits, we understand that a flashy interface and beautiful product shots simply do not work on their own. B2B prospects want to first vet the company based on high-level information from the website to support the referral or paid advertising that leads them to the site in the first place. Ultimately, once consumers have a reasonable understanding of the product or service offering, they want to speak to another human to discuss their fit. To satisfy this need in the buying process, we use elegantly designed elements to encourage each visitor to complete the conversion process.

The compilation of a lead generation web form is the most common conversion point in B2B websites and in general, can become a bit of a black hole. There is widespread fear or distaste for web forms because we’re asking visitors to provide us with their highly valued personal information. We are asking consumers to trust that we’ll keep their private information and safe secure. Much of this concern is deeply rooted in internet privacy, which has become a worldwide epidemic. The web form design should reassure users that the company will not use their information to market something the user is not interested in, or worse yet, sell their personal information to another party.

The key to creating successful B2B web forms that convert is tied to more than the website design itself. A B2B web form supported both by professional web design and concise web content will convert with a higher success rate than those that do not comply with these practices. When married together, the two elements work to build trust in the visitor ensuring that they’re more comfortable sharing their personal information with the B2B business.

A cardinal rule at our Toronto web design agency for creating web forms in B2B web designs is to educated and advise our clients on these best practices and to only ask for essential personal information that is mission-critical in the early stage of new customer relationships. Requesting too much personal information early on is likely to create a divide between the business and prospective visitor, ultimately eroding the trust we’ve worked hard to develop throughout the user experience design leading the visitor to the point of conversion.

With initial leads, it’s best to seek only the necessary personal information, such as a customer’s name, email, or phone number. It’s important to connect personally with the lead and establish a conversation built on a personal level of trust. Only then should you begin to ask for supplementary information from the customer to build a more robust customer profile.

At this stage in the lead nurturing process on a B2B site, the goal is only to make contact with a qualified lead, and not push for a sale or start filling up their inbox with marketing material they may not want or might find annoying.

Web Form Design Design Tips

Some considerations can be made to improve your B2B web form design and improve conversion rates, such as:

• B2B form fields and functions should be as simple and as straightforward as possible. You’ve already got the user’s attention. You don’t need to wow them with frills and effects. Don’t interrupt the conversion process!
• Where possible, combine fields on the B2B form to make it as easy as possible for customers to fill them out.
• Adhere to common web form labels and conventions. If your web form is predictable and offers the user a quick and easy option to let their browser automatically fill out the form fields, you’re more likely to receive a higher quantity of form conversions.
• Instead of requiring users to enter information manually, offer an opportunity to select information from a list where applicable.
• Ensure a clean form design to allow users to scan and indicate which fields are required if any are not.
• Avoid complicated web form design. Instead, break it up into multiple, bite-sized steps or pages if necessary.
• Where possible, set up your web form design to pre-populate information from earlier in the courting process.
• Webform design needs to conform to current browser standards so that no matter what platform or device is used, everyone has the same user-friendly experience.
• Consider offering a free resource to offer people value before they click on the action button.

Many B2B website owners will make use of third-party customer relationship management (CRM) tools such as HubSpot or Salesforce, as the backend of their lead generation B2B web forms.

You are not in the game if your B2B web designer is not already well versed in implementing these common CRM API’s and applying your new custom B2B site design to their third-party web forms. Not only should your B2B website designer be skilled in implementing these solutions seamlessly, but they should also be able to offer you advice on best practices for setting up your B2B web forms with any number of services.

Responsive Website Design

Responsive website design is a must-have for a B2B site offering not only the best user experience to potential customers (who are often on the go) but also for building a professional and trustworthy brand image for your company.

The best B2B website design is able to render quickly and efficiently on a mobile device. Any B2B site that does not offer an optimized mobile experience, will render a poor impression and often lead to frustration in the potential lead. With web form conversion as the ultimate goal of B2B website designs, offering a better user experience than the competition should be the cornerstone of your B2B digital marketing strategy.

Beautifully Designed Calls-to-action

To drive B2B website leads to the form pages that connect qualified prospects to a salesperson, we need to ensure the website interface offers a large, clear call-to-action (CTA) on each product page.

After clicking on a call-to-action, there should be no mistaking what will happen next for visitors. If we leave the people feeling fooled or tricked into navigating to a part of the website they’re not interested in, we begin to lose the trust we’ve worked to earn through our lead nurturing initiatives. By offering a call-to-action that indicates what the next step will be, we can ensure that qualified leads are entering the sales funnel and people are willing to share their email address.

Optimized B2B Landing Page Design

It can be tricky to convince a website owner that their customers do not need to land on their homepage every time they visit the website. If your B2B company offers more than one product or service, a great way to create a faster, more direct path to the information that visitors are searching for is to create an optimized landing page design for each unique offering. When these pages are optimized for search, users can access the page with a single click.

HubSpot has performed market research on B2B website design and user experience concluding that 76% of customers feel the most critical factor in a website’s design is that it is easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for quickly.

Offering a direct path to the information our leads are seeking eliminates distractions, and we typically see an improved conversion rate from qualified B2B leads in no time at all.

Optimized B2B landing pages are also a fantastic way to broaden and boost the SEO performance of your website by casting a wider net in the areas of web search you market your company in.

Be Human

B2B customers, more than any other, seek the human element.

When creating a new B2B website design, ensure that the web content is written in a way that is distinctly human and avoid writing content with a focus on search engines. Use the same vocabulary your customer will be familiar with in normal conversation and begin courting them before the first phone call.

One other great way to include the human element in B2B web design is to include testimonials from previous customers and industry leaders and how your customer service helped solve specific pain points. This content feature will say a lot and help to build your professional image, personality, and trustworthiness. Testimonials play a key role in convincing B2B leads to ultimately complete the webform and set up the first sales call.

Please have a look at our many B2B web design examples in our portfolio to see how each of these hand-crafted websites delivers success for our clients.