skip to Main Content

A better experience for your next website redesign.  

The average B2B company website is redesigned every 3 or 4 years. Which means for every 1,000 brands, 250 – 330 marketing departments will embark on a website redesign over the next 12 months.

Before you kick-off your next website redesign project, here are a few questions you’ll need answers too.

We’ve just spent the last several weeks helping a client with their new website and I thought it would be helpful to share some thoughts from this recent experience.

Sure. Redesigning a company or brand website is a big project. They’re very involved with many moving parts, but there are some things you should think about early on that can save you a lot of redo’s, time, and money. 

Let’s cover the bases.

You need a new website. Check.

Who will be involved? Will the site be built by Internal or external resources?
This decision can affect the launch date. Internal resources won’t add to the project cost, but they likely have other responsibilities that take precedence – potentially stretching out the due date by months.

Know your audience.
This will help ensure the messaging and site content is relevant to their needs.

What’s lacking in the current site?
Where does your current site miss the mark? How does adding additional capabilities and functionality help the user experience?

What functions and capabilities will the site have to deliver on?
What business challenges will your new site help solve? And how will it help you meet your marketing and sales objectives? 

What platform will accommodate the above?
Don’t go into the project with the idea that you need a WordPress, Drupal, or other type of website. Select the platform to meet your needs – and that includes ease of updates via the CMS.

Where will the new site be hosted? Who will be responsible for maintaining and updating the site?
Uptime, reliability, and security, should be high on your priority list.  

What sort of tracking will there be on the site?
Google Analytics is standard, but then so is the ability to include tracking for your automation platform.

Are you planning on adding links for your social channels?
Now’s a good time to review which social channels are working and which aren’t.

These are just a few of the questions you’ll need to consider. How you answer each of the above can impact  the wider organization. It may require a change of process which impacts staffing or reallocation of responsibilities. And how you handle each question, can affect other aspects of the site design.

Websites themselves don’t stand alone. 

Today, websites are asked to do a lot of the heavy lifting. They check the box on your credibility. That you’re a real company. They’re also the face of the company and they do a lot to tell your story. They help initiate the buyers journey and, done right, they can help fill the top of your funnel.

Every day, more and more sites include an eCommerce capability, but for B2B brands (and due to the sales cycle) capturing contact information and leads is often the higher priority. 

So, lead generation is a major goal of the new site. That brings up other questions that can impact your current process. 

Some companies use plugins like Gravity Forms on their site to capture contact information and provide a way for prospects to get additional information. Website forms are generally not designed to be email opt-in forms and these contacts shouldn’t be included in your marketing email communications — they didn’t opt-in, they asked a question.  Additionally, these kind of forms tend to capture contact details in isolation.

So what do you do with these new contacts and how responsive are you?
If you don’t have some form of integration for these forms with your CRM, it becomes a manual review, export, and import process… into another standalone system. And with customer response time being all important, if you don’t respond to new contacts quickly, they’re gone and likely lost forever. 

If you use a chatbot on your site – does it have the capability to capture contact information?
If it does, where does that information go and what do you do with it?

For the client we just helped, they built their new site in-house.

We consulted on the strategy and elements of the design, as well as the copy and messaging, but as subject matter experts they took the lead.

We worked as partners throughout the process, but our key contributions came from the perspective of the User Experience (UX). What was it like to be a site visitor? Ease of use? Does the content give me what I want and need now, while providing a path to learn more later. Or does it provide too much information? And what happens next – beyond the site visit?

If there’s one thing the client kept hearing from us throughout the process, it was … How? And Then what?

Websites are huge projects. Before you start on copy, imagery, and wondering how many pages it will be;

  • First, review the strategy. 
  • Wireframe the visitors journey. 
  • Decide (and get everyone’s buy-in) on the process for handling enquiries and/or fulfilling eCommerce sales. 
  • Determine how you’ll be complaint while you handle prospect contact information and which automation platform can help you with nurturing these contacts effectively and seamlessly – while reducing your manual workload. 
  • And, have a solid plan for how you’ll turn each contact into a qualified lead, post web visit – because a website can only do so much.

A website redesign can be a fun project and can do a lot to advance your brand and sales. They don’t have to be nightmares with delay after delay, or endless money pits. 

To get the most out of your website project, be sure to review, not just your business strategy and objectives, but also your internal processes. And remember, the website is just the first part of customers’ journey, there’s a lot of other marketing that’s required to turn a contact into a qualified lead. 

If your plans include a website redesign, let’s talk. We’re always happy to offer our perspective and advice — it may be just what you need to smooth out the process and reduce your overall project spend.

 

Build your brand with those that matter.

#B2B #websitedesign #webdesign #websiteredesign #leadgeneration #SMBbusiness #business