The primary goal of most B2B websites is to create business opportunities by educating buyers and attracting them into your sales pipeline with content. The inbound marketing process attracts potential buyers to your websites with educational content, converts visitors into leads with premium content offers and nurtures the leads until they're ready to be passed to sales professionals to close them.
Research shows that B2B buyers conduct purchase research with search engine queries and website visits. So it's clear that your website plays a critical role in the success of your sales and marketing function. But just what do you need to do to optimize your website for lead generation?
Choose the right platform for lead generation
The inbound marketing process is based on the concept of optimization through experimentation. Because you can measure everything you do with inbound marketing, you will constantly be trying new tactics to optimize your process for lead generation.
From a website standpoint, this means that you will constantly be updating content, measuring what works and what doesn't. The platform you use to build your website needs to support an environment of experimentation. Going to a website developer every time you want to make minor adjustments to your site doesn't support the experimentation necessary to succeed in inbound marketing.
So the platform you choose for your lead generation website needs to allow for your team to update content while maintaining professional branding standards - without requiring your team to be able to code.
We recommend that most of our customers use either HubSpot or WordPress for their website platform. Both platforms allow us to build high-quality websites while allowing our customers to update content with drag and drop editing features. Both sites easily incorporate the necessary lead generation features for inbound marketing.
Create a professional website that incorporates user experience
Your website is the 21st century equivalent of a storefront window. If it's cluttered and unprofessional, potential buyers aren't going to walk through the front door.
That's why professional branding is so important. This is where you will want to hire a professional that can build an attractive framework for your website that's built with evolution in mind. Your website needs to support not just your inbound marketing efforts, but also support the outbound efforts of your sales team.
If one of your sales team meets a prospect at a networking event, your website should build upon the foundation of that face-to-face experience. An outdated website can nip that potential business relationship in the bud.
User experience should be a fundamental element of your website design. Your site design should make it easy for potential buyers to find what they want. It should also use design concepts like whitespace, contrast and choice theory to maximize lead generation. One of the biggest problems we see with websites is that they are far too complicated. Look at how Apple uses simplicity to focus attention on its products.
Pay attention to site performance
Most website visitors will bounce from your website if your page doesn't load within three seconds. It's important to monitor this and make sure you're not slowing down your website with unnecessary Javascript, page requests and overly large images.
Most of the things that slow websites down are easily fixed. But you can't fix them, if you don't know about them. If you'd like a custom report on your website performance, schedule a free review with us.
In addition to technical performance, you need to monitor your site's performance in terms of attracting traffic and moving it through your sales and marketing funnel. Regularly reviewing your marketing performance is the key to optimizing performance and generating revenue.
Your website is the foundation of your inbound marketing program. Just like a house built on an unstable foundation, an inbound marketing program built around a bad website will create problems. Take a look at your website and ask yourself, "Is this helping our hurting my lead generation?" The answer will dictate your next steps.
