Is your website a revenue driver? Or is it a glorified business card?  Most companies start with a business card website to show they are legitimate.  A business card website has the basics about your business, like your name, location, phone number, and basic business information. Still, this type of website won’t drive your business forward in the long run. Think of your website as the most critical marketing asset you own. You don’t own many of your other marketing assets the way you own your website. If you think about it, you rent space on LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social media. So what are some of the biggest mistakes that B2B businesses make on their website? Here are my top five.

No Statement Next to Your Logo To Explain What You Do

If you are Delta Air Lines or Coca-Cola, you don’t need to put a statement next to your logo that says you fly planes and make soda.  These are national brands.  If you are a small to medium-sized business like HB NEXT (one of my clients), it might help your website visitors to understand “what” you do and “how” you can help them. Jump on the HB NEXT website and see what I mean. Next to their logo, you’ll see a statement telling visitors they can help with Next Generation Safety and Environmental Compliance and offer Software, Consulting, and Managed Services. Statements like this add context to your website.  They tell your visitors how you can help solve their problem, and when you include the information next to the logo in the header, it appears on every page of your website. This placement is important because visitors can understand what you do no matter where they land first on your website. One of the first questions people ask when they visit a website is, “Am I in the right place?” Descriptive statements like the one used on the HB NEXT website help to answer that question and tell visitors they are in the right place so they don’t quickly jump to another website.

No Trust Factors To Help Visitors Feel Better About Working With Your Company

What’s a trust factor, you ask?  Simple visuals and information help a website visitor feel better about working with you. One of the best trust factors on the planet is having your phone number in the upper right-hand corner of your website because it’s a way to show a website visitor that you are legit and they can reach out and touch you when needed. Other trust factors are logos of existing clients, testimonials, ratings and reviews, statistics that add context to the breadth and depth of your services, or statements about how long you have been in business. For example, on the HB NEXT safety page, they use a statement that says they have helped protect over 1M employees for over 5,000 clients since 1999. This type of statement builds credibility and helps a first-time web visitor feel better about working with HB NEXT as a partner on compliance issues and challenges. Does your website have sufficient trust factors?

A Rotating Slider or Video at the Top of Your Home Page That Distracts

What is a rotating slider, you ask? Have you ever been on the home page of a website, and the primary visual is a rotating slide show? If so, then you’ve seen rotating sliders. This website introduction feature is popular, but is it effective? The answer today is no. Motion can distract people from completing the task they originally came to your website to finish. This holds for both videos and sliders on a website. Research from Conversion Rate Optimization agencies shows that this can decrease your conversion of website visitors to website leads by 10-15%. That means fewer people calling you and filling out your website form. It’s much better today to have a static image and clear message that explains to prospects and customers how you will help them save money, make money, save time, etc. Don’t fall into the trap of putting a rotating ad at the top of your website to distract your audience. Keep it simple and be straightforward about how you will help them survive and thrive. Does your website have a strong message and a static image?

No Clear Calls to Action To Help Visitors Navigate

One of the first three questions visitors will ask when they visit your website is, “What do I do here?” Another way of asking that question is, “Where should I go?” To answer this question, you must provide simple informational trailheads for your visitors. These trailheads can be displayed to your website visitors using images and colors. Unfortunately, when someone visits your website, you don’t know what else has happened in their day to distract them mentally, so you must make your website easy to navigate. Having pictures, icons, and colors to help guide the way is a best practice to get your visitors deeper into your website to research your products and services. Look at how the HB NEXT website uses icons and colors to guide visitors to the destination of their choice. They have four main trailheads for people to follow on their home page for Safety, DOT/Fleet, Environmental, and Training Solutions. 

Listing All Services on One Web Page Labeled Services

If you have a business card website, you might list all your products and services on one page. That’s ok when you are just starting, but as your business grows and scales, you should consider adding specific pages for your products and services. There are several reasons for this. 

1. It provides information trailheads for people to follow.
2. It helps you rank your products and services in search engines. You are much more likely to rank for a service if you have a dedicated page on your website that talks about the service.
3. If you have one page labeled services, Google will think that your page is all about services, but unfortunately, your target audience is not plugging in “services” into Google to find you. They are searching for a specific service, and your site won’t be served up as an option if your web page is titled “Services.”

Summary

As you can now see, there are many things to consider when building a website. We recommend you set your site up to use best practices like this BEFORE paying a marketing agency a lot of monthly money to drive traffic to your website. If you don’t have a solid website, you are likely spending money to drive your visitors and leads off a cliff and into nowhere. Are you thinking of making some marketing changes in Q4 of 2023 to set you up for success in 2024? If so, let us provide you with a complimentary assessment of your website by visiting this web page.  We’ll give you some design tips and look at how you compare to three competitors in search engines. Thanks for reading, and best of luck on your marketing journey. 

About the Author

Todd McCarty, WSI, has over 25 years of experience in Marketing and has worked for some of Atlanta’s leading companies in marketing leadership roles.