90% of our clients come to us with the same problems: firstly, they need to grow their lead pipeline and, secondly, help the sales team close more deals from the leads they give them.
The trouble is, very few B2B websites have been set up for either of those things to start with. And trying to change them now is like shifting the Titanic after the iceberg has appeared through the fog.
That’s because websites weren’t originally built for conversions.
In the early 1990s, when the web first went mainstream, websites were created by techies eager to learn the new technologies involved. They weren’t interested in how things looked and certainly not in selling anything.
In 2000, businesses were obsessed with hitting the top spot on their keywords (or any other keywords that might get them traffic, however irrelevant). Unfortunately, the then-primitive search engines rewarded sites stuffed with keywords and pages full of reciprocal links, which made for a poor experience once again.
In 2009, with search engines getting smarter and users getting more used to the technology, websites started to be built for companies. The corporate machines and their brand teams demanded more. Unfortunately, none of them really thought about UX. It was all functional, yet complex, CMS systems governing corporate sites became boring and stuffed with content that was not helpful for the user, wrapped up in a rigid functionality that was not helpful for marketers.
Many B2B companies are still here today.
In 2020 the focus switched to mobile. Mobile first, mobile everything - even though 67% of all conversions across the web still happen on a desktop/ laptop. That number rises to 82% in B2B.
During all this time, B2B marketing departments rarely had much independent control of the website. Everyone from the board, to the IT department, to the product managers wanted their say and marketing was left to try and make sense of all the demands.
In B2C, that is no longer the case. Our B2C counterparts test variations of everything and let the data guide them. Does the CMO want the new brand strapline on the homepage? Let’s test it and see if it works. Does the product manager want his stuff front and center? Let’s test that.
And it works. Decisions become driven by the data of how your users are behaving and not just the opinion of who shouts loudest. Board members are bright people. They quickly learn to follow the version that creates the most leads and revenue, even if they personally wanted something different.
B2C companies have also found that this has an extra benefit. Because marketing has this ownership, they are also given the budget to invest in the skills and technology – from the right CMS to A/B testing platforms to personalization tools to make changes and test things quickly. Not having to go through a huge drawn-out process with the dev team to get stuff done allows for rapid testing, which delivers faster growth.
In B2B, many businesses create a whole new site and then do nothing with it for years except add regular new content to “keep it fresh”. Then, after a few years have passed, they do another complete overhaul (which takes 6 months and a huge budget) before the cycle starts again.
Often the changes are made when a new leader comes in and are not based on any insight and are certainly not tested (other than, perhaps, with a few grudging staff members from different departments).
But that’s not how the top websites win. The best B2C companies know that they should focus on their customers and prospects and design websites around what those customers and prospects want to see.
Amazon is a great example. Their site is not pretty, and it now has so many products that finding what you want is not simple. But the experience of buying is so easy, especially for Prime members, that it now accounts for nearly 50% of all Christmas shopping transactions in the USA or UK.
Dell, Salesforce, Netflix and Facebook continue to prove a simple point: customer-centric websites win. They dominate their marketplace by giving their users what they want and drive out the competition, who have been established much longer and should have been able to fend off the threat. Except they kept on guessing what their customers wanted, and the new kids let the customers decide through A/B testing.
All of those winning websites are built around their users. Every change, every idea, every piece of copy is based on some insight from the data they collect and then tested. If it works, it stays. When was the last time you saw any of those sites have a big redesign? They constantly get tweaked and evolve, but they never completely change.
And their customers love them for it.
Data and insights.
All websites are swimming in data and B2C companies are learning how to use this better and better every day. In B2B, we don't use the tools at our disposal enough. For example, GA becomes a reporting tool for goals, not the rich quantitative resource that can unearth bottlenecks (that B2C teams use it for).
There are two types of data: Quantitative and Qualitative. And you need to use both of them if you are going to perform meaningful tests and make big improvements.
Quantitative: This is your number crunching. It is, at the very least, properly using GA to pinpoint where the problems in your website sit. Where do your customer journeys fall down? Which pages are showing a too-high bounce/ exit rate and so on? You should also use a heat mapping solution like Hotjar to see where your users are clicking and how far they are scrolling down your page (there’s a free version so there really isn’t any excuse here).
Qualitative: This is your detailed user research. If Quant shows you where there are problems on your site, properly done Qual will tell you how to fix them. Customer surveys, user testing, focus groups and so on – anything that gives you real, honest feedback from the type of people that your site is aimed at.
This is probably the biggest piece of advice I can give you: DO NOT skimp on this stage and think you can get away with not doing Qualitative research. If you do, your optimization efforts are very likely to fail.
In B2C, the really savvy companies actually take this even further. They understand that improvements only come from data- and research-driven experimentation. Plus, they recognize that anyone in the business can get involved and have a valid hypothesis. In a broad organization, it would be naïve to think that marketing is the only team with any useful data that could drive innovative ideas.
So they establish a culture of experimentation throughout the organization. At Netflix or Booking.com anyone can submit A/B tests and they get added to the timetable. That’s how they conduct upwards of 500 A/B tests every month. In B2B, we don’t understand that kind of revolution, it’s just too scary to contemplate. But if we do what we have always done, we will keep on getting back what we always got from it.
In B2B we need to learn to be less afraid of failure. In B2C they are comfortable with the fact that everything they try won't work – because the wins and learnings from failures are much more valuable. A win can be made permanent and a loss can be switched off after just a few weeks.
In B2B, marketers are too often afraid to test things in case it has a negative impact, but this means they are also missing out on all the wins and the innovation.
Remember this is a marathon, not a sprint.
Just because you have collected and analyzed all your data, it does not mean that the first value proposition you create for your newly laser-focused landing page is going to be the best it can possibly be.
You run an A/B test to validate your thinking and analyze the data that it generates. You will find new insights that suggest iterations and alternatives that also need A/B testing and finally, after a number of tests, you will find the winning formula.
That’s why CRO is the single most powerful weapon in your arsenal. It blends data-driven decision-making with human understanding in a proven framework that will boost the performance of every step in your sales and marketing funnels by structuring everything in the way that your prospects want to buy.
And that is a crucial point that lies at the heart of all CRO:
This may sound like a pedantic play on words but think about it for a second. Can you honestly say that your website helps people buy in the way that is best for them? Or does it force users down your sales funnel?
And no person likes being sold to. But they LOVE to buy from companies that make it easy for them.