HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR WEBSITE FOR BETTER LEAD GENERATION Four steps to auditing your site & planning improvements

Transcription

1 HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR WEBSITE FOR BETTER LEAD GENERATION Four steps to auditing your site & planning improvements A good website will do incredible things for business to business (B2B) companies. Over the last ten years websites have become the central marketing pillar for many B2B companies. Is yours doing everything it can to bolster your company s image, build awareness of your brand and generate leads? In short, is your website effective? This white paper is for business and marketing leaders of small and mid-sized B2B companies. It explains how to conduct a website audit that will help you plan changes to make your site more effective. 1

2 IMPROVING YOUR B2B WEBSITE TOO MANY COMPANIES SPEND THOUSANDS (AND TENS OF THOUSANDS) OF DOLLARS ON NEW WEBSITES WITHOUT IDENTIFYING THEIR GOALS AND HOW THEIR SITES WILL ACCOMPLISH THOSE GOALS. EFFECTIVE B2B WEBSITES A high-performance B2B website starts with knowing your business and marketing goals and evaluating how your site currently performs, so that you can evolve it to the marketing tool you want and need it to be. As buying behavior continues to evolve in the B2B world, an effective website isn t just beneficial it s essential. This white paper outlines the steps to auditing your B2B company s site so you can plan improvements that will enhance your image, increase awareness of your products and services, and most importantly generate leads. THE AUDIT AND PLAN PROCESS 1. Your front door: why and when to consider a website audit 2. What to include in your audit 3. Completing the audit 4. Planning improvements to your site 2

3 01 STEP 1: YOUR FRONT DOOR WHY SHOULD I AUDIT MY WEBSITE? An audit helps B2B companies clarify what is working well with their site, and how it can be improved. It gives critical guidance to the internal leader of any website redevelopment project and to the external parties (like website developers) in building sites that don t just look nice, but actually deliver results. Too many companies spend thousands (and tens of thousands) of dollars on new websites without identifying their goals and how their sites will accomplish those goals. WHEN SHOULD I AUDIT MY WEBSITE? There are three key times to review your site and plan changes: 1. During marketing planning 2. At the start of a website overhaul 3. After a new website launch The next page details how to know when it s time. They end up with sites that don t deliver meaningful results, despite large investments. 3

4 THREE KEY TIMES TO REVIEW YOUR SITE AND PLAN CHANGES YOUR SITE AND PLAN CHANGES 1. DURING MARKETING PLANNING It s a good time to look at your site s effectiveness when you sit down to establish or revisit your marketing plan for the upcoming year. Does your current site speak to your target market? Does it showcase your most compelling products and services Is it optimized for search engines? Does it help your company stand out from the crowd? Does it include calls to action that enable you to capture leads? If the answer to any of these questions is No, it s time to refresh your site. 2. AT THE START OF A WEBSITE OVERHAUL If you ve already decided to update or redesign your site, the first steps in the pro- cess are to identify your goals and audit your website performance. The audit will reveal the key areas that need attention and help you plan the redesign. 3. AFTER A NEW WEBSITE LAUNCH After you have launched a new site, review its performance: Is it meeting the goals you established? It is easy to update? Is it generating additional traffic and leads? If the answer to any of these is No, what additional modifications can be made? 4

5 02 STEP 2: WHAT S INCLUDED IN A B2B WEBSITE AUDIT? There are six areas to cover in a B2B site audit: SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION A site that ranks well on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing will deliver better marketing results. The process to get ranked well is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and is one of the most important considerations in a website audit.results, despite large investments. USABILITY A good B2B website is more than just visually appealing. It s easy for visitors to use. This means easy to navigate and easy to get to the information that they seek. If visitors have to click more than a few times to get the information they re looking for, they re likely to abandon the effort. BRAND ALIGNMENT Is your company s brand identity and message clear and consistent on your website? If a visitor looks at a few pages, what impression will they have of your organization? Your website should be consistent in look and message with your overall brand. LEAD GENERATION Engaging prospective customers is one of your site s most vital roles. Delivering valuable content and establishing an opportunity for ongoing discussion (through s, events or other interactions) is key for B2B websites. ONGOING MANAGEMENT Many companies make the mistake of building a beautiful site that isn t scalable or easy to update. Identify your short and long term goals to determine where you need a Content Management System (CMS) to ensure your site is easy for your staff (not your web development company) to update on a frequent basis this will help you get found online. SOCIAL MEDIA This is a growing area in B2B marketing. Your website should provide social sharing options like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Identify which social networks are a fit for your industry and make sure you re represented. We ll walk through a step-by-step process on the following pages to guide you through your audit. 5

6 IMPROVING YOUR B2B WEBSITE 1. BY THE NUMBERS 2. THE USER EXPERIENCE 3. THE LOOK 4. THE TECHNICAL COMPONENTS 5. CONTENT AND UPDATING 6. LEAD GENERATION 7. SOCIAL MEDIA AND ADVERTIS-ING REVIEW STEP 1: BY THE NUMBERS Start your audit by understanding how your website is viewed by the search engines like Google, and how you stack up compared to your competition. There are several 3rd party (and, in some cases, free) tools to help you do this. Review the reports from the following sources to see how your site performs on search, traffic, and more. Google Analytics ( This tool will tell you how many users you have each month, where they re coming from, how they found you and what search terms they used. You can also learn about how much time the average user spends on your site and how likely they are to surf away from your site depending on the page. AdWords Stats ( If your site uses Google Adwords, this is a simple way to see what people are searching for when they find your website as well as what they may be searching for when they leave your site. gshift ( This tool will help you optimize your web presences by seeing how your site ranks on major search engines, as well as how your competitors rank, along with keywords you should consider. Compete ( This tool will give you information on your own site traffic and that of your competitors. 6

7 STEP 1: BY THE NUMBERS You can also use the Hubspot Marketing Grader ( This tool will give you a quantitative evaluation of your site s effectiveness (on its own and compared with competitors) and grade it in three areas: Top of the Funnel how effective is your site at attracting prospects Middle of the Funnel how effective is your site at engaging users and converting them into leads Analytics how well is your site structured for evaluating its performance on an ongoing basis 7

8 03 STEP 3: STEP BY STEP GUIDE ON HOW TO COMPLETE A B2B WEBSITE AUDIT STEP 2: USER EXPERIENCE Understanding how search engines and other automated tools view your site is important, but it s just as important to make sure that it works well for real people especially the kind of people you want using it. The best way to understand user experience is to solicit input from a few of the users your site is targeting. Don t worry, you don t need to conduct dozens of usability tests (unless you re a bank). The point of this step is to get input from a handful of different types of users on their experience on your site. Who to Ask: Your corporate executive team Your company sales team or agents Your marketing team Your channel partners Your existing customers Your target market and prospects What to Ask: Depending on your specific goals you may want to ask questions like: What do you like or dislike about the site? Is the site easy to navigate? What impression do you get of the company what do you think they do and what makes them special? (For customers and prospects) Were you able to find what you were looking for? For executives and sales) What action do you want the user to take when they visit the site? (For marketing) How often do you need to update content on the site and how long does it take? 8

9 STEP 3: THE LOOK HOW DOES YOUR SITE LOOK? FIRST IMPRESSIONS DO MATTER THIS STEP WILL MAKE SURE YOU KEEP VISITORS ON YOUR SITE FOR MORE THAN A SINGLE CLICK. Here are a few things to consider in evaluating your site s design: Consistency Does your site have a similar look and feel on all pages with a consistent style or background? Ensure page layouts are similar throughout sections. You don t want users to have to orientate themselves for each new page. Brand Is your corporate identity and personality (brand) well represented? Are colours and styles consistent with other collateral you use? Differentiation For many users, your website is their first impression of your company. Are your position and points of difference clearly articulated? 9

10 STEP 4: TECHNICAL REVIEW There are many technical elements that go into a successful website. Many sites look great, but don t have the technical fundamentals that lead to marketing effectiveness. Here are a few of the technical issues to audit on your site: 301 Redirect To a search engine, yourdomain.ca and www. yourdomain.ca are not the same thing. Set up a permanent redirect (also known as a 301 redirect ) to get full credit for what s on the site, no matter how it is accessed. Redirects are also used when you delete a page or change the page URL to ensure any visitors who have bookmarked the old URL are taken to the new page. Alt Tags for All Images Images are invisible to search engines, and alt tags are needed to tell search engines what web pages are about. Effective alt tags will maximize the impact of your site s images for SEO purposes. NOTE: if you are embedding additional dynamic content like videos or audio, remember to tag wherever possible to improve your SEO. URLs, Page Titles and Page Descriptions URLs, page titles and page descriptions should be unique and customized to individual products and industries; and they should contain related keywords that will help you rank highly on search engine results pages (SERPs). Broken web links Test each and every link of your site (or use a tool like Hubspot s Marketing Grader to do it for you). Make sure links are tested on a regular basis if the destination source is external. Google punishes sites with broken links harshly. Metadata Ensure that your metadata accurately portrays your company, products and services. Metadata should be written in regular sentence format, not as a list of keywords, and be tailored to each page on your site. Optimizing individual pages (not your site at large) is what leads to SEO success. Meta keywords Unlike metadata, meta keywords are your opportunity to list the keywords you think your target market may search for to find your company and what it offers. Meta keywords should be included on every page and tailored to align with the contenton on the page. 10

11 STEP 5: CONTENT REVIEW AND CMS EVALUATION Your content must be compelling to keep users engaged and deliver the information they seek. It must also be fresh to attract search engines and help you get found online. Here are some considerations: Call To Action (CTA) Is your contact info and call to action (eg Register for a Free Evaluation, Buy Now) on appropriate pages of the website? Current Content Does your website have content that is frequently updated and current like News or Blog pages? Google favours sites that have dynamic and current content. The more competitive your market, the more dynamic and current your content needs to be. Downloadable Content Does your website feature any freebies for users? Downloadable content like case studies, newsletters and white papers engage users. This is a great way to convert users into leads. As you can tell from the suggestions above, updating your website frequently is critical to success. But relying on your web developer for each change can be slow and costly. A Content Management System allows your own staff to update your site without needing HTML or other coding skills. More on CMS on the next page. 11

12 STEP 5: CONTENT REVIEW AND CMS EVALUATIONt Your website should be supported by a content management system (CMS) that allows your staff to easily update those areas of your site that require fresh content regularly (e.g. Press releases and new product launches). A good CMS: Is scalable and dynamic has the ability to support additional users and new languages as needs arise. Has a place for Title Tags it should provide the option to add/edit the Title tag and also notify you in case the site has duplicate Title tags or if the Title tag is missing. Collects Metadata CMS should provide the option to add/edit the Meta Description and Keywords tags. Allows for Canonical Tags The CMS should be able to add Canonical URL tags on every page of the website. Generates XML Sitemap/RSS/Atom The CMS should be able to generate/create XML Sitemap automatically at root level and every time a page is created or deleted, the CMS should add or delete the page URL from the XML Sitemap. Creates Custom Error Pages like 401, 403, 404 and 500. Has Auto 301 functionality If a page is deleted from the website, the CMS should set a 301 Permanent Redirect to its respective parent level page. Should be able to follow your existing web URL structure product/category/product-name/ Includes other Basic Features like Heading Tags, ALT Tags, On-Page Sitemap (HTML Sitemap), External JavaScript and CSS files, and Social Sharing. Includes Breadcrumb capabilities Clean, user friendly way to increase effectiveness of Content Silo-ing through internal linking, and pass valuable keywords Has Admin Level Access for specific sections or files like Robots.txt,.HTACCESS and CSS Style. 12

13 STEP 6: LEAD GENERATION THE KEY IN THIS STEP IS TO UNDERSTAND HOW YOUR USERS INTERACT WITH YOUR SITE AND IF THEY ARE CONVERTING INTO LEADS. If your users have no reason to interact with you, they won t. Good B2B websites provide ways for prospects to engage. The most common options are: Contact Us button or info on every page. Downloadable content (can be articles, newsletters, case studies or white papers). These should be free but, when they provide particularly compelling content, make them gated ie, ask users for their contact information in return for giving access to the content. A call to action (might be a webinar, an upcoming show or a phone number). Invite users to sign up to an RSS feed, newsletter, contest or other communication via a sign up form. Make sure to take an inventory of all the assets you currently use on your site for generating leads. For example, what articles, white papers, videos and other marketing content do you have. Make sure to identify where the content sits and identify if the content is successful. You ll want to preserve links to the great content if there are a number of backlinks to your existing website. 13

14 03 STEP 3: STEP BY STEP GUIDE ON HOW TO COMPLETE A B2B WEBSITE AUDIT STEP 7: SOCIAL MEDIA REVIEW In this final step, review your social presence and your social sharing. Simply having a LinkedIn Business Page, a Twitter account or a Facebook Page is not enough to have a strong social presence. Social media is about deliveringrich engaging content and allowing your users to share it socially. Allowing users to rate your pages, share articles or blogs, or post links on their respective social pages will help grow your reach in an organic and uniquely un-commercial way. Which network is right for you? LinkedIn a professional network with a focus on recruiting and networking. The user groups in LinkedIn can be phenomenal tools for sharing information and news about your B2B company. Twitter an information network with a mix of personal and corporate accounts. YouTube a video network with a mix of social and corporate content. YouTube is the second highest rated site for traffic and provides great capacity to tag your content. Facebook offers business pages and is growing in B2B use. Slideshare a network that enables you to share presentations, documents, videos and webinars. Having engaging content is key to a strong social presence There are numerous additional existing and emerging social networks to explore like StumbleUpon, Flickr, Pinterest and Tumblr, each with a unique market and focus. 14

15 04 STEP 4: HOW TO PLAN IMPROVEMENTS TO YOUR WEBSITE BASED ON YOUR AUDIT You ve now completed a comprehensive evaluation of how your website currently performs, and have identified your goals for how you want it to perform. You have all the information you need to plan a powerful B2B website that will generate leads for your business. Make sure your new site incorporates the strengths of the old site, but adds new content that reflects your current products and services. Also make sure to add functionality for the new ways that B2B buyers are researching their options and engaging with potential suppliers. If you can t afford to build everything you want on your site all at once, don t worry. Plan for what will be added in the future, and ensure the site is built to easily (and with minimal cost) expand when you re ready. For most B2B companies, a website is a central pillar of all marketing activities and can represent a significant financial investment. Taking the time to audit how your site performs and identifying how you want it to perform will pay dividends in marketing ROI for years to come. It will also help you avoid the all too common frustration that B2B companies experience when they realize a few months after building a new site that it s not delivering what they hoped it would. 15

16 ABOUT THE MEZZANINE GROUP The Mezzanine Group is a Toronto-based Business to Business strategy and marketing company. For more than ten years, we ve helped executives in small and mid-sized companies, large enterprises and professional associations achieve growth through effective strategic plans and marketing implementation. We know growth - we were named one of the fastest growing companies in Canada for four years by PROFIT Magazine. Want more info? Sign up to receive regular updates at or for our blog RSS feed at 16