The web has radically changed the process of buying and selling.  Demand Gen’s 2016 B2B Buyer’s Survey Report reports that 62% of B2B buyers say that a web search was one of the first three resources they use to learn about a solution. In fact, 94% of buyers reported using online research at some point in the purchasing process.

This means your website is the most powerful marketing and sales tool you can use to attract new leads to your business.  Is it up to the challenge?

Here are a few reasons that it might be time to take your website to a new level…

Reason 1 – You have started to think that, “It might be time to update our website”

Intuitively you already know.  Your website looks outdated.  It doesn’t accurately reflect your brand.  It is difficult to update and has incorrect information on many pages.

As more and more of your prospects turn to the web to research potential vendors, you need to be more conscious of your digital presence.  You need to actively manage your website and digital content to accommodate the ways that buyers conduct research and identify potential vendors and partners.

Now is the time to take advantage of the opportunity.

 

Reason 2 – Your site is not mobile ready

Take a minute and look up your website on your smart phone.  How did it look?

Mobile searches surpassed desktop searches back in 2015.  If you have Google Analytics installed on your website, you can see what percentage of users accessed your site from a mobile device vs a desktop computer.  You may be shocked to see how many of your visitors are searching on their smart phones.

This trend is sure to continue and you need to make sure that the mobile experience of your website is a good one.

Reason 3 – Your website is not attracting enough of the right kinds of visitors

You may be currently unimpressed with your websites performance and unwilling to invest more resources into redesigning your website.  However, once you dig into the reasons why your site is not performing, it may reveal how a different approach to organizing your content may be the key to better performance.

Many websites were designed around the sales process instead of the buying process.  Changing the focus to match how your potential customer moves through the buying process is proven to generate better results.

Google provides many tools that allow you to discover how buyers are using search to find companies like yours (and your competitors!)  Using this information to inform how to redesign your website will ensure that your customers find the answers they need as they move from awareness to consideration to making a purchase.

Reason 4 – Your website does not incorporate any calls to action beyond “Contact Us”

Calls to action are critical for interacting with your visitors.  Calls to action are digital clues that a prospect provides to let you know where they are in the buying process.

In the Awareness phase, a prospect is looking to solve a problem and is looking for information.  Your opportunity here is to provide educational content that will help define the problem and point your prospects toward possible solutions.  Here is where you can offer whitepapers, ebooks, or checklists.  You can provide downloads to these resources or “gate” the content by requiring a prospect to enter an email to access the content.

In the Evaluation or Consideration phase, your prospects are aware they have a problem or an opportunity and they are trying to discover the best solution.  You have an opportunity to convince them your product or service offers the best solution.  You can offer access to webinars, case studies, FAQ’s, and demo videos.

In the Purchase phase, your prospects are looking to decide on a solution.  Here you can offer free trials, demos, free consultations, coupons, etc. that are designed to nudge these prospects towards deciding on a solution.  Your website can automatically notify a sales team member of these types of inquiries and ensure that they have an opportunity to close a sale when the buyer is more likely to be ready to speak with a salesperson.

Reason 5 – Advances in technology have made it easier than ever to design a website

Chances are that the last time you invested in your website it required a lot more development time and expertise than is required now.  Web Design has moved towards a much smaller set of development tools and platforms that come with a variety of templates which are very easy to customize.

Most of today’s required features such as mobile responsiveness, and advanced SEO tools come standard with these platforms.

As always, your marketing strategy needs to be clearly defined.  The design of your website should focus on your customer and guide them along their buying journey.

If you are concerned that your current website doesn’t accurately represent the value of your brand or is not as customer focused as you would like, it is probably time to explore your options.

If you would like to talk to Clarity about your website or any other marketing related questions, you can email jward@clarityinc.com or click here to request a Free Marketing Assessment.