Think back to your trick-or-treating days as a doe-eyed youngster. Remember those houses that only had a faint porch light on? No decorations in the yard or even a hint of Halloween to speak of – they always made you pause and question whether you should walk up to the door and knock. In fact, most kids probably skipped that house and went to the next one.
Unfortunately, that’s precisely what happens when a customer browses to an incomplete, ill-designed, or just straight-up sketchy homepage, the digital front door to nearly every company these days. And who suffers most in that scenario, aside from the potential customers themselves? That’s right, your sales team. So on that note, let’s take a look at a few ways you can make your website as sales-friendly as possible.
1. Involve Your Sales Team Into Your Web Design
First of all, you have to remember that your web dev folks aren’t necessarily well-attuned to your sales team’s specific needs. And vice-versa. There might be some slight crossover between the Venn diagrams for their roles, but not a ton.
Therefore, it’s essential to include sales early and often. After all, they’re the ones on the revenue frontlines, speaking with your customers, and absorbing any pain points they might voice about the customer journey across your digital footprint.
For example, a potential B2B customer might love your product but finds your landing pages chaotic and confusing. There’s an excellent chance that your sales team already knows about the issue, but your web dev team will only find out if there’s some degree of communication and synergy with sales. The same goes for several other design elements and factors that, not coincidentally, I’m about to discuss.
2. Responsive Design Drives UX
Over half of your B2B audience uses mobile devices to browse the internet. Research says that number grows to 75% by 2025. Obviously, those stats scream the importance of responsive design and broad usability that welcome both desktop and mobile users with open arms.
But there’s both an art and science to responsive design. It’s not just a matter of tweaking your website’s design to look respectable on different devices. Ideally, you want your design to dynamically adapt to the environment, which, as you might guess, requires a significant level of expertise to pull off successfully. But that’s what specialists are for, right?
3. Bold and Beautiful CTAs
Too many designs take the call-to-action button for granted, assuming the user innately knows what to click to download an ebook, sign-up for a mailing list, or contact a sales team. But as we’ve seen over the years here at Creative Cave, simply assuming your conversion paths are clear as day is a sure-fire way to create traffic cul-de-sacs across your website.
To avoid such catastrophes, your CTAs need to stand out, making it completely obvious where the customers need to click to proceed along the merry ol’ funnel. In that sense, think of your CTAs as road signs along the highway, instructing users how to proceed and arrive at their desired destination, whether that’s a content offer landing page, a contact form, a blog with key information, a product description, or anything else.
Simply put, don’t let your customers get lost on your digital highway. Use bold colors and fonts in your CTAs and make sure the user knows exactly what happens if they click on them. Both your customers and sales team will thank you.
4. Speaking of Conversion Paths
Since I already brought them up, clear and wide-open conversion paths aren’t just about CTAs. You also need to build-out content that progresses users along the funnel. Keep in mind that, as we’ve said before, content that targets folks higher in the funnel probably isn’t going to increase conversions in and of itself, so you need to create content for each stage of the buyer’s journey.
For eCommerce sites, it’s critical that you establish a navigation pathway that’s convenient for buyers to find what they need quickly and efficiently. Likewise, you want to organize your site by categories, subcategories, and keywords that make it easy-peasy for users to navigate to the exact products on their mind.
Putting it all together, a web of links between your social media, blogs and other website content, specific webpages, and product or service pages will provide seamless, well-delineated routes for customers to follow that are intuitive and convenient. You don’t want any roadblocks along your paths that will inhibit eCommerce sales or stop a customer from contacting your sales team.
5. It’s All About the Visuals
With the possible exception of this wise blog you happen to be reading right now, massive blocks of text aren’t necessarily great for sales. Actually, to put a finer point on it, large swaths of text in your web copy might help for SEO but can intimidate or even overwhelm a user if not used properly.
But communicating with your target audience isn’t just about written – or typed – text. A picture is worth a thousand words, right? Well, take that old chestnut to heart and convey as much information as you can by visual means. Photographs, video content, snazzy graphics, or other visual elements can break-up monotonous text and, just as importantly, engage the user at a deeper level.
I have a caveat on the visuals, though – do them right or don’t do them at all. Visual content isn’t the place to cut corners by using low-res graphics with poor design and a generally unprofessional feel.
Further, try to avoid using stock photos that are already strewn across the interwebs, especially on a competitor’s website. Be original and bold with graphics and video, making sure you devote the necessary time and resources for your visual elements to be an asset, not a detriment.
6. Think Ahead
Lastly, it’s important to remember that what might suit your organization and sales team today could very well be outdated in just a year or two. But then again, you’re not exactly sure what those future needs will be – assuming you aren’t clairvoyant or have a crystal ball handy.
Thus, going back to a topic we’ve discussed in the past, adhering to a growth-driven design concept gives you the best of both worlds – the tools you need to maximize sales today while providing the flexibility to efficiently adapt toward future needs.
I won’t rehash growth-driven design here, but I encourage you to look at that previous blog to better understand the many benefits it can provide to you and your sales team. And, as always, if all of this seems just a bit too much to handle in-house, your web dev, design, and sales experts here at Creative Cave are ready, willing, and able to roll-up our sleeves and help you launch your conversion rates into orbit.
