There’s no doubt that this is a very challenging economic environment because of the pandemic. However, there are many things that you can still do as a B2B business to improve the conversion rates on your website. Often it just comes down to getting the fundamentals right.
This infographic from an Award-winning SEO agency provides a helpful guide for B2B businesses on the key elements to focus on to improve their conversion rates. Below, we have expanded on these points for your benefit.
Become crystal clear on your goals
The first thing you need to do is to become crystal clear on your goals. Now you might think that this is quite obvious- your goal is to increase revenue as much as possible. While in principle that makes sense, in practice there are going to be many intermediate goals that you need to set up along the way.
For example, for a B2B customer to decide to spend money with you, they may need to be convinced with some more information- so you may have a lead magnet piece of content such as an ebook or a guide or a checklist that you want them to download and consume before they contact your sales team for more information. This would need to be set up as a separate goal on your website.
Ensure your tracking is set up correctly
You need to audit all of the different steps that a customer may need to take on the path to finally making a purchase and ensure that those goals are reflected with what you offer on your website.
To be able to track how you’re progressing against the goals that you previously set up, you need to be able to accurately measure performance on your website. You may be surprised to see how many B2B businesses actually don’t have proper tracking set up on their websites.
So ensure that you’re able to a)track user behaviour on your website., and b)set up the appropriate goals and reporting so that you are actually measuring the metrics that matter the most to your business.
Review user flow and heatmap data
Once you have the proper tracking set up, you can start to measure elements such as user flow and heat map data on your website. What this means is you can see how users are progressing between different portions of a particular landing page. Or how they’re progressing from one landing page to another page on your website and where they’re dropping off. Heat map data shows you where their attention is going on a particular page, and where you’re potentially losing their attention.
When you see this data in the context of the goals that you have set for each landing page you will start to get some really useful information about what part of your messaging is working and what part isn’t. And it will help you focus your efforts where they’re most needed to boost conversion rates.
Ensure your site speed is up to scratch
40% of users will bounce off a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Therefore, you must have a quick loading website. And the way to do this is to use some free tools that are available such as the Google Pagespeed Insights tool to help you identify any elements of your webpage that may be slowing it down.
Common examples would be large image sizes or large files that take a long time to load. These can be minimised to improve page speed. To identify the elements that are slowing your page speed down, optimise them for improved page speed, and you will find that you not only improve your conversion rates but will also be given a boost in your organic search rankings as Google is integrating user experience factors into its natural search algorithm.
Include Social Proof
It is a behavioural psychology trait that as humans, we look for cues on how to behave from other humans. And so if we see that other people have engaged with a website or rated it highly with reviews, for example, we will be that much more likely to trust that website. This is why it’s very important to include things like client testimonials and reviews on your website, especially on your conversion landing pages.
They help address customer anxieties about spending their money with you. And they also show proof of trust to search engines such as Google which are now using trust as a factor in their organic search ranking algorithms.
Review Your Forms
Many online forms are too long and can be overwhelming for users. You should really question every single element on that form and ask whether you actually need it- or you could even break down your form into multiple steps so each step is much more manageable and less overwhelming for your users.
In Summary
While this is definitely a difficult business environment in which to operate, there are still opportunities for b2b businesses to improve their conversion rates by focusing on the fundamentals of user experience and conversion rate optimisation on their websites.
