Website Building for B2B Companies: 10 Ways to Grow Your Online Presence

If you want to reach your target B2B audience, encourage them to click that ‘buy’ or ‘contact’ button and grow your revenue, you need to master the website building process to create an attractive and effective website that generates sales.

By building this powerful online presence, you can also develop and grow your brand, offer more value, and make it easier for search engines like Google to find you.

With website visitors spending just a few seconds on a website before they decide to click away or not, it’s vital to get it right first time.

Here at Marcom, we understand that website building for B2B markets can be complex, and you are likely to need a helping hand. That’s why we created a short guide/roundup of the factors you need to consider, including domains, hosting, SEO, branding, content creation and usability so your business has maximum impact. Keep reading to find out more.

1. Secure a custom primary domain

Before you do anything else, you should establish and secure a custom primary domain name for your website. This is simply the ‘home address’ for your website and will help visitors to find you quickly and easily.

However, it’s not enough to choose something at random – you need to find a domain that matches your brand, boosts your credibility, gives a good impression, and helps those search engines to find you.

• Consider using your company name: This helps visitors find you, boosts your branding and enhances your brand identity.
• Keep it as short as possible: You want customers to find you quickly, without needing to type a long string of words and letters.
• Ensure it’s easy to spell and memorable: Avoid using alternative spellings, nicknames, numbers, and hyphens.
• Think about SEO: If you can include keywords in your domain, you’re more likely to boost your SEO efforts.
• Make it broad: By doing so, you’ll have more opportunities for future growth without needing to change your domain.
• Be different: Aim to make your custom domain different from your competitors and as clean and catchy as possible to boost your search rankings.

If you’re struggling to think of the right primary domain for your business, start by brainstorming a few ideas. Then check what already exists online and select the right domain for you.

2. Think about web hosting and maintenance

As the name suggests, a web host is a company that allows you to create and store your website so that your visitors can view it. You connect your domain (address) to your host (home itself) and voila- you have built your online presence.

There are various companies that offer web hosting including those that include integrated website builders and those that simply offer the space to build your own website. They vary in cost, depending on the provider, technology and support you need.    This includes:

• Squarespace
• Wix
• Weebly
• GoDaddy

Although many of these do offer free website-building features, we recommend that you avoid this as it can limit the functionality of your website. We also recommend that businesses of a certain size take command of their own managed web services for both self-hosting and maintenance of their website.

So often in our experience, we find that appropriate ongoing maintenance and support is overlooked once you have designed, built, and launched your market-leading website. You should look for phone and chat support so you can get quick answers if there is a problem with your service.

If you’re unsure which is the right web host or website builder for you, contact us today for help.

3. Consider Content Management System (CMS)

Many B2B businesses will have Content-driven Marketing and Inbound Marketing at the heart of their growth strategy. To this end, early considerations for which is the most suitable Content Management System or CMS integrated with your business website are key.    Some of the most popular of these options include:

• WordPress
• Joomla
• Drupal
• Contentful
• Hubspot CMS
• Headless CMS

 Then, choose between a theme framework vs bespoke design

Many business owners choose to use website theme frameworks and pre-existing website templates when creating their websites because they are perfect for the non-professional, often feature easy-to-use drag-and-drop design functionalities and are free or relatively inexpensive.

For small businesses or startups, we agree that there are many beautiful templates that, offer the right functionality, allow you to add your branding and are perfect for those with limited budgets.

Having said that, we’d usually advise against using the free versions as they tend to limit what you can create and often don’t offer the features or scalability you will need.

For bigger businesses and if you have a healthier budget, we’d instead recommend developing a bespoke website design. This ensures that your website is targeted and fit for purpose, modern, responsive, easy to use, and offers all the technological functionality you need to attract customers, drive sales, and support the growth of your brand.

4. Identify your target B2B audience

If you can identify who wants to buy your products or services, you’ll be able to create a better website, reach your target customers, grow your brand, and increase your sales more easily. That’s why you should create detailed profiles of your customers and user personas before you start to develop your website.

Using a combination of customer research, surveys, and interviews, you can understand exactly who they are, their user journeys, and then create a website that targets their needs. This can include colours, fonts, layouts, images, tone of voice and website functionality.

5. Add your company branding

With the information you’ve gathered about your target customers, you can start to develop your website, adding branding throughout. Key elements include your logo (hire a graphic designer if you don’t already have one), your colour scheme, fonts, imagery, and design.

Here are some tips:

• Use attractive graphics and easy-to-read fonts
• Research your competition in the market to see how they have designed and optimised their B2B website
• Stay consistent throughout your website, understand your users’ journeys
• Add clear calls to action and contact information
• Compress and optimise your images for faster loading speeds

By doing this, you’ll attract more website visitors, ensure they understand what your business is about, help boost brand loyalty and help you get maximum ROI on your investment.   Remember, your website is your 24/7 salesperson, so it pays to get it right.

6. Make your website easy to use

Whichever web development route or design you select, ensure that your website is intuitive and easy to use.

Create clear navigation menus and headings, add plenty of white space and consider including a search bar. Also, ensure your website is mobile-friendly and responsive so it fits on the screen or whatever device they’re using and loads quickly to avoid frustration.

This will help you attract and retain your customers and encourage them to buy.

7. Add website security

When building a website, you need to protect yourself from hackers who can add malware to your website, destroy your rankings or even steal customer data such as credit card details.

This is especially important if you’re building an online store or using an e-commerce platform and therefore taking payments. Security for the protection and integrity of data as well as to ensure operational uptime is also critical for B2B businesses. There are various options available- speak to us for more help.

When you do this, you won’t just protect your website and customer data but also build a sense of trust with your customers and build brand reputation and loyalty.

8. Find the right e-commerce platform

Speaking of e-commerce, you’ll also need to choose the right e-commerce platform if you are managing a B2B business that plans to sell goods or services online.

Again, there are various options available with different features and pricing plans. Most of them integrate with website builders, templates, and bespoke websites with just a click or two, although you may need to ask one of our website developers for help.

The most popular of these include:

• WooCommerce
• Shopify
• Squarespace

9. Focus on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO is a set of practices that helps search engines like Google find your website more easily and direct potential customers to your site. With around 48% of internet users starting their research via these search engines, it’s an area you simply cannot afford to ignore.

As experts, we know what a huge topic it is, but you can start by creating your website with Search Engine Optimisation in mind, including:

• Researching keywords and adding them to headings, menus, links and body text
• Fast loading speeds
• Security: SSL certificates are essential
• Mobile friendly site
• Clean website code
• Online reviews
• High-quality links to websites with related content
• Internal links to keep visitors on your site
• Social media integration throughout such as Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube and LinkedIn
• Adding keywords to your headings

Once you’ve created your website, you can use SEO tools such as Yoast to ensure your website content is optimised for SEO.

10. Create clear and engaging B2B website content

When you create your B2B website, you must ensure that visitors know who you are immediately and that they know where to look for further information, useful resources or help.

Start by ensuring your homepage banner (hero) is as clear and concise as possible, adding images and a short piece of introductory text to help clarify further.

Then focus on your navigation menus, ensuring that you’ve included basics such as an ‘about page’, ‘contact us’ and products or services. Use these pages to create useful content that further highlights your brand and helps you engage with your target customers. If you’d prefer help, consider outsourcing to a professional copywriter.

Also, ensure you’re regularly updating this information and adding useful content such as blog posts to add more value to your website and keep the search engines happy. Make sure everything is written in your brand voice and free from typos and grammatical mistakes that can harm your brand image.

For extra brownie points, add testimonials and reviews to add social proof and encourage your customers to buy.

Don’t get overwhelmed

As you can see, there’s a lot to do. And to be honest, what we’ve outlined above is just scratching the service.

Below is a checklist that we follow for a website build. You can see that it’s pretty comprehensive.

Scoping

• Functionality briefing
• Structural analysis

Technical audits / sitemaps

• Baseline Analysis
• SEO audits
• Strategic KPIs / benchmarking

Project planning Structural development

• Legacy content mapping
• Intended content structure and keyword mapping

User journeys Design

• UX diagrams / UI Wireframing
• Conceptual development

Client approval / sign-off Template development

• Content population
• Content optimisation

SEO review and refinements Managed Web Services

• Hosting, maintenance and support
• Uptime monitoring

Migration and launch preparation

• Launch and post-launch configuration checks
• Email deliverability and validation checks

Web mastering, site submission and health checks

• Monitoring – ongoing support and aftercare
• Reporting and analysis

This is why you should work with a professional web design team like Marcom. We will handle the tech side of things so that you don’t have to.  Working with professionals will help your website be fully ready for being online, help you rise up through the search rankings, attract more customers and enjoy the business success that you deserve

Want us to guide you through the process? Get in touch today.