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Each issue of CMO Close-up features an interview with a CMO, as well as other marketing executives answering that issue's "Big Question."
This week's feature:
Close-up with Laura Howard, CMO, ECI Telecom
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10 Great B-to-B Sites
10 Great B-to-B Sites
Karen J. Bannan
Story posted: September 14, 2009 - 9:39 am EDT
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Each year, BtoB asks a panel of five Web site design and usability experts to identify 10 of the best b-to-b Web sites out there. Though the medium continues to evolve, with such features as video and
social media playing an increasingly prominent role, the basics remain the same. B-to-b Web sites must provide visitors clear, concise product and company information, reflect a company’s brand consistently and engage users in a conversation—whether it’s about an industry trend or about how to take the next step toward a making a purchase.
It’s not surprising that the economic recession has been one of the main things marketers are taking into consideration when updating or redesigning their Web sites this year. A recession colors how people do business—what they buy, how much they are willing to spend and who they are willing to buy from.
“There is an incredible erosion of trust because of the state of the economy,” said Nick Gould, CEO of the Catalyst Group, a Web usability firm. “Companies we thought we could always trust now seem to be the least trustworthy.”
As a result, he said, companies are revamping their Web sites in an effort to promote trust with visitors, tweaking design to reflect humanity and transparency.
Of course, the recession wasn’t the only invisible hand guiding marketers this year. Social media in the form of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter created another new Web content paradigm, Gould said. “It’s not just worrying about how to use Twitter and Facebook tactically. Customers are
accustomed to a certain tone and forwardness, and are going to expect to see that on a company’s home page,” he said.
This is why marketing buzzwords and hard-sell tactics are out, said Jennifer Cardello, a user experience specialist at Web usability firm Nielsen Norman Group. “The focus has to be on making the customer successful, and that is often achieved by aggressively editing and minimizing Web content,” she said. “It’s very easy to get into a mindset of listing everything that a product does, but that’s not what people care about.”
Instead, she said, companies should think about content from the user’s perspective. “Don’t talk about yourself. Talk about how you can help your visitors,” she said.
This same push to make things feel more familiar and friendly has ushered in a move away from feature-heavy home pages. The trend, said Stephen Woessner, business education outreach
coordinator at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse Small
Business Development Center, is to get away from trying to put too many products or features on your home page—or even
linking to them. “It doesn’t do anyone any good if they come to a site and there’s a mishmash of products,” he said. Companies can
consider creating separate sites for separate products, or at least breaking out products by type of user or user needs, he said.
Simplicity also reigns where design is concerned, said Bill Rice, president of the Web Marketing Association. White space and clear text are in, he said, and design-heavy elements are out. “There’s less motion on sites,” he said. “Where there used to be animated graphics to try and grab you in, now you’ve got static images.”
That’s not to say that interactive or multimedia elements are gone completely. Instead, marketers are more judicial when
including such elements, tapping them for utility rather than splash, Howard Kiewe, senior research analyst at Info-Tech
Research Group, said. “We’re seeing a movement toward using rich Internet applications that give you the power to provide a better experience,” he said. “Rich applications don’t have to wait for a page to reload, so you can use them to provide
interactivity on the front end and link to data on the backend.”
So, for example, companies can provide immediate access to their supply chains, letting potential customers check if
something is in stock and, if so, which warehouse it would ship from. But marketers should still be careful not to make their
interactive offerings too “salescentric.” “Videos should be there to help the entire industry grasp the issues,” Rice said. “Products will still get sold, since you will be seen as a leader and expert in the area.”
The one exception to the less-is-more mandate: customer feedback and usability testing. Marketers should be asking their Web site visitors what they need and want to see, and also providing commentary around those needs, Kiewe said.
“You really need to get inside people’s heads,” he said.
“Design work should start way before you start building the site. It should start with user input.”
Site visitors are now serving another function as well, Cardello said: They can provide content. “Innovative b-to-c and b-to-b providers are using the Web to facilitate conversations,” she said. “The most innovative have figured out that there is significant
value in c-to-c [customer-to-customer] conversations where
customers help each other with anything from technical advice to business strategy. Customers are going to find each other anyway. Why not facilitate that introduction and foster a community?
Customers look kindly upon those types of efforts by companies.”
When designing these new interactive pages, marketers must also consider how their customers and prospects are accessing the Web site. As of January 2009, more than 63.2 million people access news and information daily from their mobile devices,
according to digital marketing measurement firm comScore Inc. Keep technologies that can’t be viewed on mobile devices to a minimum or provide a text-based option, the experts said.
Finally, no matter how visitors come into your site, from a navigation perspective, they should be able to find what they want in one or two clicks. Information-rich sites can meet this goal by providing a strong search engine that uses contextual search. “If you’re on a retailer’s site looking at printers and search for ‘cable,’ results should give more relevance to printer cables rather than television cables to help the customer find what they want,” Rice said.
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4 Comments
1 through 4
Dave
December 2, 2009 10:29 am
Just forwarded this article to my entire team. very inspiring ideas. Thank you for pulling it together and to the businesses & agencies that created them.
Jessica
December 3, 2009 01:16 pm
Great list, with so many great websites out there I would imagine it's difficult to chose just 10. Some of my favorite B2B websites include Akken (http://www.akken.com), Yooba (http://www.yooba.com) and Business Catalyst (http://businesscatalyst.com)
chris gotts
Sage - Online Consultant
November 17, 2009 10:41 am
Great article,
was looking for ideas and inspiration on b2b sites and found loads through these. thanks
Jack Rohan
The Red Group
September 15, 2009 12:12 am
Great article. Thanks for putting this together. Serves as great inspiration and guidance for what more companies should be doing.
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