Does Your B2B Website Impede Sales?

© Dianna Huff

Have you visited your company’s Website lately? I know it sounds like a funny question, but I’m always surprised when my clients, who are in charge of large corporate Websites, say company employees don’t use the company Website nor know what’s on it.

If you haven’t been to your company’s Website in awhile, tried to sign up for the newsletter, purchased something from the online store, or conducted a search for your company via Google, you may be in for a few surprises.

Step into your customers’ shoes by conducting these exercises from home. (I’m convinced accessing your site from “inside” your company hides all ills.)

Once you start viewing your Website from your customers’ and prospects’ point of view, you’ll quickly see it may have a number of barriers that impede sales. What are some of these barriers?

1. Poor navigation.
If your company sells hundreds of products, how easy is it to find what you’re looking for? Does your Website have a “search” function? Can you follow where you’ve been via bread crumb navigation? Do you get stuck deep down in the site with no idea of where you are?

2. Withholding information.
A prospect comes to your site looking for product literature. To get it, he or she has to:

• a. Fill out a very long form or become a registered user.
• b. Supply personal information that he may not want to give you.
• c. Click back through to the home page again because hitting “submit” doesn’t immediately put him or her through to the requested collateral.
• d. Once your visitor gets to the collateral page, it says, “For a brochure, please call.”

Click! That was the sound of your prospect moving on to your competitor. (And, the above experience happened to me exactly as I described it on a B2B Website.)

3. Multimedia glitches.
For those companies who do get it right and give their prospects plenty of information, they still can run afoul of faulty media.

One Website I visited had streaming media showing their high-tech product in action. However, once I downloaded it, I received an error message stating the MP4 image couldn’t run. Bummer. It looked pretty exciting, too.

4. Online shopping glitches.
One time I ordered a file cabinet online. All went well at first and because I was a registered user, the company site remembered my name and credit card number. However, when I hit “submit,” I received a message stating my credit card was invalid. Huh? Tried again. Same message.

Hunted around for a number to call — no luck. Clicked back through to the home page and started the process again and found the “live support” phone number — on one page, only. It disappeared once you were ready to check-out. I ended up having to call my order in because of the glitch. If I hadn’t had a valuable store coupon, I would have given up.

To reduce customer frustration and lower abandoned shopping carts, ensure all online shopping pages have your “live” customer support number posted in a conspicuous place.

5. No newsletter.
Picture your prospect: she comes to your site looking for information. This person isn’t quite ready to buy yet — she may have to get funding via a grant or convince her boss on your product or wait for the new fiscal year. But she’s definitely interested.

She downloads a white paper and views your Webinar and maybe prints out a brochure and files it away. Six months later, she buys from your competitor.

Why? Because she forgot about you! One of the best ways to keep top-of-mind with prospects and customers is with an e-newsletter. Whether you send it out monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly, an e-newsletter lets you feature application notes and case studies, links to new product information, and special offers.

It also showcases your company’s broad range of services because if you’re like most companies, your customers are constantly saying, “I didn’t know you did that.” With an e-newsletter, they’ll know.

6. Website not optimized for search engines.
Here’s another good exercise: Go to Google and type in a few of your company’s key search terms. Does your company show up in the top 30 listings? If not, it’s probably because your company’s Website hasn’t been optimized for search engines.

If your Website uses Flash, hides text, or has poorly written meta page titles and content, it will receive a low ranking from Google and/or will not show up in the top listings.

Now go to your company’s Website and look at the top of your browser bar. If it says, “Welcome to Company XYZ,” you probably need to revise your meta page titles and content.

Websites are powerful tools that can significantly increase sales. Ensure your Website gives prospects and customers a seamless experience by testing it frequently. Purchase products, download collateral and other media, sign up for your newsletter and do searches to see where you are in the search engines. You’ll win kudos from visitors, and in the process, make it easier to close sales.

This article originally appeared in Mac McIntosh’s Sales Lead Report.