Your website is the storefront of your business. As such, in addition to communicating your offering, it needs to establish the initial sense of credibility and trustworthiness for your company. This is especially valid for business to business companies where the evaluation is much more complex. This complexity is usually created by the fact that the purchase has a higher price tag and the commitment required to adopt the product is much bigger.
Below I have assembled the techniques we have seen work for B2B website. However, many of them can also be applied to B2C websites as well.
Show Customers
This is probably the most important information that you need to feature on your website. It is the ultimate validation that your product is valuable and solves people’s problems. It sounds obvious but we have seen many examples of companies having some fantastic client stories and not featuring them on their website. They were literally sitting on a gold mine.
Two of the best ways to showcase your clients are:
Case Studies
Case studies are summaries of why and how your client implemented your product or service. In addition to improving credibility, case studies help clients verify that your product can address their business case and that companies in the same industry use it.
Taken from HYPE’s homepage
Testimonials
These are short 2-3 sentence quotes from your clients that summarize the value they got from using your product.
Tip: Make sure you use photos of your clients to make the testimonial more effective.
Taken from HYPE’s Case Studies page
Provide Contact Info
54% of B2B buyers say that the lack of thorough contact information reduces a vendor’s credibility and would cause them to leave the website. (2015 B2B Web Usability Report).
Contact information not only provides a way for people to contact you, but also shows that your business is legitimate.
Consider adding information like:
- Phone
- Physical address
- Support email/phone number
- Online chat
Introduce Your Company
Staff and Bios
Show your prospects who are the people behind the product and who will they be interacting with should they become customers. No one likes anonymity when it comes to purchasing a product. This is especially true for companies that provide services where the value of the product is mainly delivered through personal interaction.
Tip: Add links to people’s LinkedIn accounts to provide further validation of their experience and expertise.
Taken from HYPE’s About Us page
Values and Culture
To shorten the distance, consider talking about what are some of your guiding principles and how you apply them to everyday life at your company.
Taken from HYPE’s About Us page
Press Releases and Company News
Create a section where you publish news about your company, like press releases, events you attended, or any awards you have received. This way you will show prospects that your company is a “living and breathing” thing. However, if you do not have enough news to share regularly (1-2 times per month), do not create such a section as it might have the opposite effect.
Taken from the news page of Atlassian
Company History
If your company has a notable history of growth during the years, you can create a section where you talk about your achievements. The growing business demonstrates that your product delivers value and as a result your business matures.
Taken from the company overview page of Progress Software
Ensure Simple Design and Usability
There is no second chance to make a first impression and your overall design and website usability are the first things that prospects encounter when they visit your website. This is an extensive topic, so I will not go into much detail here. But if you are interested in learning more about how well your website meets design and usability best practices, you can sign up for our Free B2B Website User Experience & Design Audit and we will present you with a detailed analysis.
Share Your Expertise
Sharing your know how in the form of blogs and eBooks is one of the best ways to demonstrate expertise and that your understand the business you are in.
Tip: Before investing time into creating your resources you should have a solid content marketing strategy to guide your content production. Based on your target buyers, the content strategy will help you determine which are the topics you should write about if you want to be relevant and deliver value.
Explain Pricing
One of the first things people go after on websites is the price. If you do have a fixed pricing model that you can openly share with prospects, make it visible through a dedicated web section. This way you will demonstrate transparency.
Tip: Many companies in the B2B sector have custom pricing, so they don’t reveal any pricing information on their websites. In such cases you can acknowledge the lack of pricing by mentioning that your solutions are very tailored and as such their price might vary from customer to customer.
