Building the best B2B website to draw in business, showcase your value, or represent your brand can be a challenge without knowledge of the key elements involved. From idea through to final development, it’s important to grasp the fundamentals firmly and apply them to your build process.
At Squarebird, we’re keyed in on the most crucial elements of effective B2B websites. In this article we’ll go over what you need to know for the design, content, and development of your site, as well as how these can align with your brand identity.
We’ve been building B2B websites for years, helping clients evolve their online identity. Get in touch today!
“One of the biggest factors of building a B2B website is time, from the view of clients as well as the team. A lot of commitment is required by both the agency and the client in the early stages of a project, and lots of key decisions need to be made during this phase. It’s a fun process, though, and clients should enjoy it and feel engaged, heard, and that their point of view is understood.” – Ben Tucker, Client Services Director
B2B website design
Your website design is like a digital shop window. It should showcase everything you have on offer – your business, services, case studies, and value. All the key information a potential client needs to see should be there for them to browse at their leisure, and engage them enough to want to get in touch.
The best website design means you’ll have a cohesive appearance and brand identity across all touchpoints, as well as showing a level of professionalism and care towards your work.
What is the process for improving a B2B website design?
- Engage with professionals. Without a firm knowledge base backing the decisions you make for your design, you’ll be flying in the dark. Professionals know the trends, techniques, and tweaks to use to make your business truly stand out.
- Research your users. Figure out how they’re currently using your website compared to what you want them to do. Then, use this to inform the changes you make to your design, resulting in an accessible and intuitive site.
- Benchmark against competitors. To see the fruits of your labour, a comparison is needed. By looking at how you’re performing compared to competitors, you can see where your business sits in the market and what you need to do to improve.
- Ensure text hierarchy. Different sizes and placements for titles imply different levels of relevance to the user. Make sure you have a proper hierarchy in place using heading tags so that when Google crawls your site, they know how important each piece of data is. This will help direct your website to the most relevant users.
- Use professional imagery. By adding your own video or image content, professionally produced, your B2B website will be much more effective as it will be wholly unique to you.
- Find your identity. Whether you want to fit in with the flock of your industry, or be more disruptive and separate yourselves, it’s important to consider your users and how they want to interact with your website – then create an identity which aligns.
The main design features to improve a B2B website
To achieve the best design, there are a number of different features you should include such as:
- Video
- Clear structure and user journeys
- Your own professional imagery (where possible)
- Clear calls to action
- Consistency between desktop and mobile
Within each element of design, there are many steps that need to be taken to ensure everything looks and feels right to the user. Getting each of these steps right the first time would be impossible, so it’s a good idea to work with someone that’s done it all before.
Contact our team to see how we can make a design that’ll make your business soar.
Brand and website: how do they relate?
Having a brand identity is important as it provides consistency across everything a user interacts with that’s related to your business. It also serves to make sure your business looks more professional.
Brand identity is often codified in brand guidelines. Since your website is just another touchpoint for your clients to engage with, it should follow your brand guidelines to achieve the best results.
What elements make up a brand identity?
Some of the core elements of a brand identity are:
- Values
- History
- Name
- Logo
- Colour palette
- Tone of voice
- Messaging
Basically, anything you produce is an indicator of your brand identity. That is why brand guidelines are so important – without them, there would be no rhyme or reason to the visual content you create. This would mean your brand identity is confused and unclear, and potentially prevent clients from fully engaging with your offering.
The impact of branding for your B2B website
For a B2B website, branding is extremely important. While big brands that come to mind are often consumer-facing, the B2B sector is equally receptive to a good brand identity and story.
Having consistent branding on your website provides impact through:
- Professionalism and trust. Without cohesion between your platforms, your business will look a mess – and that may in turn reflect on client perceptions of your capabilities.
- Storytelling. Getting across your core values and the extent of your experience is a good way to foster trust in clients, making them more likely to engage with your services.
- User experience. Cohesion in branding, colours, messaging, and site appearance makes it easier for users to navigate your website. This will lead to a better chance at securing business from site visitors.
- Authority. A bold brand is great, but even subtle ones can demonstrate their authority through the unwavering use of their brand identity. Over time, this can eventually evolve in a recognisable brand look, resulting in more authority and trust with clients.
Overall, a strong brand identity on your B2B website supports your credibility, uniqueness, and client experiences, ultimately contributing to the site’s effectiveness for attracting and converting business prospects.
Content for B2B websites
Content on a website is made up of two main elements: text and images.
Text content, or copy, will have all of the key messaging about your business and services, with the potential for added value through either a unique tone of voice (TOV) or a focus on search engine optimisation (SEO).
Images have their own requirements as well – in part this relates to SEO, but the meat of these content elements should be considered based on the style and source of the images, as well as how much effort you’re willing to spare to get the best results.
SEO vs TOV
Whether you want to focus more on SEO or TOV depends on the importance of attracting organic traffic to your website. If you’re driving traffic through other means, a TOV focus in-line with your brand identity can be a better choice.
On the other hand, having solid SEO foundations is beneficial to all businesses – especially if you’re just starting up. Good SEO can help attract visitors and boost your rank in Google, making you seem more credible while also supporting your marketing efforts.
SEO plays a crucial role in driving organic traffic and maintaining an edge for B2B websites. With a good enough strategy in place, you can support your sales objectives while positioning yourself for success in the digital marketplace.
Support your marketing with our SEO team, or improve and apply your TOV through our copywriting services.
Stock vs bespoke imagery
For imagery, bespoke is the way to go. Providing it has been done professionally, it will be a sleek way to show who you are and what you do – especially for businesses that work on projects with case studies and demonstratable results.
For companies where a lot of their work is intangible, or bespoke imagery just isn’t an option, it can get more challenging. However, choosing the right visual assets and stock photography can still result in a great, unique look for your B2B website.
Whatever you choose, it’s important to ensure it’s carefully selected, right for your brand, and not used by any competitors. With all these elements combined, you’re set up for some great site visuals.
Enhance your imagery with our photography services.
Should you supply your own content?
Content is one of the biggest factors and delays in a website project. It can be easy to think you have the capacity to do it yourself, but the reality is that it takes a long time to produce good written and visual content.
If you’ve got the time and resources, then you can absolutely supply it yourself. Even then, it can be a good idea to have it reviewed by external experts who can look at it under the lenses of SEO, accuracy, and how well it aligns with your brand identity.
When deciding to work with someone like a copywriter, you’ll still need to ensure you provide enough key info and have regular discussions. This will result in the messaging you want being accurately conveyed, and stop the project from hitting a wall.
On the other hand, if you’re set on providing your own content from scratch, you need to be prepared for the level of work and commitment this progress requires.
Get in touch today for support across all elements of your website content production process.
The B2B website development process
Website development is the process of building a website, typically starting from a set of page designs, a user interface kit, and written content.
Websites are built using a number of coding languages and platforms. At Squarebird, we specialise in WordPress and WooCommerce. 43% of all websites on the internet use WordPress, meaning it’s a well-recognised platform that offers a lot of benefits for businesses and their users.
Development is essentially the practice of taking web designs and turning them into functioning websites. During this process, further technical elements can be introduced like animated, movement, and wider functionalities that simply aren’t possible or time efficient in the design stage.
At the end of it all is a polished, live website that users and prospective clients can interact with.
Live a day in the life of a developer with our article >
What to look for in a web development?
A good website development is built on a number of important features. These include:
- Responsive design
- Cross-browser compatibility
- Optimised performance
- SEO-friendly structure
- Scalability
- Flexibility
- Security measures
- Accessibility compliance (where relevant)
- User-friendly interfaces
- Analytics and tracking
- An intuitive backend
With all of these features working together, you can ensure a positive experience for your users from a site that achieves its objects and contributes to your business’ success.
Additionally, the best web developments will leave you with the tools you need to make minor changes to your site yourself, like uploading a blog or adding a new service page. Your business will continue to evolve, so make sure you’ve got a futureproofed website that can keep up.
Full-stack services for effective B2B websites from Squarebird
Getting the most effective end result means not neglecting a single step from the B2B website build process. Without all of the elements we’ve mentioned above, you may end up finding your website lacking in impact and potential.
As a full-stack digital agency, Squarebird are in prime position to supply you with everything you need to produce a great B2B website – and more. We’ve got dozens of fantastic businesses in our portfolio, and are always on the lookout for new and engaging projects to work on!
Get in touch today for a quick consultation of your needs, or check out some related articles for more about what we offer.