How to B2B Websites: Successful Corporate Websites Made Easy
Sara Bak4/14/2023
We explain to you what you need to know about B2B websites and how you can get started with them.
Table of contents
- B2B vs. B2C vs. D2C website - What is the difference?
- The customer journey on B2B websites
- ICB vs. Persona - Decisions are not made by one person
- Which content and elements should a B2B website contain?
- is easy to use for every user.
- Remember: This template should only be viewed as inspiration and adapted to the individual needs of your target audience and your company!
- No distraction by removing the navigation bar
What exactly is a B2B website, and what makes it successful? In this article, our guest author Sara Bak shows you everything you need to know about the topic and what elements make a good B2B website.
B2B vs. B2C vs. D2C website - What is the difference?
The terms B2B, B2C and D2C are often thrown around in connection with websites. But what do they actually mean?
B2B stands for "Business-to-Business" and refers to business relationships between companies. In the context of websites, B2B means that the website is geared towards selling products or services to other companies or collaborating with them.
A B2B website can, for example, be a platform where companies sell their products to other companies. However, B2B products & services are often complex and require explanation, which is why websites can provide a lot of educational work or should motivate for contact.
Therefore, B2B websites rarely have a shop system. The focus is more on branding and generating leads, inquiries, demos, or sign-ups.
Conversely, there is B2C, "Business-to-Consumer", which describes a business model where a company is in direct contact with consumers. A B2C website would therefore be more geared towards private individuals who want to buy products or use services. This is by far the most common form of websites and usually has a shop system, through which the products are sold directly.
D2C, or "Direct-to-Consumer", describes websites where companies sell their products or services directly to consumers, without going through traditional sales channels such as retailers or distributors.
D2C websites are particularly attractive for e-commerce companies, as they offer a cost-effective way to establish their products or services on the market and build their customer base.
One special feature of D2C and B2C websites is that the customer journey is usually much shorter than that of B2B customers. The reason for this is that buying decisions in the D2C and B2C sectors are made by individual consumers, who are more influenced by emotional factors.
If a product or service meets their needs, impulse purchases are often made within a very short time. This is especially true for low-priced products.
The customer journey on B2B websites
In the B2B sector, however, the process often involves complex products or services that are sold to companies. Purchasing decisions are made not by one person, but by groups of decision-makers within the company, who are often influenced by rational factors such as price, quality, and benefits. Typical roles that belong to the decision-making group could be:
- User
- Decision maker
- Recommender
- Influencer and
- Signer
All these roles have different questions during the decision-making process and require a variety of different information. It therefore requires a different approach than in the B2C customer journey, which only one user goes through.
These decisions can also require more time and resources, as they often have to be coordinated by many departments or individuals within the company. The customer journey or sales cycle therefore usually takes longer and extends over weeks or months.
Another important point in which a B2B customer journey differs from the B2C or D2C area is the goal: Here, in most cases, it is not about a sale, but about a long-term business relationship. Therefore, the customer journey with their touchpoints looks differently:
- Awareness: The company recognizes a problem that needs to be solved. In the search for a solution, the company becomes aware of the B2B company's offer among other things.
- Consideration: Based on research, the company is shortlisted for a collaboration. At this point, initial contact is usually made to discuss open questions and clarify whether a partnership is beneficial for both parties.
- Transaction: The initial contact reveals that all requirements and demands on the company are met. The purchase/transaction/cooperation takes place.
- Experience: This phase is crucial for the course of the business relationship: Based on the experience that the company makes with the product or service, it decides to continue or end the cooperation. Ideally, the expectations that the company has can not only be met but exceeded, which makes a future business relationship more likely.
- Loyalty: The last phase of the B2B customer journey is simultanously the most important: In order to achieve the goal of a long-term business relationship, a solid foundation must be created here. If this is successful, a cycle is created, in which new purchases/transactions/cooperations occur again and again.
Source: salesforce
To achieve that this Customer Journey actually becomes a cycle, it is important to provide the right information at the right time. To improve this process systematically and the overall customer journey, it is advisable to develop a Customer-Journey-Map. Moreover, it is recommended to learn more about the different roles in the decision-making process and their needs
ICB vs. Persona - Decisions are not made by one person
Unlike in B2C, there is usually more than one person involved in the purchase decision in B2B. While personas are often developed in B2C marketing, ICPs are more relevant in B2B. ICP stands for "Ideal Customer Profile" and describes companies that perfectly fit the target group due to specific characteristics. These ICPs can in turn contain various buyer personas. The most important ones are: User, decision maker and blocker.
Source: propellercrm.com
User
One of the buyer personas is the user, who ultimately uses the product or service. This user group is also usually the one actively seeking a solution to a known problem to eliminate pain points and advance the company, which is particularly relevant for content marketing.
As the user persona is usually the first contact to the company, the following messages should be communicated as much as possible to address him best:
- The offer makes the job of the user Persona easier/more productive/relaxed/ ...
- The user persona can develop personally through the offer, for example, learn something new, improve a skill or be promoted
- The user persona is convinced by the website of the company's expert status
- Solving the problem through the offered service or the product makes the user persona something special
The user persona usually has the largest share of practical experience and must therefore be convinced that your solution addresses a real need and creates added value.
Decision maker
In the B2B sector, the decision-maker persona is the most important persona to be convinced: After all, she is the one who becomes the sponsor of your offer and does the persuasion work within your company that the offer should be bought.
At the same time, however, she must also safeguard the interests of the company, especially from a financial point of view. Therefore, the ROI is decisive for the decision-maker persona and should therefore appear in the content of your websites in some form.
Examples of elements that are particularly relevant to the decision-maker persona are:
- ROI calculator
- RFT templates
- Buyer's guides
The decision-maker persona is a kind of mediator and is not only responsible for "selling" the offer to her own team, but also to the management level. This decides on the budget or other stakeholders, such as the IT or legal departments.
Blocker
Even though the decision-maker persona is usually also the buyer, the blocker persona must be convinced of the purchase. They are often members of the management level who attach particular importance to ROI, risk minimization, safeguarding company values and resources, and legal framework conditions. Therefore, as the name suggests, this persona can block these purchasing decisions.
Blocker personas often have low technical knowledge and are willing to learn, but have difficulty making decisions. Therefore, they need concrete information and application examples to better understand the context of the offer and to make the best decision based on it.
The goal of your B2B website should therefore be to address all these buyer personas. Although the decision-maker persona is the decisive force deciding for or against a purchase, the concerns of the user and blocker persona should also be addressed.
It is also important to mention that your ICPs should not be used decisively to categorically accept or reject new business opportunities: There are often companies that are not covered by your ICPs, but are still a good fit for your products. Therefore, ICPs have the main task of providing you with the framework for which companies to approach proactively by investing in sales and marketing.
The difficulty with this: All these personas have different interests and pain points - users want to simplify the task, while CEOs, for example, have the budget in mind - which is why a well-thought-out approach is necessary here. You can control this through specific content and elements on your B2B website.
Which content and elements should a B2B website contain?
The most important question for practical use is of course: What should a B2B website look like in concrete terms? Here are our most important tips on what a good B2B website should definitely depict to achieve the desired goals.
Useful subpages for B2B company websites
Sounds logical, but is often underestimated: If you work with companies, then your website should also be geared towards companies! This means: It needs Landing pages for the individual target group segments that we introduced earlier, so that you can address them even more specifically.
These include use cases: With them, you can show in which industries the B2B solution can be used. Examples are always helpful to give your target group a better idea of how the solution can be applied.
The same also applies to case studies. These give your target group a further overview of how your offer can be implemented in practice. However, they also serve to build trust and demonstrate that you can achieve real results with your solution! We recommend you to use case studies that underline the range of application of your offer where possible.
Contact pages are also very important on B2B websites: Only through them can your customers contact you and get information about your offers. It is therefore important that the contact information on these pages is always up-to-date and complete in order to keep the bounce rate as low as possible here.
Alternative to contact pages, demo or appointment booking pages are often used in B2B. Here, users can directly book a consultation or initial discussion with a sales representative. Appointment booking pages can be practically implemented by embedding corresponding solutions from Calendly or HubSpot Marketing Hub.
Understand your target audience(s)
One of the most important aspects: Know your target audience(s) inside and out! Because they are the ones who ultimately buy your products or use your services. What many forget: The website should also be oriented 100% towards the needs of the target group.
Therefore, constantly inform yourself about new trends or also problems that occur with your ICPs and specifically address them on your website. Information about this can be provided by your sales teams, your customers directly or also competition analyses, from which you derive what customers perceive as particularly positive or negative about your competitors.
Benefit instead of features
Surely, you also know these websites that just flood customers with features of their products: "With practical suspension", "handmade", "without preservatives" or "battery life of over 40h". All this information may be relevant for the users in their purchase decision, but they are not sufficient to convince them.
So, it is more effective to communicate the benefits of your product or service, instead of just its features. What matters is what the users "get out of it", so what benefits result for them. Thus, your benefit quickly becomes an added value for the customers, for example "with a battery life of over 40h you can stream your favorite series without interruption - even on the go".
Your target audience feels directly addressed, as you address underlying pain points with the benefit that your product or service solves.
Trust, Trust, Trust
What is more off-putting for customers than a website that just talks about features? - A website that does not appear trustworthy! Therefore, trust elements should be a central part of your website.
Trust can be created in different ways: concrete numbers and facts that support your work, awards, quality seals, customer reviews, and testimonials are just a few examples. To use these trust elements as effectively as possible, we recommend distributing these elements on your website to continuously win your users' trust.
Cases - Show the implementation and use of your offer
When you present your product or your service on your website, your users can often not yet imagine accurately how the implementation can look in concrete terms. You can easily remedy this by making case studies part of your website!
Case studies give your users a concrete insight and ideas about what your solution can achieve, based on concrete examples. This way, you show them different application areas of your offer and what it can look like after implementation. This makes it easier for your users to better imagine the final results and builds trust in your offer.
Create added value with educational content
Regardless of whether company blog, glossary or webinar: Educational content takes your website to the next level! Not only do you create an expert status with this content, which in turn creates trust, but you also create a considerable added value for your users.
Your users can learn something from your content and possibly even fix their own pain points. This creates an optimal basis for a later business relationship, as your users have already experienced themselves whether your offer works. If this content is still SEO-optimized, it creates additional traffic, through which you can be found.
Functioning tracking
Website tracking refers to the collection of data on the behavior of users on a website, such as clicks, page views, dwell time, or engagement. The whole is implemented by tracking methods such as cookies & pixels and web analytics tools.
In the B2B sector, website tracking is extremely relevant, as companies often offer high-priced products or services and therefore have more complex sales funnels compared to the B2C context. By tracking the behavior of users on a website, companies can gain valuable insights into the interest and intentions of potential customers. For example, they can determine which pages are visited most frequently or which products or services are most in demand.
This information can help companies improve their marketing and sales strategies by creating more targeted content and offers and optimizing their lead generation and conversions. In addition, companies can identify potential problems on their website, such as pages that don't work, through website tracking, and quickly resolve them.
Test everything
A website, whether B2B or B2C, should be considered a work in progress and should always evolve: Both the market, your company, and your ICPs are dynamic and continue to develop, which should also be reflected on the website.
With newly gained insights and learnings, you get the opportunity to continuously improve your website and adapt it to new developments and ICPs. To implement this as efficiently as possible, every change on a B2B website should be data-based and tested.
This is where Web analytics tools come into play: Tools like Hotjar or Google Analytics allow you to analyze precisely how your users interact with your website. KPIs such as bounce rate, dwell time, or conversion rate can then be used to optimize the website.
Whether these changes bring a measurable improvement can then be statistically verified again with A/B testing tools. These tests provide you with valuable insights based on real data, how your website with its individual elements should be structured to work best.
So, how should a B2B website be built?
To make building your B2B website as easy as possible, here are our tips:
Reliable, stable host
Firstly, choose a website host, that covers your needs and with which you can work scalably and ensure with web acceleration software that your website has short loading times.
Form follows Function
The alpha and omega principle when it comes to design: The design of your website should be laid out so that it is oriented towards its function and purpose and best supports and presents its functions and contents.
Work with mockups
Before building, it makes sense to design a mockup - this is relevant not only if developers are supposed to implement it later, but also because you can work more creatively in web design tools like Figma than in website builder tools
.
Scalable
Your website should be built scalably so that it can grow with your company. Ideally, it can then also be adapted by your marketing team.
Component-based DesignThe website design
should be based on individual components to quickly and easily design and implement new landing pages.
Use No-Code ToolsFor building your website, we recommend using no-code-builders such as Webflow or WordPress. Besides easy creation of websites, it is also important that the CMS
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is easy to use for every user.
Successful B2B Websites - What does a good website look like?
Wondering what a good B2B Website actually looks like concretely? Here are our learnings on how it works best:
Exemplary structure of a functioning B2B WebsiteThe structure of a B2B website
can vary greatly: It strongly depends on your target audience and your company itself and is always individual.
- We often use different copywriting formulas that work better with certain target groups, for example:
- The copywriting formula BAB ("Before-After-Bridge") initially addresses the condition before the solution. Then, after the problem has been solved and finally the solution itself. This formula works particularly well with problem-centered target groups
The 4P formula (“Promise-Picture-Proof-Pitch”) on the other hand, first presents your claim about your offer, followed by a pictorial description, the proofs of effectiveness, and a pitch where you present the solution. This works best with solution-oriented target groups.To give you a general idea of how a B2B website should be structured in general, we have created a tried and tested template
which you can use as a guideline:
Remember: This template should only be viewed as inspiration and adapted to the individual needs of your target audience and your company!
Top 3 examples of best cases - Company website examples
1. Grammarly
Source: Grammarly
- On the B2B website of Grammarly, the benefit for its users becomes immediately apparent: to convince with effective communication. This is sustainably underlined with the graphic of an application example. The logos of customers create a strong trust effect.
- Hero graphic shows simply and effectively how the tool works and what benefit it has.
- Strong benefit & feature communication using the FAB formula
- Risk reduction through enlightenment about GDPR & security features
Offer different benefits for different user personas (Support, Sales, Marketing)
2. Asana
Source: Asana AsanaAlso with
- , the benefit for its users is immediately visible and at the same time shows the most important functions of the software directly in the hero section.
- Integrations are not only represented with logos, but actual use cases are shown
- Individual use cases are described using interactive graphics
Inclusion of high-quality produced testimonial videos
3. Salesforce
Source: Salesforce
- The Salesforce website not only convinces with its focus on benefit for customers and real numbers, but also immediately makes website visitors aware of their educational content. This builds trust, which Salesforce has built up through its expert status.
- Smart CTA naming through a call to value
- Benefit communication using the FAB formula
- In the final CTA, a 100 % risk-free trial is offered to provide users with a weaker CTA target
No distraction by removing the navigation bar
Conclusion
Author
Sara Bak
Author
Sara Bak
Sara Bak ist Copywriting & Content Manager der Webflow Agentur Growably aus Köln. Growably unterstützt B2B Unternehmen durch conversion-optimierte Websites dabei, Leads und Kund*innen zu gewinnen. Mit Strategie, Copywriting, Design und Development bekommen Unternehmen eine Website, die ein aktiver Sales- & Marketing Kanal ist. Die best-practices aus diesen Projekten teilt Sara in diesem Ratgeber.
