Customer Experience strategies for your B2B website

Customer Experience (CX) for a B2B website is today essential to laying the foundation for a business to grow. According to Adobe’s 2019 Digital Trends report, businesses and organization should primarily focus on customer experience to see an increase in revenue in 2020. Taking care of the individuals that interact with your brand, trying to understand their needs and wants as they navigate through your website, is no longer optional. Optimizing every aspect of the users’ journey is now a crucial part of any successful marketing strategy.

When we talk about Customer Experience (CX), we refer to every instance in which a person comes across your brand. This includes: the first impressions gained when navigating through your web pages, speaking to support staff, and even the design of your packaging. B2B customer experience is even more important, as closing a deal tends to follow longer procedures, and the relationship between businesses can develop for extended periods of time.

In this article, we explore the key elements that form a strong CX strategy for B2B websites looking to acquire new clients and see past ones return.

Customer experience for a B2B website: let’s convert visitors into clients

A good strategy for the customer experience B2B of your website matters. There are two main reasons why you should consider investing in a CX strategy: to keep existing customers returning and transform bounces into new clients. A study conducted by PWC shows that the average consumer is ready to pay up to 16% more when the interaction with the brand is positive, while one in three consumers will walk away after just one bad experience.

When thinking about building a powerful CX strategy for your B2B website, ask yourself what steps the potential user takes from the first encounter to the sealed deal. 

First impressions count: whether it’s a Google search, a sponsored ad, or a poster at the bus stop, transparency is always rewarded. Adopt a product-centric approach and be clear about your service with words, images, or a combination of both. Delivering an unambiguous yet targeted message will attract interested people and invite them to explore further.

If it’s true that content is king, design comes at a close second. When someone reaches your www-site, you  should make sure that there are no usability obstacles. All the information you provide should be well-organized and easy to find. It’s always a good idea to create a virtual guide to guide users’ navigation, offering quick access to contacts, pricing, and search functions. Being consistent in your design and creating an infrastructure that focuses on the user will help keep the visitors’ attention on what is most important: the product.

Customer experience doesn’t end at the check-out. On top of offering support in case something goes wrong, collecting and analyzing feedback should be at the core of your CX strategy.

There’s plenty of online guides and expert advice on how to improve your website, but there is no better source of information than your customer. Whether it’s through statistical data, follow-up emails, or a chatbot, you should take users’ behavior seriously to identify potential obstacles and areas that need improvement.

Effective ways to make your B2B website more customer-friendly

Let’s assume that when you start to sell a service or product, you already have a clear idea of who your target is and why they should come to you rather than the competition. Developing a CX strategy will help you get your message across and improve the digital experience of visitors who find your brand online.

The winning A/B Testing strategy:

The quickest way to understand what works and what doesn’t for your customers is through A/B testing. As the name suggests, A/B testing is the type of analysis you conduct by creating two (or more) versions of a web page to see which one is more effective.

A/B testing can involve variations in design, copy, or pricing, and, when done well, it allows you to tailor your website to the users’ behavior. While you may already have defined your target, A/B testing pushes the profiling further, using hard data to establish the best way in which to present your layout and content.
There are several tools available for businesses willing to experiment with A/B testing. Google Optimize  is a free tool to get started with basic design variations. VWO and Optimizely offer professional platforms to analyze and refine every aspect of your website.

Personalized Content

Episerver’s survey on digital experience tactics in 2019 shows that “the number one website feature/functionality to be adopted in the next 12 months is personalized content (36%) followed by improvements to the mobile experience (33%).”

Personalization of content has become a practice so common that often consumers will interact with the brand only if it speaks to them directly. Creating an experience that is tailored for the individual can seem too technically advanced for small businesses to develop. However, today there are tools available that make this task more straightforward than expected.
Softwares like Unless add a human touch to your webpages, strengthening the connection between business and visitors. Working with geolocalization, analytics, and external integrations, Unless can allow you to communicate with tailored messages.

Clear pricing and easy call scheduling

As mentioned above, you should strive for clarity when talking about your business. Being transparent about what you are selling will always be appreciated by potential customers. Research shows that 44% of B2B buyers would prefer to see price listings displayed online, while 37% of users appreciate being able to book a call with a salesperson.

Streamline the design

Once your website is up and running, you should try to simplify the user experience and the customer’s journey as much as possible. Offering a consistent layout, fast-loading pages, and a thought-through brand placement are all great starting points. The second step is understanding whether the user encounters any obstacles, or finds the site difficult to navigate. Hotjar’s  heatmaps let you see the users’ behavior on your pages, providing data on the elements that attract the most attention and the sections that go overlooked.

Also, avoid being spammy and overdoing it with pop-up forms or call to actions. Customer experience is all about the perception of visitors navigating your web pages, and if a user feels too pressured, they may leave with a bad impression.

Data collection strategy and offer effective support

Data should be collected before, during, and after the users’ interaction with your website. Market research will help you define a general profile of your ideal audience, while asking the users about feedback and impressions will further refine the experience and the target.

Gamified quizzie are an effective way of obtaining information about the visitors coming across your web pages. Typeform can help you create forms, surveys, and questionnaires that will provide relevant information to feed into your dataset.

Communication, however, shouldn’t just be beneficial for you. It is essential to offer excellent customer service at any stage of the experience and support the customer effectively when a problem arises. Whether it’s through a Skype call, a ticketing system or email, fast and efficient communication will make customers happy and remind them of the human side of digital business.

Creating the perfect customer area

Accessing, storing, and changing personal information are key parts of the users’ experience. In this paragraph, we explore when and why you need a customer area in your website.

Having a personal portal can serve several functions:

• Changing personal information; it’s the place where a customer changes home address, subscription plan, credit card, and personal information necessary for transactions; 
• B2B communication; it’s the page where deliverables are shared and saved; 
• Customer service; it’s the area where a ticketing system can be implemented to provide support.

When building the perfect customer area for your B2B website, keep in mind that the interface should be as intuitive as possible. On top of being easy to navigate, it should allow the user to make changes to their profile effortlessly.

A clear privacy policy should also be available to guarantee that any sensitive details are stored safely.

Creating a great customer area page will help you reduce support costs and keep communication organized. By offering private chats or customized contact forms, you’ll be able to tackle issues directly without being overwhelmed by emails or phone calls.
If your website runs on WordPress, plugins like Clinked or SuiteDash  can help you build practical customer areas without excessive coding.

GMV case study: medical devices for soft surgery

GMV is a company that develops non-invasive medical devices designed for soft surgery. They contacted us to develop a strategy to align their website and branding with the success of their products, asking for a complete revision of the customer strategy.

Through our first analysis, we realized there were issues in both the usability of their website and their communication strategy. The information was spread across multiple pages, making it confusing for the user to orient themselves on the website. Their WordPress template wasn’t flexible enough to cater to different target audiences – agents, doctors, and consumers – and they needed a developer every time an update was due.

Our response involved a series of actions aimed at improving brand awareness and placement, making the website faster and more intuitive to navigate. 

Firstly, we made sure every page was consistent in design, creating a visually compelling portal suitable for the three key audiences defined with the brand.

We then developed a Customer Area section tailored for their B2B clients. This section resembles an e-commerce site, offering doctors and agents specific information to sell the products, with promotional materials, manuals, and tutorials.

The results proved that customer satisfaction increased significantly thanks to a leaner design, filtering options, and direct access to support tools. By using a user-first approach for the development of GMV’s portal, we allowed both the company and the customers to save precious time and work in a more efficient digital environment.
You can read the full case study here.

Customer Experience for a B2B website: a conclusion

As you probably have gathered by now, user experience should no longer be an optional part of your business plan. Implementing a strategy to increase the customer experience in your B2B website, together with the satisfaction of users in your B2B website, is critical to strengthen relationships and gain loyalty. In this article, we’ve given you an overview of the main aspects to keep in mind when developing a CX strategy for your digital business. In whichever way you chose to approach it, make sure you always put your customers and their experience first!