In a digital world where we are all bombarded with marketing at every turn, a less than stellar website can quickly be detrimental to the success of your digital marketing plan and ultimately your company.

However, creating a great website requires an in depth understanding of an array of necessary features as well as the technical web development skills needed to pull them together.

Thankfully, there are millions of incredible websites literally at your fingertips that can serve as an inspiration for a B2B website design that is both visually appealing, highly functional, and effective at bringing in organic search traffic.

The Cornerstone of Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Offering your audience an appealing, easy to navigate, and SEO optimized website is absolutely essential for modern B2B businesses looking to stand out from the competition. In fact, it should be the central piece of your overall digital marketing strategy.

Marketing companies will tell you that a phenomenal website is far more than a simple business brochure. Rather, it does everything from drawing in new leads, connecting with your audience, establishing credibility, building trust, answering important questions, providing valuable market research, and even closing sales.

In this article, we will analyze 10 essential features for your B2B website design. In addition, we will explore some great example sites to help you create a new site that will immediately impress your website visitors and keep pushing them forward on the customer journey.

1. Know Your Target Audience

One of the most crucial pieces of any digital marketing strategy is acquiring an in-depth understanding of who you want to attract and serve. It is essential to have a deep understanding of what your target customers want and what they need.

What pain points cause them the most struggle? What are the running from and what are they running toward? What are their intricate preferences? And how does your product or service fit into those desires and characteristics?

Once you know those details, you can tailor make the design, website content, and user experience of your B2B website to align with their specific expectations. Making the customer the central focus of your website strategy will enable you to create a website that resonates and captures their attention, and ultimately drives conversions.

No matter what business industry you're in, your ideal customer is the foundation for a truly impactful B2B website design.

Bonsai understands this concept and uses targeted subpages to focus directly on individual segments within their larger audiences: small businesses, agencies, and freelancers.

2. Know Who You Are: Value Proposition

“Being different has its own uber power which is strikingly irresistible.” (Hiral Nagda)

Before you can truly be competitive in any industry, you need to understand what makes you different than other businesses that offer the same product or service. This will typically require some market research to analyze your competitors.

In order to create a successful B2B website, you need to clearly communicate that value proposition that makes you "strikingly irresistible." In others words, be able to clearly describe why your visitor should choose you to meet their need.

It is imperative to align every element of your design around that unique value proposition that you are offering. Offer compelling messaging that conveys your unique selling point throughout your entire site. Capitalize on your unique value in everything from text to visual graphics and video.

Jasper, an AI writer targeted at marketers, does this incredibly well. Not only do they communicate what makes them different, they allow visitors to personally demo it right off the bat.

3. Use An Organized Site Structure

There's a lot of good to be said for a simple, clear and concise user interface that provides a customer experience that doesn't overwhelm. Rather, it will naturally lead visitors to the next logical step.

Your website navigation is the foundation of your entire site. By employing a clear and intuitive navigation, you create a positive user experience and encourage more engagement and ultimately, more conversions.

As an added bonus, a well-organized website also improves crawl-ability by search engines and enhances your SEO. For convenience, be sure to include both header and footer navigation menus as well as a quick search function.

We would expect only the cleanest site from organization Goliath, Evernote. Their home page utilizes a clean, straightforward structure to invite visitors into their world while also welcoming back existing customers.

4. Tell Website Visitors What To Do Next

To be successful, your B2B website should include the strategic use of a clear and compelling call to action on all of your web pages. Simply put, CTA's boldly tell visitors to take a specific desired action that align with the goals of your business.

Once a visitor is on your website, you have their attention. To make them paying customers, you need to eliminate distractions and take the lead directing them toward the next step in your customer journey. Tell them to sign up for your newsletter, direct them to request a demo, instruct them to make a purchase or contact your sales team.

Audience specific landing pages and a virtual sales funnel can also be an effective way to create an easy entry point to bring qualified leads through your sales cycle.

To effectively incorporate CTAs into your B2B website design, make them prominent by using color and design to get attention. Use persuasive text that resonates with your specific audience and clearly communicate the benefit they will receive by taking action quickly.

On their b2b website design, PandaDoc provides two very clear next steps through the CTA on their home page.

5. Establish Credibility and Build Trust

In a highly digital world, the element of personal connection becomes substantially more challenging, and even more important. By focusing on building trust and connecting with your website visitors, you foster long-term relationships and encourage conversions.

Remember that building trust online starts with the initial avenue that you use to generate leads, be it social media channels, digital ads, email marketing, or the blogs that bring in website traffic from search engines.

In these avenues as well as your website, one of the simplest, but most powerful tips is to show your face. According to Forbes, "...consumers want to know more about the people that are running these companies. The more they know, the more they trust you."

Incorporating the use of video (showing your face, of course!) throughout your website is a powerful avenue to share your brand story, quickly connect with your audience, and move them toward action.

Last of all, be sure to incorporate social proof elements that instill confidence, such as client testimonials, case studies, customer success stories, industry affiliations, certifications, or awards. In addition, make it easy for visitors to reach out by including contact information or forms that function properly to ensure quick followup.

Webflow, a popular website builder platform, utilizes a short, but powerful video that quickly helps establish credibility as well as offers powerful social proof directly from their clients.

6. Present Your Product By Emphasizing The End Result

For a successful B2B website design, it is crucial to present your products or services strategically. Generally speaking, no matter who your potential customers are, they often don't care much about the intricate details and descriptions of your product.

Ultimately, they want to know what it can do for them. What will their business look like if they buy your product or employ your service? Include what they need to know about key features, and unique selling points, but always keep the focus on what it will produce for them.

Telling a story is a quick way to engage, become more memorable, and ultimately provide a visual of the tangible results they are looking for. Often, the best story inspirations are within client testimonials or in your own personal or company origin story. What shifted in your own life in order to bring you to the solution that you are offering to other companies?

To complement, make sure that you use high-quality visuals, such as images, videos, or interactive demos, to demonstrate your product from every angle or showcase proven past results from your service. Additionally, provide clear options and pricing information (or clear next steps for custom price quotes) to help potential customers make informed decisions.

Surfer SEO, a comprehensive tool for SEO, puts the graphics of their system front and center of their b2b website design. But they do it in a way that focuses on the powerful results that users can expect.

7. Complement Your Site With Great Graphics

Graphics will enhance the visual appeal of your B2B website design, aid in simplifying complex information, and help engage visitors. Incorporate visual elements throughout your site to break up text and create a pleasing balance.

Infographics or data visualizations can help simplify complex concepts or present statistical information. Photos can help showcase products or bring personality to your brand.

Studies show that incorporating faces into your marketing strategy is a powerful way to get attention, build connection, create emotion, and make your brand more memorable.

For best results, always use high-quality photos or graphics that resonate with your target audience and ensure that they are optimized for fast loading and properly tagged for SEO.

By leveraging graphics effectively, you can create an engaging and visually appealing B2B website that captures attention, communicates effectively, and leaves a lasting impression on visitors.

Kajabi does an impeccable job targeting creators on their b2b website design by incorporating the faces of many of their clients, along with their individual success story with the platform.

8. Additional Design Elements

Along with photos and graphics, you should incorporate consistent design elements to maintain a cohesive visual style throughout your website. This includes use of your brand colors, themes, styles, and fonts.

It's important to use an easy to read font that contrasts well to your background. Also, make reading easier by breaking up larger blocks of text to no more than three lines at a time and include interactive elements.

You can also use of a visual hierarchy to draw attention and highlight more important features like titles or special quotes. Keep your site clean and uncluttered, to prevent overwhelm, by including plenty of white space throughout and sticking to less than 5 colors.

Gusto, a payroll and HR platform, offers fun cohesive colors and elements that beautifully tie together their brand website.

9. Attract and Connect Through Quality Content

Part of your B2B website design strategy should include the use of informative content aimed at the pain points and interest's of your target audience. Blogs provide an opportunity to attract new potential customers through organic traffic from search engines.

In fact, 60% of marketers attest to the efficiency of content marketing for both lead generation as well as for encouraging loyalty from existing clients.

To increase effectiveness, optimize your blog posts for search engines by incorporating relevant keywords that match user intent and by also providing internal and external links to authoritative sources. Then encourage social sharing and comments to foster conversation.

Wave, a bookkeeping platform, targets new small business owners by answering commonly searched questions through their blog. These include topics such as how to register corporations in certain states.

10. Speed and Device Compatibility

In addition to clear website navigation, your site should offer a fast load time and maintain a clear structure across all types of devices. Page speed is a crucial part of the customer experience as well as SEO for lead generation.

With over half of web traffic originating from mobile devices, it's imperative that your site be mobile friendly. It will help keep your users engaged as well as enhance your SEO efforts.

This will usually mean simplifying your existing site by condensing the navigation, shortening longer titles, eliminating some graphics or background images, as well as using sliders or drop downs to condense content.

The software company, SAP, offers a great example of how this is done.

Overall Best Practices For Effective B2B Website Design

You can help ensure success for your new site or website redesign project by implementing these best practices for your B2B website. 

Start by knowing your target audience well so you can tailor your web design around them and create a user experience that resonates with their needs and preferences.

Present your company well by high-quality graphics, frequent CTAs, and a strong value proposition. This will help you build trust, connect with site visitors, and drive conversions.

Taking the time to incorporate a blog will provide opportunities to enhance visibility, establish thought leadership, and attract organic traffic through SEO.

Lastly, don't forget to leverage tracking and analytics programs (like Google Analytics) to get valuable qualitative research data on user behavior. This will allow you to continuously test your website effectiveness and work toward higher conversion rate optimization.

We hope that you've found a great example (or two, or three!) here to inspire your B2B website design.

Simplify Your Journey to The Best B2B Website Design

Feeling overwhelmed in the details of B2B website design? Then it may be time to hire a professional web designer, as in a web design agency that specializes on B2B businesses for instance. Let us create a custom website that caters to the specific needs of you and your target audience, while you get your focus back on serving them and expanding your business. Get in touch with us today.

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