Newsletter #89 Building a Great B2B Website

Created on 29/06/04

A special hello to all new subscribers. This article is on the Web at this address.

The last newsletter (1st June, 2004) was "M-Commerce Goes Ballistic"

Much of the focus in Website strategy, design and usability has been on B2C (Business to Consumer), rather than B2B (Business to Business) Websites. However it is only retailers who are purely B2C, the rest of you are probably more interested in selling your wares to other businesses.

The reality is that B2B sites, or the section of your site that focusses on B2B interactions, needs to support an entirely different buying process. If you haven't appreciated that then you're missing out on many opportunities and definitely need to read on!

The major differences between a B2B purchase and a B2C one are that:

• The length of the sales cycle is normally longer
• There are more steps in the process
• The decision to buy is normally made by more than one person

Like a B2C purchase though, your site must survive the initial screening process and get on the shortlist. This is where your Search Engine visibility and links from industry portals come to the fore. Often industry portal links are more important for smaller businesses as portals can achieve better search engine positioning and far more traffic than a standalone business site with a small budget.

Once on your site you need to make sure a potential customer:

• Sees your site as professional and doesn't reject you out of hand
• Can easily find the information they require via your home page or any other page on your site. Always be aware that visitors may initially land on an internal page.
• Can get at least an idea of the pricing of your products or services - if they are researching ballpark figures for a project they'll go elsewhere if you don't provide that information.

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INTERNET STRATEGY -- If you or your company are planning an Internet development why not give us a call? Often we find that business managers or owners don't see all the possibilities or fully understand how the Internet can be used within their business. First consultation free. Check out this page or just reply to this email.

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If you put some effort into making it easy for potential customers to deal with you, the rewards can be great. Jakob Nielsen in a recent article argues that if your product is any good you will have a number of advocates in companies who prefer it to the competition. Nielsen says your job is to make it easy for them to argue your case to other managers by providing an "Advocacy Kit". These kits can include elements like:

• Product photos that can be used for illustration of product uses or scale diagrams that are useful for planning.
• White papers that plainly and concisely setout the ROI (Return on Investment) of your product or service.
• Tables that show set out product specifications and show comparisons between your products and your competition.
• Downloadable PowerPoint presentations on a neutral background so they can easily be incorporated into anyone's corporate template.
• Email updates that keep your advocates informed about new features and updates

In all cases the best file formats to use are the ones that make it easiest for advocates to download and use. Generally HTML pages are best except where tables are involved when Microsoft Word format is the easiest to paste into other documents. PDFs are only really useful if you expect people to print out the whole document rather than cut and paste - we feel that PDFs are used too often on the Web.

Product photos or diagrams should also be in JPEG and GIF formats respectively, except where high resolution is required, when TIFF is the best option.

Building a great B2B Website is about building a customer relationship tool, not just an online advertising brochure.

Newbies

Power Users

Hey if you are a Power User you shouldn't really be seen dead using the IE browser should you? Microsoft stopped improving IE several years ago, it has security problems galore and at least two browsers I use, or have used, are better:

Mozilla Firefox at http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
Opera 7.51at http://www.opera.com/

For previous tips visit the Power Hot Tips page.

Technorati is a conversation engine. It tells you what's being said, right now, about every blog or site that has something to say. Search for a keyword or phrase and Technorati lists every other page that has linked to it in the past 24 hours, ranked by freshness or authority. Technorati watches early 3 million Weblogs and tracks over 400 million links at the time this was written. http://www.technorati.com/index.html

The winner of the Education Award at the last Webby Awards the BBC's Human Body is a must-visit if you're interested in what makes us tick. A great site to point the kids at too. Full of great information and interactive tests - see if you can spot the difference between a fake and a real smile and beat my 17/20. :-) http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/

"Mobile Lifestyle: Changing the Nature of Information" by Sean Carton. The trend toward mobility and taking Internet-acquired information on the road will continue. A very worthwhile read. http://tinyurl.com/2hry8

To search through all the articles in our online database use the search function on any page of our Website.

"Nothing holds up the progress of science so much as the right idea at the wrong time." Vincent de Vigneaud

You can see our other Quick Quotes on the front page of www.netinsites.com; just refresh the page to see another one randomly selected from our database. Great for presentations or times when you want to appear to be a techno-dude(ss)!

To access previous newsletters visit our newsletter archive.

If you want to subscribe to this newsletter just visit www.netinsites.com and use the box at the top right.

Best wishes

Alex Garden

Internet Strategy | Website Design | Website Promotion | Web Text Messaging | Email Newsletters | Online Sports Games | Content Management