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Archives for 2007

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B2B Tagging

You’ve seen the tags that you can add to your Flickr pictures, YouTube videos, blog posts, submissions to Digg, etc. These are important because they change how we can find and use information:

Why is tagging important? Because you no longer to have to “file” information in one “folder.” Information can be tagged with multiple keywords or keyphrases and then “exists” within these multiple places. Usually you can search for information based on words included within it, meta information (usually invisible information used to describe the type of information), and the keywords. This allows multiple ways to find information and usually results in a more satisfying search experience (more – we still have a long way to go).

Tagging on a customer-centric website allows your visitors to determine how to organize your information (instead of you), which leads to a more satisfying experience (so they’re more likely to come back). Tagging can also be used to tie various pieces of content together which you can use to show your customers what other people tagged with the same tags, most popular content, etc. which also gives your customers a sense of community.

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B2B Sales Leads

Having a website is supposed to increase your sales (if done properly). How do you know who is looking at your site and who is interested in your products?

One popular way is to put some type of login/registration requirement in place in order for people to see some type of information or content that they are looking for. This seems like an excellent idea from a sales or marketing standpoint, except now you’re dropping all pretenses of having a customer-centric website. Remember to think about what your customer wants. If they are searching for some information on your website (or came from a search engine) and have to register or login before they can get it, how many of them will just leave your site entirely (with a bad taste in their mouth) instead of giving you that information?

Instead, only collect personal information when it is in the customer’s best interest to do so. Offer a form or online chat where people can request more information that includes as little information as needed to help them. This is not the time to get their full contact information, date of birth, credit card, and what color their bath mats are. Name and email or phone are plenty. And guess what? You now have a sales lead that was willingly given to you – this customer is much more interested in your products and services. They are probably further down the sales funnel and therefore a much more valuable contact than just throwing up login requirements to get lots of names.

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B2B Website Usability – Does It Work?

You may be wondering if all these tips for redesigning your website to be customer-centric work.

A month ago we redesigned the flagship website (a B2B publication) at the publishing company where I work. The redesign focused on increasing the amount of content that is updated more frequently, offering more content (including blogs and video), and making it easier for readers to find what they’re looking for (by following good usability practices).

Since the redesign we’ve been monitoring their traffic using Google Analytics because it filters out all search engines and crawlers. The average weekly visits have increased 34%, average weekly page views have increased 23% and average weekly visitors have increased 36%. The change was so dramatic that the traffic on the first day was higher than it had been in six months (probably due to word-of-mouth or a forum post somewhere) – the publication didn’t advertise the redesign in print until the following Monday which had another increase in traffic.

Website optimization is a constant process so there still is work to do to see what works for our customers (readers) and what doesn’t. Using Google’s stats and site overlay we’re able to constantly tweak the site to help readers find what they’re looking for. Next step is to take a look at few more customer-problem sections as shown by a high percentage of exits on certain pages (through Google analytics) and to consider removing registration requirements from the rest of the content. We’ll also take a look at the keyword cloud on the site (what keywords are repeated throughout the content) and how they relate what readers are looking for through search engines (including our own).

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