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Customer-Centric Sites

In Good vs. Bad B2B Websites, I introduced the idea of customer-centric sites: designing your site with your customer in mind instead of your company or organization. Why is customer-centric design important?

Your Customers will go somewhere else. There are plenty of websites and companies out there that do the same thing. If your customers can’t find what they are looking for on your site, they will quickly look elsewhere. According to a 2006 Online Transactions survey conducted for Tealeaf by Harris Interactive,

The top problems that would cause online consumers to immediately and permanently turn to a competitor’s website are:

  • Incorrect information or lack of adequate information on the website (41%);
  • Inability to complete the transaction due to an endless loop (36%);
  • Difficulty navigating the website (37%); and
  • Being automatically kicked off the page (25%).

Your Customers will tell their friends. With the proliferation of blogging, message boards and instant messaging, your customers are talking to each other. If one customer has a bad experience with your website, the others will quickly know. You can benefit from this communication and react instantly to your customers’ needs with a community on your own website.

InformationAge – Action/Reaction: Web 2.0: The fastest-growing websites are those geared towards interaction and community.

If you don’t, your competitors will. As competition on the web grows, companies are forced to improve their websites in order to stay in business. Websites used to be a required for the credibility of a company. Now they are often the only way a company communicates with its customers and potential customers.

Next Steps: The idea of customer-centric sites is tied intimately to the usability of a website. Here are some good sources of more information on website usability:

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RSS for B2B Websites

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a feed which sends content from the website out to a feed reader. RSS provides an easy way to check hundreds of sites for updates in one place. Google and Bloglines both offer a web-based reader, and there are several software based readers including NewsGator.

More importantly, what good are RSS feeds to a B2B Website? Having RSS feeds for the content on your website allows your readers to subscribe to the feed and be alerted through their feed reader when you update content on your site. You can set the feed up to send out the entirety of your content or just snippets to entice visitors to read the rest on your site. Most mainstream sites send out their entire content, relying on visitors to come to their sites based upon their good information and functionality. RSS feeds also allow search engines and other web crawlers another way to access and index the content on your site which can increase your search engine optimization (SEO).

Many mainstream content management systems and blogging software already have RSS feed functionality, including the ability to customize how the feed looks and what content it sends out. There are also plugins, scripts and software available to create feeds from your web content. The more adventurous can also attempt to code their own feeds.

RSS feeds can also be used to take content from other sites and display them on your own (please make sure you are aware of any copyright restrictions). This requires software to turn the feed into code (HTML) which is displayable as part of your webpage. Many content websites already have this built in to widgets, badges and plugins they offer on their site (ex. Flickr, Twitter). For these sites, it is as simple as copying the code they give you into your own website code.

Once you have RSS feeds setup on your website, you can use RSS tracking sites, such as FeedBurner (just acquired by Google) to track how many people are subscribed to your feed, reading your feed content, and coming to your website from the feed. Without this type of specialized tracking, you can get ballpark statistics from looking at the visitors on your site. Many of the feed crawlers will announce themselves as such in their browser information (usually in the visitor information of analytics software). Google Analytics displays how many readers are subscribed and using the Google Reader. You will also be able to see visitors who come from web-based feed readers in the referral section of your analytics program.

RSS feeds for B2B websites allow your visitors to be constantly updated when you post new content on your website. SEO is improved by giving search engines and web crawlers a way to be updated when content is updated on your site. And you can improve the content on your own site by looking for badges, widgets and plugins that allow content from other sites to be displayed on your site (through RSS feeds).

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Good vs. Bad B2B Websites

I just got back from a B2B trade show in Las Vegas, representing the publishing company where I work, to sell our online products to our B2B customers. As part of my research of each customer, I visited their website to see what their Internet presence looked like. I looked at about a dozen websites, which ran the gambit from pretty good to not very good at all (ok I’m being a little nice – some were pretty bad).

What was the difference between the good sites and the bad sites? Whether they are customer-centric or company-centric. Customer-centric sites recognize that B2B customers come to a website to do research for a buying decision or to find service or support for products they’ve already purchased. These sites provide white papers, in-depth product descriptions, training, service and support. Most importantly, it is easy for a customer to find exactly what they are looking for through good web design (usability) and search functionality.

As shown in our previously discussed research from American Business Media and the Washington Post, and confirmed in research from the Nielson Norman Group, B2B Decision Makers use the web to conduct research for buying decisions. According to the Nielson Norman Group research, B2B websites measured a mere 58% success rate, compared to the 66% for mainstream websites (this is success of the website visitors being able to accomplish their goals in visiting).

How do you become a customer-centric website or improve your customer experience?

Finding What They Need
Think about what your customers may be looking for when they come to your website. Taking a look at your analytics to see what keywords are used to enter the site from search engines and what paths visitors take through your website can give you valuable insight on what information you need to provide or make easier to find. If you have an internal search function, take a look at what visitors are searching for through it as well. Visitors often turn to a search when they cannot find what they’re looking for on the homepage or menus.

Organization
Organize the information on your website in a logical, easy-to-find manner. Place top level menu links on every single page of your website. These top level links should be descriptive and easy to understand (ex. Home, Products, Services, Help). Your homepage can contain a lot of information, but make sure there is enough white space for eyes to easily scan through it for important points. Product or Service pages should include everything needed to make a purchase decision, including a ballpark price and detailed specifications.

Purchasing
Once a visitor has made a decision to purchase (or to get the final information before purchase), it should be easy for them to find your contact information. Placing information on every Product and Service page (or even on every page of the website) and having a Contact page puts the information right in front of their fingers. Provide both a phone number and an email address since some customers are very busy and email is easier for them. If you do have products with fixed prices, consider an eCommerce solution with a shopping cart to allow your customers to make a purchase as easily as possible.

Support and Loyalty
Make your website a place your existing customers can use by providing information and training about your products, including white papers, spec sheets, webinars, podcasts and training videos. Adding community to your website through forums, comments and blogs can help you connect with your customers and provide valuable feedback through direct communication. Embrace any customers who post about problems by addressing their concerns in a fair manner. Use their insight to improve your product and your customers will feel more loyalty to your brand.

Good B2B websites focus on customer-centric designs to fulfill the needs of their customers who in turn will be more satisfied and loyal.

Need Help with Your B2B Website? Get started with a free website analysis or contact us for a quote.

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