How to maximise the effectiveness of your B2B professional services website

But before we go through the tips and strategies of how to create an effective B2B professional services website, it is important that you understand why and what we can expect from your website.

Different businesses use websites in different ways. As a B2B professional services provider, your objective should be to have potential clients visit your website to find information on your products and services before doing business with you.

The website educates, persuades, impresses and motivates them to take action and find out how you can help them. When done right, you can expect your website to:

• Increase your visibility and credibility – a website makes you look professional and established. It improves your business image and implies your business is progressive and up to date with technology.
• Reduce cost – you can save thousands of dollars in printing and mailing costs by putting your brochure online. Not only that, having information about your products and services on your website allows your business to reduce phone calls and staff time answering frequently asked questions.
• Provide instant information on and access to your products and services – visitors can help themselves to information anytime and anywhere, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• Shortens the sales cycle – by the time the client calls you, they already know a lot about your products and services and who you are. They will feel more comfortable and will trust you.
• Allows an easier way for your clients to refer people to you – word of mouth is by far the most effective form of advertising. Having a website means your existing clients can refer their associates to your website, which is a lot less threatening than giving you a call straight away.
• Reach non-local businesses – a website can expand your reach to a market that may have been otherwise difficult or expensive to reach through traditional advertising. In fact, since 1998, the proportion of Australian small businesses that are connected to the internet has risen from 34 per cent to 92 percent (Sensis® e-Business Report, August 2007).
• Versatile with what you can sell and display – the web enables you to display images, audio, and video clips effectively and inexpensively. Websites can also be updated as often as you like for minimal costs, making them an extremely versatile advertising medium.
  

Now that you see the potential effect a website can have on any B2B professional services business, I hope it gives you enough reason to take your online strategy seriously. If planned correctly, it can leverage any B2B professional services business like no other marketing tools. On the other hand, if your website is not powerful and effective, you are going to have a difficult time converting those visitors into clients.

In the next few months, Market Ease will bring you a series of articles relating to your B2B professional services websites and strategies on how to maximise their effectiveness. Here is a glimpse of what’s to come:

• Bad design vs. good design – a survey reveals what people like and dislike in a website and how to utilise this information to create effective, user-friendly websites for your B2B professional services business.
• What to look for in a web designer – there are so many web designers out there; how do you find the one that is right for you? A simple checklist for finding the right web designer for you
• Top 10 strategies for maximising conversion rates for your B2B professional services website
• Does your website make these mistakes? – What to avoid in your B2B website
• The one single factor that has caused many B2B professional services firms to lose 75 – 85% of their leads – this is a very common mistake that you must avoid.
• And more (to be revealed later)...