A B2B website design project is a great opportunity to craft a truly compelling online platform for your firm. A professional, polished website is a great tool that can be leveraged by your sales team to increase revenue. It’s also a valuable asset for your marketing team to increase brand exposure and drive leads and can be used by your client support team to retain and educate clients, and much more.
At Bop Design, my team works on B2B website design projects every day, but I understand that for many businesses, website projects are only undertaken every 3 – 5 years. As such, I’m sharing a few things a CEO should keep in mind when engaging a firm to do a website redesign.
1. Either be involved or empower your marketing team to lead the project and make decisions on your behalf. Having one foot in the B2B web design project and one foot out just impedes your team and the project and can result in delays, excessive changes, and additional costs.
Even a 10 – 15-page website requires a significant investment of time spent providing input, making decisions, giving feedback on copy and design, and reviewing changes. Be realistic about the amount of time you have to invest and where it falls in your current and future priorities.
2. Know what a website can and can’t do. A website redesign is a great way to refresh your company’s brand, increase brand awareness in your industry, and help generate new client leads. However, a new website is not going to fix a broken business model, an under-performing sales team, or a bad reputation.
3. Know your target audience. Your firm’s target audience(s) should be clearly defined prior to commencing a project. This is a crucial piece of strategic organizational decision-making that should be done prior to engaging a B2B website design agency. You know your market best.
4. Understand what makes your company unique. Determine who your main competitors are in your field and what makes your firm different. Understanding the competitive landscape and communicating that to your agency is critical in making the new website a success.
5. Define your product or service offering clearly. Launching a new B2B website to showcase and promote a new product or service offering is great. Trying to define what that service or product offering is during a website project is a recipe for disaster and can delay timelines –and add costs — to your project. This is another crucial piece of strategic organizational decision-making that should be done prior to engaging a web design agency.
6. Support the website redesign efforts. In today’s hyper-connected digital world, a professional B2B website design is not a nice-to-have but is a must-have. Regardless of your involvement in the website project, make your support of the project clear to everyone within the company. By clearly stating your support, you are creating a smoother design process for your internal team and paving the way for a successful launch, not to mention post-launch ROI engagement.
7. Plan initiatives accordingly. It’s important to understand the time commitment that should be budgeted for the team working on the website project. A B2B website redesign is a huge undertaking and a collaborative process, so teams need to be accessible to provide feedback and materials necessary to move the project forward. I do not recommend taking on a website project concurrent with another big initiative happening in the company – whether it’s an event, product launch, or another time-intensive project.
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