What Clients Want to See in Your Web Design

Jeremy Durant — November 30, 2016 Follow @BopDesignSD

A website is a great 24/7 sales tool. It’s a fantastic marketing means to generate leads, establish credibility, increase brand recognition, and build thought leadership – even after hours or when the salespeople are out.

To maximize the ROI of a B2B website, it’s important to consider what potential clients want to see in your website. If the website doesn’t consider the needs and wants of the target audience, it won’t accomplish the four things listed above.

How do you determine what clients want to see in your web design? The answer will be unique to your target marketing and industry, but we’ve laid out 5 typical things potential clients want to see to help you answer that question.

The Value of Your Services/Products

Don’t simply just list your services or products (although you should make it clear WHAT you offer). Think about the value of your services or products, particularly from you client’s viewpoint. Are you saving them time or money, streamlining their process, ensuring they are compliant, or filling some other need?

Once you determine the value of your products or services, be sure that you boil it down to a brief statement – about 4-5 words. Make sure this statement is clearly visible on your B2B website, since it will be one of the main things that will interest and attract potential clients to your website. It’s also an essential element for differentiating your firm from all the competitors in your space.

Credibility + Trust Elements

A prospect won’t become a client unless they trust you and find your firm to be credible. Your website is the perfect place to start to build the credibility that will lead a prospect down the sales funnel.

Consider what matters to your industry.

• Is it certifications from respected institutions, including degrees?
  
• Is it government review and approval?
  
• Is it some other type of third party validation, like publication in a well-known magazine?
  
• Other great forms of credibility are awards for your products or services.

Carefully evaluate the types of trust elements your B2B firm has earned over the years. Determine which are the most appealing and convincing to your potential prospect. Keep in mind that what you think is the most valuable may not be the most valuable to your target market.

Examples of Your Products/Services

Earlier, we mentioned ensuring your products or services are clearly listed on your B2B website. Part of this should include examples of the products or services you offer. There are a variety of ways you can showcase these examples. For example, Bop Design has a portfolio of our B2B web design work. If you have a service offering that doesn’t lend to a portfolio, create case studies about your service in action and the results of that service. Firms that sell products can share pictures of the product in use or even show videos of how to use the product.

Consumers today like to spend some time getting to know a product or service before they ever speak to a salesperson. Make it easy for a potential client to get to know your products or services in more detail before they need to reach out to you.

Contact Information

It’s important that your logo and name are featured on your website, but we make the case that it’s almost more important to have your contact information in a prominent place or places on your website. As an example, the Bop Design website has our phone number clearly listed at the top of the website, as well as a Contact button on the side of our web pages. Both are “sticky” which means they stay in the same spot when a user scrolls – always being visible and easy to click on.

Web design can be cool and interesting and lovely, but it must be functional. Always make sure that contact information – whether it’s a phone number or an address or an email – is highly visible on your B2B website. Don’t make potential clients hunt for it.

What Makes You Special

Potential clients searching for your products or services on the internet want to know what makes your firm special? Why should they work with you rather than your competitor? Your B2B website is the perfect platform for clearly stating what makes your firm special. This isn’t going to be one element, rather, it’s going to be reinforced by multiple elements on your website. Everything from the images you use, the videos you host, your company history, your blog, your content offers, etc. All these elements work together to spell out what makes your firm unique and the best firm to partner with.

Ready to get started on your B2B web design? Check out these 7 Best Practices of Web Design launching your project.

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