Article
Cultivate Business Relationships On Your Website
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Applying the Theory
A simple formula to follow as you build your B2B site's structure and design its pages, is:
A. Qualify (index pages, top screen).
Anticipate the reasons for the visit, and provide navigation grouped by either the purpose of visit, or the type of visitor. Depending on the amount of content you have, you could organize by both: where the B2B visitor clicks will identify who they are.
B. Educate (inside pages, page body).
Provide more information about what the visitor is looking for, bringing them further into your site to teach them about benefits. Don't distract the visitor with sales messages or any non-contextual links.
C. Action (content pages, bottom page).
After you're sure that the visitor got what they came for, make them an offer. This offer can be a sales request, a request for more information, an invitation to join a newsletter, or be contacted by a sales person.
Wrap your general site navigation around the formula above and you have your design for a single page. As the reader moves further down the page, they become increasingly qualified for the action you want them to perform. You give the reader what they want, bringing them closer to you what you want.
Cultivating Relationships - The Practice
These sites do a wonderful job of building a relationship with the visitor in a strictly business-to-business marketplace. Noted is each functional area by (A) Qualify, (B) Education, and (C) Offer.
(A) The landing page provides product information grouped by product type, with subcategories noting product characteristics of interest to the visitor. Note the product benefit after each link.
(B) When you click on a link at the subcategory, you are directed to the information related to the request with only simple navigation. No other sales pitches are provided, just the facts.
(C) At the very bottom of the page, you are provided two options: get more information, or buy a product at the store.
(A) The home page presents boldly the three things their visitors might want to do (transfer hosting, setup hosting, or manage hosting). The next line on the same page goes into more detail about the site's primary purpose of setting up new hosting.
(B) They purposefully provide only high-level information, as qualified visitors already know what the terms mean and have an understanding of the technical aspects of the products on offer.
(C) After the short introduction, they get right to who to contact for more information.
(A) Navigation options on the front page are organized by industry, service, or product. Someone clicking on "Industry > Forestry" is likely interested in those types of products.
(B) They receive an overview of Caterpillar products and related benefits from the perspective of someone in that industry.
(C) At the bottom of the page, the visitor sees a link to find a dealer. A dealer locator form could further enhance this facility, so that the visitor's next step from the page is to the information they want to receive.
Some of these points of interaction could overlap or intersect, but all primarily take the visitor from the general (browse for information) to a specific offer (to provide the information). This whole process happens while generating demographic information about visitors through their navigation paths, and points of response generation. Many B2B sites do not communicate to visitors that the business is interested in long-term relationships with each visitor. If you are in this position, then you will probably know just by looking at your income statement.
These Websites are great to model because the entire experience is about the visitor -- most content is oriented towards the needs of the particular B2B audience that the business serves. Too many sites just talk about how great the company is, what they can do, the latest stock prices, and more things most visitors don't care about. But if you serve your visitor first, they will come back and buy.
Whether you want to build a community, sell your services, or even report on industry news, ask yourself what you can do to keep those business-to-business customers coming back, while gaining valuable information you can use to serve them better?