Motarme guide to website design for B2B technology marketers; includes advice on structure, home page layout and calls to action.

1. B2B Tech Marketer’s
Guide to Website Design

2. 1. You need 4 skills
2. Read this book
3. Decide what your website is for
4. Know your audience
5. Site structure
6. Page layout
7. Build for search
8. Convert your visitors
9. Analytics
10. Principles
Contents

3. 1. You need 4 skills
Marketing
Online
Marketing
Design
Build

4. 1. You need 4 skills
• How to communicate your value
proposition.
• How to promote your products and
services successfully to your target
customers.
• How to differentiate from competitors.
• How ensure your target customers
find you online.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
• Online advertising / paid search.
• Social Media.
• Conversion and Lead capture.
• How to build the website.
• Database and content management
system (CMS) – Wordpress / Joomla /
Drupal …
• Support video, social media
• Lead capture from landing pages.
• Online sales / eCommerce
• How to make your site attractive,
useful and usable for target
customers.
• Structure and layout of pages.
• Colours and fonts.
• Use of graphics.

5. 2. Read this book
•Explains how to make sites more usable.
•Helps you avoid basic errors.
•Main message - when we look at a web page it should be obvious, self-
evident. Don’t use text, graphics or layouts that cause unnecessary
delays or confusion.
•If you follow Steve Krug’s advice you have a better chance of steering
visitors to what you want them to do and see.

6. 3. What is your website for?
Answer:
•To generate sales leads
•To generate sales
Source: DemandBase and Focus.com 2011 Survey of B2B IT and marketing professionals

7. 3. What is your website for?
• The purpose of your website is to (a) generate sales leads and (b) help
you sell products and services.
• Focus your website on bringing in new prospects – people who don’t
know your business yet.
• This means describing what you do clearly and compellingly.
• Balance your goals (sales) and the visitors’ goals (information, service,
support).
• Make it easy for visitors to find information quickly.
• Design your website to encourage those prospects to take an action –
register for something, buy something, download something …
• ‘Convert’ those visitors – registration or sale.

8. 4. Know your audience
• Understand your target audience – who are you trying to attract online?
• Do all potential customers come from the same sector, or different industries?
• If a visitor from one of those industries comes to your website, how will they
recognize you are targeting them?
• Do the people you target all have the same kind of role, or do you sell to multiple
buyers?
• Use “design personas” to model each of these buyers. Usually a maximum of 3 or 4.
• For each persona, ask what goals they will have when arriving on your site – to find
information, download a report, ask for help, read a case study, watch a product
demo …

9. 4. Know your audience
• Create “Design Personas” for your top 3 target customers
• They are “archetypes” representing 80% of your target visitors
• Use them as way to describe and understand those customers
Oscar
Role: Sales manager
Organization: SME
Age: 45
Goals: have easy access to
prospect information 24/7; get
better quality leads; better
pipeline
Nora
Role: Marketing manager
Organization: multi-national
Age: 32
Goals: manage multiple
channels; drive awareness of
the company; produce more
and better quality leads.
Liam
Role: IT manager
Organization: SME
Age: 31
Goals: reliability and
availability; simplified
architecture; security; cloud-
based infrastructure

10. 5. Site structure
• Design your new site structure like an “org chart”
• Use your “personas” as a guide – what goals do they have when they get to
your site? What information do they need?
• Keep the number of levels in your org chart to a minimum, ideally 3 or 4
• If you have an existing site, map from old pages to new to ensure you are
keeping everything that is essential.
About usProduct Services
Home
Contact

11. 5. Site structure
87%Description of service/products
Which Industries You Serve
Success stories / case studies
Professional website design and presentation
About us / biographies
Client list
Online resources/content (white papers etc.)
News items
Podcasts or audio content
Top 10 Website Elements – rated “Important/Extremely Important
87%
Video or online presentations
78%
73%
69%
64%
64%
60%
57%
47%
40%
Source: “How clients buy 2009 Benchmark Report”, RainToday

12. 6. Page layout
Develop ‘wireframe’ designs for home page and internal pages
Use the ‘personas’ to guide the wireframes – base them on the personas goals
(e.g. find information) and your objectives (e.g. get visitor to register for
download)
Drive your visitors to take an action – the “Most Wanted Action” – on each page
Provide downloads and prominent ‘buy now’ offers
Make good use of page structure, text to explain what you do
Make most of the page ‘clickable’ to lead visitors to further actions /
information.
Call us now!
XX XXX XXXX
RequestaCallback

13. 6. Page layout
• Have plenty of “bait” on your site
• If you are business to business (B2B)– offer documents, videos, presentations, content that
people will want to download
• Ask for their email address in exchange for the download
• If you are business to consumer (B2C) – promote special offers, “buy now”

14. 6. Page layout
• Make as much of each page “clickable” as you can – especially all graphics.
• Use photographs of real people instead of stock photography where possible.
• Be careful about using very large graphics – heatmaps indicate visitor’s eyes
tend to skip past and around them.
Source: MarketingSherpa B2B Website Homepage Design Research Study 2008

15. 6. Page layout
 “Outside In” – make sure your website and your page layouts reflect your target
customers. Will they quickly recognize you are targeting them?
 Is your Value Proposition clear on each page?
 Is it easy to find information – clear menus and links, search option?
 Are there “Calls to Action” – CTAs – on each page?
 Trust – do you make it clear you are trustworthy e.g. through customer and
partner logos, quality marks, security certifications?
 Evidence – do you provide proof that you can do what you say you do?
 Have you designed for Search – clear page structure, clear readable URLs, page
tags, headers?
 Have you designed for Mobile – responsive design?
 Have you designed for Social –links to social accounts, share options?
Checklist

16. 7. Build for search
Most people (64%) click on the
first 3 results on Google page 1
•42% to the first result
•12% to the second
•9% to the third
Less than 10% click on pages
beyond page 1
Source: SEOBook and SEOMoz
• 85% of business buyers find what they want via search engines
• When people search, they usually don’t go past page 1 of the
search results

17. 7. Build for search
 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Paid Search are your tools to ensure you are found
 Decide which search terms you want to get found for, based on current search patterns
from Google keyword tool – keyword analysis and selection
 Configure pages so they target those selected keywords – the URL, page description, page
title tag, header tags and any graphics
 Create content – blog posts, graphics, video, text, documents – that targets those keywords
 Ask other sites to link to your site
 Link your website to your social media accounts, encourage sharing, follows / likes / +1s ...

18. 8. Convert your visitors
 You convert visitors by bringing them to Landing Pages – specially designed pages with
a clear call to action and a corresponding registration or download form
 Rule #1: Avoid unnecessary distractions – push visitor to your “Most Wanted Action”
 Be consistent with the ad or email that brought your visitor here, including keywords,
logos and other images
 Spell out your Value Proposition and the benefits of this particular offer and have a
clear call to action
 Remove any unnecessary navigation
 Try to keep registration fields to a minimum e.g. Name and email
 “A/B” test 2 versions of landing page to see which works best
 Use Google Analytics to monitor conversions

19. 9. Analytics
 Set up Google Analytics on your website so you can monitor traffic.
 Set some goals for the website e.g. Overall traffic, traffic from particular regions,
ranking for search terms, lead generation goals.
 You can use Google Analytics to monitor conversions across your website e.g.
graphically track downloads and landing page registrations over time.
 Can link this through to Google Pay-per-click campaigns i.e. monitor which ads and
keywords generate the most landing page registrations.
 There are additional tools like CrazyEgg , KissMetrics, Mouseflow and Clicktale to
monitor and analyze visitor behaviour on your website.

20. 9. Principles
1. User-centric – think about your target customers and their needs.
2. Beautiful – a beautiful site doesn’t cost any more than an ugly one. Don’t
tolerate ugliness. Make your site as attractive as possible.
3. Usability – make your website easy to use and navigate for your expected
visitors. Use icons, words, menus and graphics that are natural to users.
4. Simplicity – make your website is as simple as possible.
5. Structure – structure your home page and internal pages in a meaningful way.
Items that are related should be grouped together. Unrelated items should be
separated or otherwise distinguished.
6. Measure – setup Google Analytics on the site, monitor performance.

21. 9. Principles
7. Consistency – consistency in the appearance and behaviour of the website
makes it easier to use.
8. Conventions – conventions (such as placing the logo on the top left) help reduce
the effort for visitors. Stick with them where possible.
9. Conversion – Remember what your website is for – generating leads and sales.
Make calls-to-action noticeable, clickable. Don’t use the word “submit” – try
‘Download’ or ‘Register’ or ‘Get your white paper now’
10. Test – test your website with real people (not your staff) – watch them as they
use (or try to use) your site to achieve some goals.

22. 22
About Motarme

23. Motarme is an easy-to-use enterprise Marketing Automation system. Motarme is
specifically designed to help business-to-business (B2B) companies in the technology,
software and industrial sectors generate sales leads online. In addition to our web-based
Marketing Automation product we provide consulting, web marketing and lead generation
services. Our customers include Siemens, Mergon Group, SF Engineering and mid-size and
early stage technology companies.
Web: www.Motarme.com.

24. Clients
“ We have seen for ourselves how a solid
strategy has helped to drive traffic to our
site and generate sales leads.”
Caolan Bushell
Business Development Manager
Mergon Group
Barry Rooney
Chief Operations Officer
Siemens ITSS
“The system delivered real,
measurable results in a short
timeframe – sales and contacts from
our target audience at Tier 1
companies.”
Joe Lynch
General Manager
IMEC Technologies
“Generating leads online is now a
central part of our sales strategy.”
About Motarme

25. Thank You
Automated Marketing That Drives Sales
michael.white@motarme.com
@michaelgwhite
www.motarme.com