Our client first came to us in 2016 to help with conversion rate optimisation. They not only wanted us to review their B2B lead generation website, but also find ways to improve it.
They asked us a question that many managers of large B2B websites no doubt wrestle with, especially if they have to cater both for a broad and uniquely specialised audience.
How do you convert more leads when each of your customers has unique content needs?
To put the problem into context, this particular client serves a variety of distinct target markets with a vast array of specialised products, technologies and services. They use their website to generate leads for their dedicated sales team to follow up. It’s vital that each audience group finds the product and service relevant to their needs, but also a level of detail that speaks to their specialism and lends credibility to their business.
So how do you get more leads from your B2B website?
Back to the client’s original question. It really boils down to two things: content strategy and user journey. How could we structure the website in a way that users could easily navigate and locate the right product or service for their needs? And how could we present relevant content and promote conversion?
This problem could easily be resolved if your products and services were unique to each market. For example, you could segment users with a market filter, or create a product selection page using an ‘industry’ content filter and serve up a highly relative set of information.
But what if each of your products or services has some degree of relevancy to each of your target markets? What if your products or services need to be presented differently depending on their intended use? In other words, a product feature might be pertinent to some markets, but entirely irrelevant to others.
Finding the best UX strategy for B2B lead generation
Option 1
If we wanted to provide a true level of relevancy to each user, then one approach would be to implement a unique product page for each intended use case. Every product page would explain how a certain product could be applied in each industry.
However, with 55 products being offered to 17 markets and 15 applications, we would need to write around 14,000 unique pages of content. Clearly, this wasn’t practical. Not only would the client have to write a substantial amount of content, but we would also need to consider the following issues:
- Would our client have the resources and expertise needed to create, manage and update that many unique pages of content?
- How would they apply a competent on-page SEO strategy across that volume of content?
- How would so much repetition impact page rank?
- How could we create an effective menu and/or content filter system to direct users to the appropriate content?
Option 2
The other option is to create a generic page that provides a basic overview of each product, without providing industry-specific context around how it might be used. This would make the site easier to navigate and reduce the amount of content needed. However, this wouldn’t solve the main problem of credibility and relevance.
Our Solution: Optimised UX
- Create a generic overview of each product, technology, application and market.
- Implement a filter system between each product, technology, and application.
- Introduce a system of prioritisation which ranked all products, markets, technologies and applications by their importance to the business.
- Generate a wealth of supporting material – case studies, events, datasheets, white papers, infographics, news items, videos, and webinars to educate users and provide greater context and credibility to the core proposition.
- Implement a bespoke content filter to remove irrelevant linking material based on page visitation during each session.
- Include a contact form at every stage of the user journey.
We liked this user journey strategy for several reasons. Our initial audit of the website’s user analytics showed there wasn’t a predictable starting point to each user journey. Some users would start by selecting the application and others the market.
Our strategy didn’t force users down a specific route. We allowed them the freedom to navigate through the site in a way that felt relevant to them. This offered a less intrusive user experience than hiding content through a filter system. We then used the users’ selection to filter out less irrelevant connecting material. In doing so, we could direct users to products that met their specific needs, whilst promoting the most credible supporting content.
Creating such a powerful linking mechanism throughout the content, opened up a number of opportunities:
- We could easily apply a filter system to all content directories, allowing users to locate supporting material more easily.
- Enquiry forms could include the user’s content selection and provide greater insight to sales.
- We could suggest related content in a more targeted way.
- We could use their CRM’s automated marketing features to target users with more appropriate follow-up campaign material.
- By not prescribing a set user journey, we could evaluate the analytics to obtain more insight into the mindset of users including which content pathways users were likely to take.
Using UX to increase B2B Lead Generation
Since the implementation of our UX strategy, our client has seen an increase across all their KPIs. Not only does their website generate 41% more leads, but it has also seen an increase in organic traffic. This is as a result of higher page ranking across their most important search terms. To cap it off, the volume and value of generated leads have increased significantly.
Of course, the work continues. There is an ongoing need for generating fresh industry-specific supporting content. This lends credibility to every combination of product, application, and market. The client manages this by prioritising content generation around the use cases with the highest value to their business objectives.
Keeping an eye on their analytics and working closely with our client also allows us to determine opportunities for continued, incremental improvements so they can achieve their evolving goals.