How often do you find yourself clicking through countless web pages in a fruitless quest for an email address? Or a price? Or a line or two about what the brand in question actually does? After failing to find what we’re looking for, we clued-up consumers can feel about as digitally empowered as Amazon tribesmen, pining for the good old days of Yellow Pages and Teletext.
What better way to improve your offering than by learning from those brands absolutely killing it with their own website’s UX? Here are five B2B brands who’ve mastered the art of user experience.
HubSpot – clear path to conversion
Simple, clean, effective. Three words that succinctly summarise Hubspot’s approach to web UX. It’s immediately plain that the social CRM company’s entire domain is dedicated to achieving maximum conversion, there’s no room for fanciful and over-intricate design in Hubspot’s world.
To improve its homepage conversion, Hubspot uses a variety of UX techniques to ensure user experience matches expectations. “These include raw data analysis, user testing, stakeholder and customer interviews as well as unsolicited feedback to ensure user experience matched expectations,” explains Matt Oxley, co-founder and creative director at DotLabel. “So while the website may not win any awards for spectacular visual design, the fact it serves its purpose and increases conversions would qualify it as being one of the best.”
InVision – the power of storytelling
Storytelling is often an abstract concept in B2B marketing, its successful implementation mired in vague ambiguity. If you’re struggling for inspiration, then InVision’s website will provide you with a much-needed creative injection.
This site’s built around telling stories and articulating how better design is achieved through collaboration. “It uses a lot of video case study material to show, not tell,” says Peter Reid, CEO of MSQ Partners. “Given the product is aimed at the design and UX community, the production value is always high.”
Salesforce – a brand community
Brand Salesforce: a name synonymous with its offering. The CRM software company is the ultimate example of what a dedicated community of, let’s be frank, absolutely fanatic customers (known as ‘trailblazers’) can do for your brand. And this approach extends seamlessly into its digital output and website’s user experience.
Salesforce is a great example of a company that totally gets the need for content and the link to its overall brand promise. “It has an internal team dedicated to telling stories around customer success,” says Peter. “It’s not just about selling its product, but focusing on driving the B2B community, with its significant blog output.”
KPMG Small Business Accounting – a clear pricing model
Worthy winners of ‘Best website’ at last year’s B2B Marketing Awards, KPMG’s extensive web redesign ultimately led to a 400% week-on-week uplift in quality inbound leads (read the award-winning case study).
This was achieved through implementing striking visuals of small business owners at work to make it clear that the service was for them, while communicating through narrative and stories the fact that KPMG helps improve business performance while making business leaders’ lives easier.
The website provides downloadable content and an abundance of resources, offering up client stories (via video, case studies and pop quizzes), and all neatly tied together by a highly visual and easy-to-grasp pricing model.
“The site was all about positioning, establishing credibility, and then converting visits to leads,” says Dan Roche, head of marketing at KPMG Small Business Accounting. “And the figures now speak for themselves: the new website has been pivotal in converting interest in KPMG’s new offering to a 400% week-on-week uplift in inbound quality leads, which delivered a 120% week-on-week increase in sales.”
RS Components – customer feedback and research
These guys won a marketing award for their website’s user-centric approach back in 2016. With millions of web visitors, its poor site search and product information was frustrating customers and significantly hindering sales, but by applying a UX approach they invested in significant user research, including customer feedback, online surveys and internal forums to identify the key issues that were affecting site performance.
“The results for the site were exceeding their financial target by 42% in the first year and conversion growth year-on-year at a four-and-a-half year high,” says Matt. “Their customer feedback also echoed the success of the financial results with positive feedback on the new features and functionality of the site.”
