Forrester Report Calls Out Failure of BtoB Websites To Support Lead Gen Goals

A new report from Forrester principal analyst Alan Webber asserts that B2B companies are making the most valuable and accessible touch point difficult to do business with. “Every customer lead that comes in — whether it’s a customer downloading a white paper, signing up for a Webinar, or requesting more information — is critical,” the report states. “But B2B companies are making it unnecessarily difficult for customers to engage and interact via the Web. If customers are focusing on the Web, then B2B marketers need to focus on it, too, and tune up their online lead generation machines.”

According to “Deriving More Value From Your B2B Web Site,” when IT decision-makers were asked where they turn to for information on IT products and vendors,they cited vendor Web sites as their number 1 source of information. 49% of all respondents listed web sites as the number one source, pushing “IT peers” down to 38%. But a high-quality site that is useful and usable was a rarity among the 213 business-to-business (B2B) sites that Forrester evaluated. And when sites have flaws and lack functionality, Webber states, it hinders a user’s ability to find critical content and lead opportunities are missed.

The report suggests six focus areas for improving the BtoB website experience to maintain lead generation and key account communication:

1. Target A Set of Roles: B2B marketers cannot accept a statement like “well we kind of designed the site for IT managers. IT should be much more targeted. Most B2B marketers are familiar with personas, and Webber believes that strategy should apply to role profiles to focus the content and functionality of the site. For example, when IBM determined that the primary roles for its Web site were CIOs, business executives, and developers and wanted to better engage those executives, it developed specific sites with links on the home page, with directed content and functionality for these roles.



2. Make Content Relevant: After roles are defined, the report suggests designing scenarios to judge its functionality. For search marketing, for example, this approach requires B2B marketers to continually answer three questions: 1) Who searches for your products? 2) What are the goals of their search? and 3) How can you help them achieve those goals? Then the relevance of the site needs to be tested. Examine how easy it is for the user to go from search to site. Based upon the role profile you developed, enter appropriate key terms into the search bar, such as a specific product class or service, to see what kind of links come up. When you find the first link to your site, click on it and check if it takes you directly to that product or service.



3. Differentiate Your Brand: Ensure that your brand positioning statement or unique selling point is clear and that it comes through in the content and functionality on the site. For example, check to ensure that brand-related content is easy to find and digest. Also, Webber suggests making certain that site functionality matches with the brand. Look for additional ways to differentiate your brand and your site through the experience you offer.



4. Conduct a usability review. Webber states that the brand differentiation should be followed by expert reviews, also known as “heuristic evaluations” or “scenario reviews.” For example, begin by explicitly stating three (or more) role descriptions and corresponding goals for the site, then try to accomplish the goals, and then grade your site.



5. Build User Trust: The Forrester report indentifies three common ways to break trust with a user: 1) lack of a contextual privacy policy; 2) little or no easily accessible or digestible contact information; and 3) incongruence of information among channels. Almost every B2B site has a small and hard-to-find link to the site’s privacy policy at the bottom of most pages, often below the page fold or in text that is so small it is difficult to read. A privacy link in the footer doesn’t cut it. Forrester recommends that links to privacy and security policies be within a user’s line of vision, be specifically called out when the user is entering any type of personal information, and provide a short summary of the policy.



6. Measure And Improve The Value Delivered: While nearly all B2B sites gather data about site visitors, the metrics that marketers get usually aren’t aligned with business goals, there is too much data, or the data is stored in multiple systems that are difficult to correlate or access. B2B companies, according to the report, are left wondering what has been successful, what hasn’t, and why. To continue to improve, B2B marketers should ensure that analytics are operational and running properly.

“In this recessionary economy, every solid lead is worth its weight in gold,” Webber states. “Although most B2B companies focus their Web real estate on getting visitors to download white papers or register for a Webinar in hopes of getting more leads, they end up placing significant barriers in front of the user trying to complete that goal. What should B2B marketers do with their Web sites right now to increase leads? Focus on ensuring that the site is targeted, relevant, differentiated, usable, and trusted — and that
you have analytics to continually refine your effort.”