Warning Signs That Your B2B Website is Out of Date

An up-to-date B2B website doesn’t just look professional to prospective clients: it also provides conversions and leads without fail.

But in order to capitalize on your B2B website design, you need to make sure nothing on your site is out of date. While you don’t need to be well-versed in site design and coding to tell if your site needs improvement, there are a number of factors you can check on.

Are conversions & leads low?

According to Alina Clark, Co-Founder at cocodoc.com, a drop in leads and conversions coming from your B2B website landing pages is the ultimate sign of an out of date website.

“Traffic and conversion drops can be occasioned by a variety of website-related issues,” Clark says.

“Your landing pages may be rotting at the seams- with the wrong color, and an old approach to landing page creations. It may be your loading speeds- often bogged down by large images, or a web-host whose web services have gone down the drain.”

Related: Tools to Use: Customer Profiling & Segmentation

It can also be unoptimized code, or plugins that stopped working a while back.

The quickest solution to low landing page conversion rates is to undertake a technical SEO audit.

“Our technical audit last year led us into making a horde of website-related changes because we found ourselves on the wrong side of time too,” Clark says.

Is your site running slow?

Charlotte Sheridan, Director at The Small Biz Expert, says one of the most important things to be aware of on your B2B website at the moment is speed.

“How quickly does the website load? As Google continues to prioritize speed, it’s vital that you take this into account.”

Is your site mobile-friendly?

“The B2B sector has often overlooked mobile friendly design as the thinking was that the majority of B2B searches take place on desktop,” Sheridan says.

“While increasingly this is no longer the case, it’s also important to remember that, no matter what, Google indexes with a ‘mobile first’ approach — so even if the majority of your traffic comes from desktop users, if your site is not mobile friendly, it can still damage your positions in search results.”

Is one area receiving less interactions?

The best way to identify gaping holes in your website is to use website heatmaps to identify where your customers are interacting the least, according to Deepak Shukla, founder of Pearl Lemon.

“If some of the key areas of your website such as your service pages are not landing a lot of impressions, it is very likely that your customers are unable to navigate around your website,” Shukla says.

“Apart from using website heatmaps, you could also monitor user interaction where, if your blog posts are receiving lower interactions through comments or shares, or even a weaker conversation rate, you can make it easier for the customer to navigate around your website such as through improved website layouts.”

Maya Stern, Head of Marketing and PR at Creative Navy UX UI Agency, provides some more warning signs that your B2B website is out of date:

• the interface cannot adapt to modern devices, rendering a small and cluttered version of the website
• the text is improperly sized (usually much too small) and key areas are not properly highlighted
• the navigation is overly complicated and it’s very difficult for the user to find what they’re looking for
• there aren’t enough conversion points and users have to work hard to complete a purchase
  few to no visuals used to showcase products and company ethos
• if videos are featured at all, they are poorly integrated in the general design of the website (embedded directly from youtube)
• inefficient sorting mechanics when browsing through sizeable product and/or service directories
• no concern for accessibility standards
• poor customer experience and overly complex customer journey