Creating a great B2B website on a tight budget can seem like a tall order. Nowadays, a simple brochure website won’t cut it. Now, with more competition in every market than ever before, your website needs to be everything to everybody – it needs to feed your sales team with leads, support your overall business goals, nurture your prospects from “stranger” to “buyer,” and establish your brand as the authority in your space.
Fortunately, with a few strategic choices, you can have your cake and eat it, too – for once! That is, you can get a B2B website that looks professional, works well, and ticks all the boxes above. You’ll need to take the right approach, start with a realistic (even skinny) budget, and stay committed to your streamlined approach. Do that, and you’re well on your way to a new site that didn’t blow up your annual marketing budget!
Why Invest in a Sales-Ready B2B Website, Anyway?
For businesses, there are two options for your digital presence. A brochure website, that doesn’t help prospects answer their questions about your product or make a connection with your sales team and a sales-ready website.
A sales-ready website is designed as a 24/7 salesperson, with resources and answers for every prospect that lands on your site. It acts as a first impression for potential clients. When visitors land on the site, they need to see clear information about products and services. This helps them understand what the business offers and how to get it when they’re ready. A well-designed sales-ready website can easily capture leads for the sales team and accelerate your sales cycles.
Developing a brochure website is often less expensive, but not always, and they rarely earn a return on investment. These sites just don’t support your business goals. On the other hand, a sales-ready B2B website is designed to earn a return. First, a strong website with clear, pain/problem-focused messaging will attract more visitors who are actually looking for a solution. More visitors in buying mode means more qualified leads. When these leads turn into customers, revenue goes up. That’s ROI.
Second, a sales-ready website can use deeper analytics and behavioral triggers to track the visitor journey and user experience throughout your website. You can analyze conversion rates, the efficacy of your content marketing, work on search engine optimization in real-time, and see where your organic traffic is coming from. All of this helps businesses see what’s working and what isn’t. Based on real data, you can then make improvements in your marketing efforts that boost performance.
5 Tips to Get a Sales-Ready B2B Website on a Budget
Creating a sales-ready B2B website doesn’t have to break the bank. With the right strategies in place, you can attract more B2B buyers and earn a return on the project without spending a fortune.
A great website can help your business stand out, establish credibility, and pull prospects closer to your brand. Here are five tips to help you build an effective website for your B2B company while sticking to your budget:
Establish a Realistic Budget
Getting a B2B website on a budget starts with setting a realistic budget. For a sales-ready website with multiple product or service pages and content that helps your prospects choose your solution, you’ll need to make an investment. A well-designed, sales-optimized website should cost around $20,000 to start. This amount ensures you get a site that truly works for your sales team.
A good website isn’t just pretty. It needs to be technically sound and developed with input from B2B experts who know how to attract and convert visitors into leads. This is an investment that helps improve your online presence and reach more potential customers. In the long run, it can earn you a return on investment (ROI).
You should think of your website as a tool for growth. It’s not just an expense; it’s an opportunity to generate new leads and boost sales. That’s why it’s crucial to plan for this cost. A solid website can provide your team with the leads and nurture content they need to succeed.
So, when you’re budgeting for a new website, keep this in mind. Investing $20,000 will set the foundation for a site that drives results. Let your budget reflect your business goals. A strong website is worth every penny.
Create a Messaging Matrix & Personas Before Development Begins
You’ll need a messaging matrix to streamline the time it takes to develop your website and ensure it’s centered on clear, pain/problem-focused messages. If you’re working with a development partner, the development of your messaging should be included in the $20,000 cost of development.
A messaging matrix is a tool that helps businesses communicate clearly. It lists key messages for different audiences. Each audience group may need different messages. This helps ensure everyone receives information in a way that makes sense to them. Giving the right prospects the right message at the right time is key to increasing conversions and speeding up your sales cycle!
Creating a messaging matrix is important before developing a B2B website. First, it helps your team and your website provider understand your business, your customers, and your differentiators.
Workshopping and writing your messaging matrix can be handled by an experienced outside partner, with input from key stakeholders at your business. In that case, your team should prioritize approving your messaging before writing or development takes place on your website. A clear messaging matrix guides the development process and makes the final website more effective.
Once you know what you’re saying, it’s time to zero in on who you’re saying it to. This means identifying, researching, and developing Personas for your business or products.
A persona is a detailed and semi-fictional representation of a target user or customer created to help businesses and marketers better understand their audience’s needs, motivations, and behaviors. Again, your development partner should include the development of 1-2 personas for your website. They should conduct market research and use real data about your current customers, encompassing information such as demographics, psychographics, preferences, and pain points.
By developing personas, your business can tailor your website strategy to resonate more effectively with their ideal buyers and address specific challenges and desires. Ultimately, personas serve as a valuable tool for guiding decision-making and fostering a customer-centric approach in various aspects of business development. Your website project shouldn’t go forward without them.
Plan for a Phased, Prioritized Approach
When starting a B2B website project, it’s smart to focus on the most important pages first. This method helps you stay within budget and start earning a return before expanding into those “nice to have” pages.
In phase one, here are the key pages you should develop:
- Home Page: This page introduces your business. It should be clear and engaging.
- Key Product/Service Pages: Help customers understand how you can meet their needs.
- Contact Page: Make it easy for visitors to reach you. Include a form, phone number, and email.
- Blog/Resources Page: Fill your website with content that attracts visitors, boosts your site authority and credibility, and helps your sales team nurture their prospects with useful information.
- About Us: Share your story. Tell visitors who you are and what you do.
You should also consider testimonial or case study pages if you have those ready to go at the time of development and a pricing page if your pricing isn’t listed on the product or service pages on the site. By starting with these important pages, you can launch your site more quickly and then focus on adding more content later. This phased approach saves time and money while making your website effective!
Strategic Image Selection vs. Custom Photography
Custom photography for a B2B website can cost a lot. Talent sourcing, location reservations or rentals, day-of shooting, and the process of image curation, editing, and selection can easily cost thousands of dollars. That’s a high price, but it’s a great way to ensure your website is unique and reflective of your brand, right?
Yes, but luckily, there is a smarter way to enhance your website with great imagery without blowing your budget.
A team of experienced designers and website developers can use stock photography and stock video in unique ways to create a brand look and feel that’s 100% you without the high price of truly custom assets. The right B2B designers and developers know how to pick and place the right images to match your brand. They’ll choose stock images and video that are high quality and can still save you money. You get a curated, professional look without breaking the bank.
Strategic image selection is key. Experienced B2B designers understand how to choose images that tell your brand’s story. They can use these images to make your site more engaging. Stock photos can be just as powerful when they are selected, edited, and placed carefully. You get the visual impact you need without the high cost of custom photography.
And, of course, you’ll get the final say in the images selected and placed on your website as part of the review and approval process! Just keep in mind that smart choices about images can help you achieve stunning results while saving money.
Streamline the Review & Finalization of Your B2B Website Design
One of the easiest ways for a website project’s budget to get out of control is when there are multiple rounds of review and edits done one at a time, based on each individual stakeholder’s feedback.
For example, Barry’s B2B Bakery is developing a new website with a partner. The CEO, Barry, wants final approval on the site, but he wants their Marketing Director and Sales Leader to review the site, too. Say the Sales Leader reviews first, then edits are made. Next, the Marketing Director reviews, and disagrees with some of the changes, and new edits are made. Finally, the CEO reviews, and yet another round of edits is needed. That’s way more rounds of review than necessary!
When you’re picking a partner for your website development, choose a partner that helps you streamline your feedback into strategic review points. When you stick to a single round of review and edits at each phase of development of your B2B website, you’ll save time and money. This approach cuts down on extra work and charges. It keeps your project on track and avoids confusion, too.
Start by gathering all stakeholders for review and setting a clear date for feedback. Make sure everyone knows when to provide their input. This helps everyone focus on the same deadline. Your partner should use a feedback tool like BugHerd or Feedbucket to make this process easier. These tools allow all your stakeholders to review the design on their own time during the review period and see the comments and requests left by other members of the team. They can leave their own comments directly on the website, making feedback clear and easily actionable.
Then, your partner can take everyone’s consolidated feedback and make everyone’s edits at once.
By using these methods, you keep the process simple. You ensure that your website design gets the attention it needs without delays. The project stays organized, and you can move forward confidently, knowing that everyone is on the same page.
Partnering With the Right B2B Website Design Agency
Choosing the right B2B website design agency is important for your project. Look for agencies with strong portfolios, great testimonials, and a strong B2B website of their own. Their past work can show their style and skills. Look for case studies that match your goals, too.
It’s also important to consider communication. You need to work closely with the agency, so make sure they’re responsive and easy to talk to.
Finally, think about your budget. Different agencies have different prices, with many agencies starting websites at $40,000. Find one that fits your needs without sacrificing quality. Peer Sales Agency starts our website pricing at $20,000 for a set number of pages to help you launch a new site with everything you need to start earning ROI. In fact, we’ll show you exactly how we build & optimize websites to make them the best-performing members of your sales team. Download our latest eBook, How to Build a B2B Sales-Ready Website, and get all our secret sauce for yourself!
