If you’ve created a website for your B2B company, identifying how well your website is performing is just as important as it is with a B2C company. A large portion of your efforts when developing your website will revolve around getting people to visit your website and convert into return customers. If you’re able to attract prospects to your website, the quality of your site content and design will determine if the visitor converts into a lead.

Measuring the performance of your website gives you the information and data that you need to further enhance your website or change the design altogether. If you find that visitors are landing on your website but aren’t following through with a purchase or sign up, it’s likely that there’s an issue with the design or functionality of your website. For instance, the navigational elements on your site could be confusing.

When you’re managing a B2B website, it’s not typically enough to know how many people visit your website or how many purchases are made. Instead, it’s highly recommended that you measure key performance indicators that tell you how well your website is performing at satisfying existing customers and bringing in new ones. While site traffic is important, measuring specific goals or conversions from this traffic can be much more effective.

If you want to measure how effective your B2B website is, you’ll be tasked with identifying goals and setting each goal up in Google Analytics. These goals represent actions that you want your site visitors to take. The following guide offers a comprehensive overview of KPIs and how they matter to B2B website development.

Your Website is Your Best Salesperson

The website you develop for your B2B company gives you the opportunity to persuade clients and express your company’s value via online channels and mediums. Every B2B website should focus on generating qualified leads. When it comes to B2B companies, finalizing a lead can take anywhere from six months to a couple of years, which is why it’s highly recommended that you create a website that’s geared towards sales and accommodates the extended sales cycle.

When your website design, navigational elements, and content are implemented correctly, your entire website should be appealing to potential customers in your target audience. Some other elements that you should place into your website include videos, photography, topography, and page layouts.

What are KPIs?

KPI refers to key performance indicator, which is a measurement of performance over a set period of time for a very specific objective. These indicators provide you with goals that the rest of your web development and marketing team can strive to reach. KPIs should be used to bolster your company’s strategy in the finance, marketing, sales, and HR departments.

What are the Steps to Develop a B2B Website?

If you have yet to develop a B2B website, the following guides you through the steps you should take to create a well-designed site. Make sure that you keep KPIs in mind while designing your B2B website.

Map Out Your B2B Website Goals

The website you design should center around achieving specific goals that benefit your business. The goals that you set for your entire team should be prioritized from least important to most important. Once you’ve identified what these goals are and how important they will be for the success of your website, it should be simpler to develop a website that takes these goals into account.

Know What Businesses Want

Regardless of the industry your company operates out of, every B2B website has an audience of other businesses as well as employees and referral sources. You should perform comprehensive research on every member of your audience to determine how to capture their attention and keep them engaged. Once you perform this research, you should be able to identify and target client needs.

Focus on the User Experience

Once you’ve determined who your target audience is, you should think about how users will navigate your website and what their experience will be. The navigational and user experience elements of your website should influence goal accomplishment. Would you like site visitors to look at your products? Are you trying to get customers to sign up for a membership? Knowing what your goals are allows you to design the user experience around these goals.

Make sure that your website is quick to load. Google views page load speed as a highly important factor when determining what a website’s search ranking will be. It’s also a metric that ties directly into user experience. If someone visits a slow-loading website, they are considerably more likely to leave the website and take their business elsewhere.

Write Like a Human

Along with being relevant, the content you place on your website should be written naturally as opposed to being written for a search engine. In an attempt to increase search engine rankings, many site owners will stuff their articles and blog posts with keywords that are used in a manner that’s stilted and unnatural.

The Google algorithm is able to pick up on this with website copy and will lower the rankings of websites that don’t have well-written content. Try to match your writing style to the buyer personas you’ve created for your audience.

Encourage Engagement

Your B2B website should also encourage engagement, which can be done by creating a funnel-like structure that entices people to purchase the product or service you offer. CTAs are also highly important for any website that wants to gain conversions.

In fact, CTAs and KPIs are directly linked since a primary performance indicator involves the number of users who have clicked on call-to-action buttons. All of the CTAs on your website should have a consistent design and color, which tells visitors what they should look for when they want to engage further with your content.

Remember Your Brand

If you want to establish trust with site visitors and potential customers, it’s important to use visual cues, which can also help you develop a consistent branding. The branding you create can help you retain customers, which is why it’s highly recommended that you don’t overlook branding when developing your B2B website. Important elements of branding include images, logos, tone, voice, and color management.

Use Responsive, Modular Design

All modern websites should have a responsive and modular design that accommodates mobile users. Studies indicate that around 50% of all B2B queries occur from a smartphone. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile devices, users will be tasked with scrolling extensively just to browse your website. In this scenario, many users leave the site altogether.

How to Determine B2B Website Objectives

In order to establish a purpose for your website, it’s important to nail down what your primary KPIs will be. First, ask yourself what your business goals are. Are you focused on growth? You might be attempting to increase revenues or secure funds. Once you identify your business goals, you should write them down.

You can now determine what needs to be done to reach these goals. For instance, B2B business that want to increase revenues and make their sales process more efficient might want to focus on obtaining qualified leads. Other strategies that can be used include creating a brand identity, establishing credibility, or securing partnerships. At this stage of the process, you should identify what you want from your website. For instance, you may want more qualified leads or a higher number of purchases.

5 KPIs You Should Measure with Google Analytics

There are five distinct KPIs that you should think about measuring with Google Analytics, which include everything from downloads to subscriber form submissions.

5. Downloads

Downloads are key performance indicators that tell you how effective your marketing materials are at engaging site visitors. The types of downloads that can be tracked with Google Analytics include videos, PDFs, and any type of download that results in rewards or discounts.

When it comes to PDF downloads, it’s possible to view which campaign or channel caused an increase in document downloads. You can use this information when improving your marketing campaign. It’s also possible to track downloads for podcasts to determine what percentage of customers are listening to your content through audio.

4. Event Signups

B2B websites may be focused around event signups. If your B2B company offers special seminars, courses, or webinars to loyal customers, you can track this KPI. Anyone who registers to make a download may become more loyal to your brand. Webinars have been found to be effective at helping companies build their brand.

3. Subscriber Form Submissions

You could also track subscriber form submissions for anyone who’s looking to subscribe to a corporate brochure, research paper, or company newsletter. Many B2B websites will require companies to fill out some basic information before they can subscribe to the content in question. Once you’ve set up this KPI, you can track if form submissions increase depending on the subject matter or type of marketing you’re performing.

2. Lead Form Submissions

Lead form submissions may be tracked as well, the primary of which is a “Contact Us” form. This form is simple for businesses to fill out and can provide you with the information you require to keep in touch with possible customers. Consider creating shorter enquiry forms that just ask for a phone number, name, and short description of the reason for enquiry.

1. Conversions

Among the most important KPIs to measure involves conversions. A conversion can be anything from someone signing up for a newsletter to someone purchasing a produce you offer. As a B2B company, it’s highly recommended that you track sales as conversions.

If conversions increase month-over-month, this data indicates that your business is becoming more successful. A drop in conversions indicates that you’re doing something wrong. For instance, it’s possible that your “Checkout” page is poorly designed, which leads to a reduction in sales.

Key performance indicators can be tracked to help you identify if your website is helping your business reach its goals or hindering your efforts to do so because of poorly designed elements. While KPIs for B2B websites differ somewhat from those of B2C websites, the approach is the same. Tracking important metrics gives you data that can be used to improve your website design, marketing efforts, and conversion rates.