B2B web design:
The two-pronged
online strategy
that yields results

B2B web design: An impressive corporate image... or a continuous flow of prospective clients?

Web design is a subject in which opposing opinions abound. Perhaps it is because web design is one of those rare fields in which artistic expression is fused together with technical knowhow.

Whatever the reasons, web design is a hot item and huge sums are invested into the services of web designers within the B2B sector.

Many questions could be asked about web design and its purpose.

What do you want your web site to produce? Should a web site be designed so it spawns a continuous flow of prospective clients? Or is its purpose to be an online brochure, an impressive presentation of your company?

Well, one thing's for certain:

The more we know about web design and factors influencing the designing and purpose of B2B corporate web sites, the better we may be able to influence this area of marketing.

B2B web design — manipulating our Achilles's heel

Human nature dictates many of our actions and also how we see things and even the feelings we create about those things.

Now, one of those natural characteristics of human behaviour involves our sense of how others see us. In other words, most people are influenced by how others in their environment perceive them.

We want to be appreciated. We want others to give us the respect we deserve. We want to be recognised for our abilities and we wouldn't mind if our environment granted us a bit of status either.

On the reverse side of the coin, we DON'T want to be ridiculed, we definitely dislike being considered of low status and little worth... and we abhor the idea that others would belittle our worth, skills, status, power, and significance.

So, what's this got to do with web design?

Well... a lot in fact. It predisposes our thinking toward doing what others do just so we would not be judged to be unfavourably different.

It prejudices us toward presenting a formidable front in web design, acquiring a visual online image comparable to that of multinational corporations with billions of turnover.

It's easily proven. Just log onto the web sites of the biggest companies in the world and look at their visual appearance... and then find a dozen of the lower-end companies (in turnover) and see how carefully their appearance mimics the image of the big boys.

The overall strategy of these sites is that 99% of the effort (and funds) have been targeted into creating visual splendour, "bells and whistles" (all those neat applications that contain moving images, sounds and whatnots), and immaculate visual design.

And then there's very little text on the web pages. Often the text is very small too.

Well, as such I don't consider this a problem at all.

There's no reason why you cannot have a good-looking web site.

After all, there are many people whom you want or need to convince of your quality and reliability. Existing clients, networking partners, banks and financial institutions, trade partners and service providers, and alike.

It is good to have an online "brochure" depicting respectability and that's where professional web site design is at its best.

But they know practically nothing about creating web CONTENT.

Consequently, those web sites rarely produce any prospective clients.

B2B web design — how to attract a continuous flow of prospective clients

Now, the so-called professional web designers claim that people have such short attention spans that they simply cannot read text of any significant length... and that long copy will make it impossible to do a good job of your web design.

While it is true that everyone's attention wanes in some subjects (and some individuals cannot concentrate on anything for more than few seconds), the reason web design experts claim this is because they don't have the skill to CREATE WEB CONTENT.

Usually they ask YOU to provide the text and warn that it must be short.

Now, look here. When communicating to your target group, you are actually addressing professionals within their specific subject of expertise.

It is the subject in which their livelihood resides. It is the topic in which they feel competent and expert. It is the field in which they're intensely INTERESTED.

Their worth and status DEPEND on staying on top of new innovations and developments in that subject matter. It is the very core of their intellect and abilities.

So how could they NOT be interested in it?

Of course they're interested. Of course they'll read your texts if your web content is created the way that makes it interesting and offers new realisations, solutions and such to the visitor.

Thus we see that for attracting PROSPECTIVE CLIENTS, another web site is required. Those web designers are correct in that it's not possible to create the current web site imagery if you need to put some two-to-three thousand words on every page.

Therefore, if you want to utilise the Internet and all its free advertising capacity through search engines and so on IN PROSPECTING, you need to create a web site that does the job.

It needs to have CONTENT, lots of. This content needs to be interesting, it needs to address the realities of your target group and it must give them new realisations.

It must put the positive attention on the VISITOR, not your company.

You need to make your visitor feel that you truly care about him and that you're INTERESTED in him.

Interest begets interest. On a prospecting site you need to be interested in your visitor and that will make HIM interested in you.

Can you see how that is?

Now, it's not possible to create one of those impressive visual web sites with such a lot of content.

But what your garden variety web design expert won't know is that it's not DESIRABLE either.

B2B web design — ensuring that your web content is accepted as true

Essentially there are two kinds of sites on the Internet.

One sells something.

The other offers free information about something (and, if it needs income, sells advertising to those who want to reach his web site visitors).

While this is a very broad generalisation but we'll go with that for now.

Now, answer this: Which kind of site would YOU trust more?

Would you trust the information of the site SELLING something... or would you be inclined to believe that the FREE INFORMATION SITE contained more reliable data?

Well, for a business owner or the top executive of a B2B company, the answer might not be so obvious as he or she is interested in a lot of things... but some 98% of human beings are NOT business owners or executives.

For the broad majority of web site visitors, the all-important defining point is VESTED INTEREST when defining how much you can trust the information on a web site.

If it is a commercial web site obviously selling something then "it stands to reason that the information is biassed."

It's perceived to be slanted simply because people (mistakenly) believe that you would say ANYTHING to get a sale. They suspect that you hide the negative points and exaggerate the positive... and so on.

It's not a question of the objective truth at all. It's that most people have a preconception about the trustworthiness of information on commercial web sites.

"They make money, thus they lie" is the (birdbrain) logic of it.

So OUR logic is merely to accommodate this preconception and avoid letting it destroy our marketing message.

In marketing, you don't succeed by going AGAINST what your target group thinks or considers being true. It's clever to avoid a head-to-head with their fears and suspicions, right?

Consequently, if we want to create a web site with sufficient content to interest prospective clients, we also need to adjust the web design to this need to "avoid appearing commercial."

B2B web design — the art of creating a "free information site"

To obtain prospects your web design must concentrate on giving lots of content.

To ensure your visitors assign the highest truth-value to your content, your web design must avoid appearing commercial.

This then brings us to the "how" of web design regarding web sites created especially for the purpose of finding prospective clients.

It needs to be a site that looks like a FREE INFORMATION web site.

There are two kinds of free information sites.

In the smaller category, you find those businesses that have been started with sufficient capital to employ a host of writers and web designers to keep the information site going... and sustain its overheads until they sell enough advertising so the activity covers its expenses.

These information sites have nice visual web design. The credibility of their information is somewhat hampered in the eyes of the visitors due to the "commercial look." (More often than not they also fall for the sin of starting to SELL something on their site, not realising that it will lower the reliability of their information.)

The other category covers about 99.9% of the remaining information sites on the Internet... and these are sites without any commercial intent whatsoever. These sites are published by people who want to give whatever information for whatever reason.

These sites commonly have no discernable effort toward web design and their appearance is extremely amateurish. However, the truth-value assigned to their contents is quite high.

Now, note that I'm talking about one aspect of assigning credibility to something, namely whether or not the visitor considers you have a VESTED INTEREST in having people believe what you say on your site.

Put these factors together and you get a strategy of "professional amateurism" in web design and visual appearance.

You design the prospecting web site much neater than the main category of free information sites... but use the same simple elements so it appears uncomplicated and modest.

You invest 90% of your efforts in creating the CONTENT of the site, ensuring it contains lots of interesting articles so the site has considerable value as a source of new information or a "professional library" of sorts.

There's a lot more to it, such as creating ways to make your visitors contact you, offering them certain initial starter services, lowering the threshold of contact, planning the cohesion of the contents, carefully optimizing each web page so it's on top of search engine listings with those search terms your target group uses most... and so on... but the basics of the idea of a new prospecting site are here.

B2B web design — harnessing the power of Internet's exponential growth

The Internet grows and keeps growing.

It is already the main source of information AND the principal channel of communication for the B2B sector.

Its potential is impressive. Most amazingly, apart from the costs of setting up a site, utilising this huge potential marketing channel is practically FREE OF CHARGE.

Yet the B2B sector hardly utilises the Internet at all. The only thing we do is look for information.

But because so few B2B companies publish such information of any extent or value (as in form of articles), our web search brings forth a long list of cryptic web pages whose content is... well, disappointing to say the least.

So, why not make YOUR company the exception? Why not ensure that YOUR products and/or services offer lots of useful information to those who are interested in finding a better solution?

Why not make your web pages appear on the TOP of the search engine listings on those key words and search terms which your target group USES to LOOK for this information?

It would not be that difficult to become the top dog online, simply because your colleagues dismiss the Internet as "useless."

Useless it IS if your web site isn't planned to PERFORM. Web design needs to appertain to something, it needs to AIM at something, its premises need to be closely defined for a specific PURPOSE.

In B2B web design, one needs to set a GOAL.

Giving a web design assignment to a professional web designer without stating a specified goal can only produce one kind of web design.

The only kind web designers do:

They design the web site to please YOU.

Not your target group but YOU.

And that's all fine as long as it is a site for public relations purposes, the kind most B2B companies have — immaculate graphic design, a formidable corporate image, and all that go with such endeavours.

It's fine as long as you KNOW web designers have only that one goal... well, that's if you don't count their desire to create different types of sites to use as references, of course.

If you know how they "think web design" then you can assert your own goals to them and demand that those goals are achieved.

However, it's useless for the purpose of finding prospects.

But that's not to say it's impossible to design a web site that produces new prospective clients.

You just need to do it right.

If the goal is "to attract a good number of decision-makers from my target group to the site, establish a high truth-value for our information, offer lots of articles which will bring new ideas and realisations to our visitors WHILE educating them discreetly into understanding the unique benefits of OUR services so as many as possible contact us with the intent of signing onto our services..."

...then the web design must adhere to those guidelines and produce web content and visual appearance that FORWARD that goal and never thwart it or take attention away from the message.

And once it DOES then the web site will harness the huge potential of the Internet and produce those prospective clients.

The more your colleagues (competitors) believe it cannot be done... well, the longer they'll leave the playing field for you alone to make use of...

But it's CONTENT that sells contact, if you get my drift. You don't tempt prospective clients with impressive visual web design. You REPEL them with it.

In prospecting, the goal must be senior to any other considerations regarding web design.

Content is king in this type of web design.

Yet, I'm afraid you'll be hard pushed to FIND a web designer who has the skill to create such CONTENT and give the emphasis to these articles AND give out a site whose graphic design is as simple and unassuming as this site you're on currently.

Now, I'm no expert of graphic design or web design when it comes to creating impressive visual artistry. I'm sure this has occurred to you already just by looking at this web site's graphic design... which is created to carry the message, not take attention away from it.

Of course, you may have also realised that there must be SOMETHING to this site since you're still reading through it, despite the fact that every single one of my twenty-plus articles on this site contains a lot more text than the WHOLE B2B web site on the average.

If you read it, you do so for one reason only: The article interests you and it offers some insight into things in which you are interested.

And so it does... and so it is with prospecting. It's content that produces the results, not graphic design or visual web design wizardly.

I'm not even interested in learning that side of web design because my forte is in creating content, devising the approach and ensuring your web site is FOUND by those whom you want as clients.

And that's why I recommend the two-pronged approach to online presence.

If web design and online presentation are of interest to you, then click here to read about our Internet Marketing & Search Engine Optimization Analysis. This introductory service will give you exact information on how your site could be improved to produce new prospective clients.

If you're interested in finding out more about your marketing in general, please read the presentation of our Marketing Analysis introductory service which will give insight into what a tailor-made marketing approach could offer to your company.

Be your own advisor when it comes to web design. Figure out what you want your web site to achieve and then make your web designer follow that goal!

Best wishes,

Harry Kafka
HDK Consultants Ltd
32 Manning Close
Richmond Square
East Grinstead RH19 2DR
West Sussex, United Kingdom
Tel. 01342-328 116
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