B2B Design

Original Post  - Dec 13, 2007

It’s now been 2.5 months since the redesign of our flagship publication website. In B2B Website Usability - Does It Work? I reported:

The average weekly visits have increased 34%, average weekly page views have increased 23% and average weekly visitors have increased 36%.

Original Post  - Nov 08, 2007

Too often I come across websites or clients who want to get as much as they possibly can into the smallest possible space. They think that makes their site look trendy and up-to-date.

The problem is that the human mind processes text in a certain way - it actually uses the shapes of words and the contrast between white space and “ink” to figure out what’s going on. When you bring up a webpage, you actually scan it starting at the top left to right and then move down and then left to right again - very similar to how we read words on a sheet of paper.

Original Post  - Nov 06, 2007

Since I covered an example of a bad B2C website last week, let’s take a look at a couple of good B2C websites and what makes them good.

• L.L.Bean - This site has been one of my favorite consumer websites for several years. Why? Because I can always find what I’m looking for. If I need help there are multiple different ways to contact the company: email, phone, online chat which are clear from every single page. I can find products by their catalog number, by searching, by browsing (in multiple categories). Browsing allows the ability to narrow your choices by several different types of information (dependent on what you’re looking at) - for example, on

Original Post  - Nov 01, 2007

As a case study of what makes a good website, let’s take a look at a B2C site that is aesthetically pleasing, but fails to be customer-centric.

Apple is known for the design of their products and their website certainly is pleasing to the eye. If you happen to be looking for information regarding purchasing a product, you will be escorted through beautiful images, rich information, and links to their online store. However, if you are searching for specific information about fixing a problem, how a product should work, or even making an appointment with tech support, good luck. This information is buried on their website and doesn’t even always come up in a search.

Original Post  - Oct 30, 2007

You’ve seen those flashy (pun intended) sites covered in animation and sound. Sure they seem slick and sophisticated, but do those really work in the B2B environment? Let’s take a look at some of the issues:

• According to Adobe (the maker of Flash), 99% of Internet viewers have Flash installed.
• Flash content is not accessible by search engine crawlers, making it invisible to search engines (doesn’t help SEO).

Original Post  - Oct 16, 2007

You may be wondering if all these tips for redesigning your website to be customer-centric work.

A month ago we redesigned the flagship website (a B2B publication) at the publishing company where I work. The redesign focused on increasing the amount of content that is updated more frequently, offering more content (including blogs and video), and making it easier for readers to find what they’re looking for (by following good usability practices).

Original Post  - Oct 11, 2007

We’ve been talking about customer-centric websites, but what are your customers doing at home? Obviously these results apply to the consumer market instead of B2B, but B2B is usually not far behind:

Silicon Alley Insider: Almost All Consumers Now Use Web for Buying Decisions -

• 53% s...

Original Post  - Oct 11, 2007

Your website is your brand and image and storefront on the Internet. Every search people do for your company will (hopefully) lead to your website. Most people do not bother to use paper yellowpages anymore to look up businesses. Going to a company’s website is part of the research in a purchasing process for 80% of B2B executives according to the 2006 ABM-Harris Interactive B2B Internet Usage Survey.

Original Post  - Oct 04, 2007

Once you have your new site design launched, the next step is to see how well you figured out your audience. Yep! That’s right - more research - and testing.

You’ll once again need to take a look at your website analytics/stats and see if people are staying on your site longer and going further into the site. You should also see less use of your search engine for the items that you linked to from the homepage. Take a look at your site overlay if you have one and you should also see where people are clicking on each page.

Original Post  - Oct 02, 2007

Now that we’ve done some research on what your visitors are looking for and at on your website, we can take our first stab at our layout, or where things should go on the website. Here are a few basics:

• The menu should be either across the top or down the left. A link to the homepage should be the top or left-most link. Menu items should be links to what people are looking for on your site. Examples: Products, Services, About, Contact. You should setup a hierachy that makes sense. All your products should be listed on the first Products page (or have links from there). All your services should be listed on the first Services page (or have links from there). You get the idea….

Original Post  - Sep 26, 2007

As mentioned in a previous post, usability is important in designing a customer-centric site. Usability, as defined by Wikipedia:

Usability is a term used to denote the ease with which people can employ a particular

Original Post  - Sep 24, 2007

In Good vs. Bad B2B Websites, I introduced the idea of customer-centric sites: designing your site with your customer in mind instead of your company or organization. Why is customer-centric design important?

Your Customers will go somewhere else.

Original Post  - Sep 17, 2007

I just got back from a B2B trade show in Las Vegas, representing the publishing company where I work, to sell our online products to our B2B customers. As part of my research of each customer, I visited their website to see what their Internet presence looked like. I looked at about a dozen websites, which ran the gambit from pretty good to not very good at all (ok I’m being a little nice - some were pretty bad).

Original Post  - Sep 07, 2007

Now that we know that the Business to Business (B2B) audience is different than the Business to Consumer (B2C) audience, how do we design our website to cater to their needs?

The most important part of any design is to put yourself into the shoes of those who will be using your design. When you are at work and using the web (for work purposes), what are you doing? What sites do you visit? You are probably doing one of two things: browsing or searching. When you browse, you look at a handful of sites for updates on what is going on in your industry. Since your time is valuable, you expect to visit each site and be able to see if there is any important information just by looking at the homepage. If you are looking for something specific, you will probably start out at your favorite search engine (google, yahoo, msn, etc.). There may be a industry-specific search engine that works much better. On the search results page you click on links, click back to the search, try to refine your search by adding, removing or changing keywords, and hope you find the information you are looking for.