Insight Categories: Website Strategy

In the fast-paced digital world, it’s a battleground for the attention of potential clients. Among the competition, one key factor arises as a driver of success: User Experience (UX). It’s importance in B2B marketing can’t be emphasized enough.

What is User Experience (UX)?
User Experience (UX) is the experience a user has when interacting with a website. Within B2B marketing, it can encompass many factors, including usability, accessibility, performance, and visual presence. Creating a positive UX can ensure your users find value, satisfaction, and ease of use. A negative UX can lead to frustration and cause users to leave your website.

The importance of UX in B2B marketing
First impressions are everything in B2B. When a potential client enters your website, the experience can determine whether they stay, explore, or exit immediately. A thought through, strategically designed website can encourage users to engage further with your content or products. Statistics show that 94% of first impressions are design focused, increasing the need for an excellent UX.

A great UX can help accomplish the following:

Enhance client satisfaction
A seamless, easily navigable website should allow users to quickly find the information they are looking for and complete transactions effortlessly. This is particularly true for B2B technology brands, as your marketing website is just a preview into the type of user experience prospects can expect from your product. Clients that are happy with the experience they’ve received are likely to return and become brand advocates by providing positive reviews and referrals, an essential component of B2B marketing.

Decrease user bounce rates
If you’re not familiar with the term “Bounce Rate,” it is the percentage of visitors who leave your website after a short view. Most bounces are caused by having a poor UX. Improve your UX (and decrease bounces) by designing a clear navigation, speeding up load times, and publishing engaging content. A low bounce rate means your users are finding the content they are looking for, which can increase your conversions.

Boost your SEO
Many search engines like Google have algorithms that prioritize websites with an excellent UX in results, elevating those with  high mobile-friendliness, page speed, and user engagement. Putting the focus on UX will not only improve user satisfaction but can lead to higher visibility and enhance your SEO, increasing organic traffic.

Increase conversions
The main goal of B2B marketers is to convert visitors into clients. A strategically thought-out UX can highly increase conversion rates. Utilizing features such as a clear navigation, captivating CTA’s, and smooth checkout processes remove pain points, making it easier for the user to complete a task. Some research facilities have found that a better UX design could increase conversions up to 400%.

Create brand loyalty
User Experience isn’t just about making a sale; it’s about building an experience that creates brand loyalty. Users that have positive interactions with your branded website responsively are more likely to come back and stay as a loyal client. Your brand value can be differentiated from your competition by creating a consistent and enjoyable UX.

Here are a few ways you can effectively incorporate UX design into your broader marketing strategy:

User research
Understand your target audience’s needs, preferences, and pain points through surveys, interviews, and usability testing. It’s vital to test user behavior and make adjustments to the UX design from the data gathered.

Website optimization
Ensure your website is visually appealing, easy to navigate, and responsive across all devices.

Quality of content
Create engaging and relevant content that addresses users needs and increases interaction.

Simplify the process
Reduce many elements similar to sign-ups, checkouts, and customer support to help decrease friction and improve user experience.

Merging UX into your B2B marketing strategy is extremely important if you want to succeed in the digital world. It can help create a positive first impression, increase client satisfaction, and decrease your bounce rates, along with increasing SEO rankings, conversions and building loyal clients. Investing in your UX, you’ll find your B2B marketing will provide better results and profitability.

Part 1: What is website accessibility?

Did you know that a staggering 12+% of the US population has a disability? When you consider that many marketers are striving to increase visitor traffic by mere percentage points, 12% is a big number. So how can you ensure that disabled audiences can easily use your site? Web accessibility. Web accessibility guidelines take existing technologies into account to ensure that your website provides equal opportunities for all people to digest content and use the site as intended. 

Web accessibility has become an increasingly important guideline for website building and optimization, especially in the past few years as lawsuits involving ADA compliance have skyrocketed. In addition to the World Wide Web Consortium (an international community that develops web standards) the Department of Health & Human Services has rolled out its own accessibility standards. There are several quantifiable, measurable requirements outlined (W3C includes the WCAG 2.1 for website developers to reference; the US government includes 508, which adopted the WCAG 2.0 success criteria at 3 different levels). 

A good way to think about website accessibility is to organize it into four different categories:

– Visual accessibility

– Auditory accessibility

– Mobility (motor) accessibility 

– Cognitive (intellectual) accessibility

Visual accessibility refers to audiences with blindness, low vision, or color-blindness. Some ways to be mindful of this audience is to ensure your website:

– Includes a screen reader that can convert your text into speech

– Uses image alt tags (alternative image text provides word descriptions of the images on the page that a screen reader can read out loud)

– Is designed with enough color contrast to allow for easy readability

– Allows for zoom functionality (screen magnification)  

– Allows pop-up animations to be blocked, redirected, stopped, paused, or hidden

Auditory accessibility refers to audiences with hard-of-hearing or deafness. Some ways to be mindful of this audience are to ensure your website:

– Includes closed captioning or subtitles within your audio and video files

– Works with screen readers and voice browsers 

– Provides volume control settings that are separate from the visitor’s overall system settings if your website has audio content available

Mobility accessibility refers to audiences who cannot use a mouse, have a slow response time, or limited motor control. Some ways to be mindful of this audience are to ensure your website:

– Allows keyboard shortcuts (so, instead of a mouse, a user can use the tab, arrow keys, or enter keys to navigate through your site)

– Includes “Skip navigation” links (if your website has a mega menu, this can be handy for users that want to go to a different area of your navigation)

Cognitive accessibility refers to audiences with learning disabilities, difficulty remembering, or focusing on large amounts of information. Some ways to be mindful of this audience are to ensure your website:

– Avoids color palettes and on-screen functionality known to cause seizures for those with certain disorders

– Avoids timeouts or provides warnings for users who may need more time (you may encounter this on your banking websites or other secure sites with shopping carts)

– Content is written in an easily understandable way without errors and mistakes

– Search functionality allows users to quickly search for web pages by keyword or by using Control F to search for words or phrases on the page

– Offers a site map to guide a user into understanding the organization of the site

Accessibility is certainly not confined to just the above, and these best practices and features will also help other visitors to your website. While there are a lot of nuances involved in building a 508 compliant website, Grafik works to practice at least WCAG 2.1 compliance at a Level A for all of our website builds.