Without a doubt, your website is your #1 sales person - whatever your company size, new business start-up, SME or Fortune 500 global corporation, size doesn’t matter.
It's all about your website - how it performs should function like your best salesperson, it should build traffic, convert leads and contribute to sales growth by nurturing your website visitors down the Inbound Marketing funnel to help close the sale.
Websites that do this really well are top sales performers and can easily close sales.
We call these websites - Inbound Websites - as they're built and optimized to do a specific job and perform the function of lead generation.
The key to an Inbound Website is it has to convert users browsing your website into leads. This should be, without a doubt, the major priority for any B2B website.
So how do we get from a normal, run-of-the-mill website, probably created using WordPress, to an Inbound Website that's ready to perform for lead generation performance?
We use a website design process and methodology called Growth Driven Design.
GDD is the monitoring, maintaining and reiterating of your Inbound Website’s design with an ongoing strategy of continual improvement. This directly supports your Inbound Marketing efforts resulting in a highly-optimized, conversion orientated, Inbound Website.
This is no fad, we were an early adopter of this technique of website design when it first came out two years ago - and we're now seeing thousands of agencies adopt the principles of Growth Driven Design.
Why GDD?
Because it works and the process significantly contributes to your sales growth. We are advocates here at The Brit Agency, we've been GDD certified by HubSpot for over 24-months, and we've seen real client sales growth results in action.
Growth Driven Design needs data behind it in order to answer some critical Inbound conversion questions - and we have a lot of data to draw from within your website's analytics, screaming to be studied.
For example, when was the last time you've taken a close look at your bounce rates on individual web pages and tried to remedy them?
One of our favourite GDD analytics tools is heat-mapping software, which is invaluable right now in any modern website design - you will be able to see just how users are actually interacting with your website ... or not ... so you can make future website design decisions based upon the data.
For many years, B2B companies have been building traditional websites that they want - the client has often led the process and the project with their wish list website designs ... so the website is usually about their company, and as a result, website traffic was never built to be sustainable, and it usually generated insufficient leads, if any.
The basic methodology behind GDD on the other hand, fixes this traditional and broken process of website design once and for all - by making it data-driven and client focused.
Inbound Websites that are designed using the GDD methodology, need to be designed to perform the way your visitors and personas want it, and how they want to react to it - it's not about you, nor should it be - it's about meeting the needs of your prospects, helping your buyer persona to find the information they are looking for to solve a problem they have. And you have to start with your buyer persona.
Think about it this way, for Inbound Marketing to fully work, it has to be optimized, and work at peak efficiency. Therefore your website content and design has to be created with your buyer persona in mind - what would they do? How would they react to this offer? What blogs do they want to read? How findable are the videos in the resource section? etc.
Here are some of the key questions we ask our clients when building an Inbound Website based on Growth Driven Design.- What website iterations can I make that are going to continually enhance my visitor's experience?
- What does persona engagement look like on my most popular website pages?
- Are my website visitors following the conversion paths I've put into place?
- Are click-through rates (CTRs) on my CTAs high, or are they suffering because of poor placement?
- Are my overall conversion rates cutting it?
- What are your website goals? And what is the process of continual improvement to track the metrics weekly to show the website improvements have been made?
- What are the back end or functionality needs of site? Which are crucial, which can wait?
- What is your timeline or urgency? Can we launch a minimum viable website quickly and add a phase two build later?
- What is you Inbound Website size and complexity?
- What number of personas are to be routinely monitored and analyzed for integral site data?
- What are the key pages to utilize heat-mapping strategy and assessment?
- What is the size of design "Wish List" that can be moved into phase two or three?
- What is the conversion path and buyers journey for each persona?
Your website is a very valuable tool for your business. In fact, I like to call it your best sales rep. So you have to nurture it and spend the time to manage it properly to keep it highly productive and efficient. When your Inbound Website reaches its full potential, it should be treated more like a member of your sales and marketing team. Then your website will generate amazing results contributing to your increased sales and bottom line results.
Want to learn more about the importance of GDD and what B2B marketers should be thinking about to build new Inbound websites focused on lead generation?
