3 secrets to a business website that can generate leads

How to create a successful business website?

Creating a website from scratch is not easy, just as the intuition of redesigning an existing one is not immediate: both of these needs require a well-structured action plan, aimed at achieving commercial development objectives.

The 3 rules for a successful business website
Here they are below, clickable directly from the table.

Identify your ideal customer
Align the buying and selling cycle
Optimize the site for B2B lead generation

1. Identify the ideal customer
The practical realization of a site is only the latest in a series of fundamental and necessary steps to be implemented. In principle, it is necessary to be clear to whom we want to direct our contents, who therefore our buyer persona is : a recurring concept in inbound marketing that wants to define the set of characteristics of the ideal customer we want to attract.

It is obvious that the contents of the site should be addressed to everyone, but the primary goal of the inbound is to attract qualified traffic made up of potential customers who could actually sign a contract with us.

Striving to get to know our buyer persona means studying her in depth, outlining an identikit that fully represents her personality and history. Of course, you must also ask yourself doubts and questions that the same might ask: in this way you will play in advance, already knowing that your products or services are the perfect solution for her.

To do this, you could do research, analyzing the contents of competitors and understanding what the weak points of their business may be, thus arriving prepared to offer your best solution package.

2. Align the buying cycle with the sales cycle
Before delving more specifically into the physical creation of the website, it is worth addressing another theoretical aspect. Now you are at a good point, you know the buyer persona, his habits, his personality and you have ready a proposal for solutions to deal with his shortcomings and problems. All this is fundamental, but not sufficient; to get a complete picture it is necessary to analyze how the prospect purchase cycle could take place, a concept defined by the inbound as the buyer's journey .

Here it is useful to make a premise: the purchase cycle is a three-phase process, which can be summarized as follows:

Awareness phase in which the user realizes that he has a problem or is in difficulty
Consideration phase in which the prospect, after identifying the problem that afflicts him, looks for valid options to solve it
Decision phase in which the user evaluates the possible optimal solutions and decides to proceed with a specification.To define the buyer's journey, it is essential to examine the buying and consumption habits of the latest customers acquired, deepening in the order:

Reasons that led them to choose you as their supplier
How they approached the purchase and how the experience was evaluated
What are the possible changes to be made to improve it
The winning approach is always to put yourself in the shoes of the buyer person and imagine all the benefits that this would like to find from their purchases; therefore, by reasoning in such a structured way, you will have aligned the company sales processes with the prospect's purchasing ones, putting on the same level the advantages for the buyer persona and the objectives of your commercial offers.

3. Optimize the site according to lead generation
Here we are at the concrete aspect of creating a successful corporate website, where the theoretical strategy joins the practical component to work in function of lead generation .

Let's take a preliminary step, do you remember who a lead is and why it is important to work with a lead generation approach? Let's review together: A lead is a person who has expressed an interest in the products or services offered by your company. Basically, a person who knows you and has expressed a need for which you have a concrete solution.

Within the inbound methodology, a lead is a user who has filled out a form with their data to be able to access premium content.


To create a website that aims to attract (and convert into leads) potential customers, you need to ensure the success of specific activities, let's see together which ones:

Professional-looking and user-friendly layout
Diversified and updated content
Positioning of call to action, with related landing pages
Offers aligned with the prospect's need
Promotion on the social profiles site
Performance analysis
Layout
Selecting the right layout is by no means trivial; it is a delicate choice, knowing that it is the most impactful aspect of a site that attracts the attention of a new customer or not and, therefore, of a new business opportunity.

There are no precise rules to follow, just a few recommendations that you should keep in mind:

Remember to communicate simple messages that are always aligned with what you do
Make sure that the prospect is clear about the next step to follow within your site: do not let the situation arise in which the user has to ask what to do, because at this point the risk that he will leave the site forever is very high. The site must always be user-friendly, simple to use and clear in its structure
To be functional, the layout must be prepared for navigation from any device; there are countless devices with which a lead can visit a site and sites are not always responsive or designed to be easily readable and navigable. A trick to make sure that we are making navigation enjoyable for our users and all their devices is taught by Google, with AMP; the open source “Accelerated Mobile Pages Project” aims to make web pages on mobile devices fast and simplified. Loading is instant and less burdened. The impact of AMP on SEO is also quite evident: pages that make good use of it are rewarded in search engine rankings.
A key concept in inbound marketing is personalization , which should not be underestimated even when creating company sites. Let's talk about it together in the next paragraph on contents.
Contents
The content of a company site must be SMART and customized according to the level of interest of the prospect and the stage of the purchase cycle in which it is located. This aspect is strategic to bring together supply and demand online and to ensure that the visitor always finds what he is looking for and what he needs, without any kind of external forcing.

As mentioned before, the concept of personalization within a website and within the contents themselves is essential. Precisely because the customer, potential or already acquired, must be at the center of marketing strategies, he must feel welcome on the site and know that he can find an answer to his needs.

Many inbound platforms, including Hubspot's , help identify site users and trace their path and behaviors in order to offer a new experience, different content every time and thus accompany them along the purchase path.

Among the most decisive textual contents, the articles of a blog certainly prevail. Our recommendation is to always include a company blog within your website; it is a precious tool that guarantees you an always frequent and updated approach to visitors, but not only. It makes you visible to the eyes of new prospects who are just waiting to get to know you: with the blog you will be able to offer them useful information, solutions or valuable opinions.

The contents, of course, cannot be just textual, but there must be a right alternation between written elements and visual elements.

Here are some ideas to put them to good use:

Images: if impactful and in high definition, they are able to capture the attention and make a difference. When choosing the images to use within your website, in addition to focusing on the definition and appreciation of the same, it is important to verify that they are responsive. Your visitors can browse from different devices, such as smartphones, tablets and computers. The browsing experience must not be compromised in terms of quality for any reason, so make sure that your sites and your images are easily visible from any device.
Product images: there is a growing tendency to insert, within one's content, images that aim to show different functions of a product or service quickly. With this little trick you will ensure the understanding of the offer in an immediate way, breaking the long textual blocks.
Video: a video played, automatically or not, can represent an added value, just think that a video is processed by our brain 60,000 times faster than a text. It serves to capture the visitor's attention the moment he comes across a page and gives the user the impression that his view will be consumed quickly and without great effort.Product video: Just like with images, companies can also use the video tool to introduce new products and features or to highlight specific uses. Users will be able to find answers to their doubts, simply by observing a video about a service and this could further bring prospects closer to a concrete reality.
Card Design: are framed images that use visual content to provide information within a page. Within the cards it is possible to distribute small portions of information, such as pills, which the user can choose to deepen. If what he sees is of particular interest to him, he will go further and click on the section where he will find the product / service specifications. Also in this case it is worth remembering the importance of adapting the images to any usable device.
Among the most strategic elements of inbound marketing, the call to action is the primary means used to help a user transform from a simple visitor to a lead and, subsequently, into a loyal customer.

It is a key tool in B2B lead generation, which can be used both in graphic and textual form to promote offers in strategic points of the website and corporate blog pages. What makes CTAs really effective is the ability to show the user only personalized offers, continuing to always guarantee the best user experience. The call to action connects to a landing page, a tool, usually accompanied by a form, which is created ad hoc to illustrate the advantages of a particular offer.

Content Offered
The premium content you offer your leads after they fill out the landing page form can be of various types: eBooks to download, how-to guides, checklists and videos are a great way to engage prospects. Whichever tool you use, make sure the messages are clear and concise; don't digress, but get straight to the point.

Furthermore, creating and distributing content means responding to the needs, questions and doubts of prospects, aligning one's commercial strategy with the new purchasing needs. Here too we find the concept of content personalization which means nothing more than offering the target audience what they are looking for, what they really need.

Promote your social profiles
Social networks play a crucial role within the inbound strategy: being present on social networks will help you attract interested users and valid leads. To get started, add links to your corporate social media profiles to your corporate site, preferably where your contact information is located. Then proceed with the insertion of the social share commands on the site that take into account how many times the contents have been shared; in this way the visitor will know that a topic is popular even before reading it.

If the company's social pages are already well started and you have collected positive comments and reviews from satisfied customers, include these testimonials on the site and imagine that you are a potential customer: reading a real testimony taken from social networks will be an additional encouragement to take a step forward in the purchase process, to contact you or subscribe to the newsletter? We think so. Obviously this is not enough to generate traffic: just like you would for your content, your social pages also need to be fed with constantly updated or reworked material. Remember to draw up an editorial plan, to be followed meticulously, even for your social networks.

Analyze performance
The activity of analysis is fundamental regardless of the marketing strategies chosen for your company, traditional or innovative. It is always necessary to test and measure performance, regardless of the age of the site or your experience in the field. The analysis is used both in advance, during the construction of a company site, and a posteriori during the development phase, when your interest will be to monitor the progress and intervene with optimization activities. The goal is to continually evolve and try to refine the content by making it meet the needs of prospects.

Extra design tips:
To deepen the theme of the design of a company website, we want to give you the latest advice, so as not to find yourself unprepared on these aspects.

What should the navigation menu look like? It definitely needs to stand out immediately, so be placed high, as well as be user-friendly. In most cases, corporate sites have a very long menu with a wide choice of commands. The advantage of such a structured visualization is that the user always knows where he is and where he is going, but in the long run it can create problems of space occupation. For this reason, the use of a drop-down menu completely changes the view of a page of the site, leaving clear the path to follow, while hiding a crowded navigation bar.
What is the most attractive font? The range of characters to choose from is vast, but it is a good rule to always keep in mind the context in which to use one type rather than another: the font must reflect the type of communication and represent the tone we want to use. Of course it must be as clear and legible as possible.
A flat design for a more enjoyable experience? Including elements that give the perception of three dimensions, such as shadows, could in the long run cause a lot of confusion. Therefore, creating a website with a flat design means offering the user a simpler and more intuitive experience, being able to orient themselves better on the site and quickly understand its contents.
Thinking of creating a corporate website with the aim of transforming it into a B2B lead generation mechanism involves a series of careful reflections. In our article we have analyzed the strategic planning that underlies this ambitious plan to achieve the best results.