A $78,000 Lesson Learned the Wrong Way
In 2019, I had an enlightening phone conversation with a founder of a mid-market SaaS company who had recently undertaken a complete redesign of his company’s website (an entirely new layout, custom illustrations, parallax style scrolling, a homepage that looks like it belongs on an award-winning design gallery, etc.).
He was proud of his new design; totally proud.
Then, six months later he called again. The tone this time was very different than before. “We’re getting traffic,” he told me, “but nothing’s happening; there are no demo requests, no one is filling out forms. The sales team thinks the website is basically invisible to them.”
He spent $78,000 to build an extremely expensive but beautiful digital brochure about his company instead of building a site that would actually help him sell his products or services. It’s simply not uncommon for many B2B companies to confuse how aesthetically appealing their website is, to being able to create conversions from it when people visit it. Some people even treat their website like this big old poster hanging on the wall somewhere rather than the hardest working salesperson on the payroll.
Digital Brochures Are No Longer In Demand. Get Them Off Life Support.
Let me explain. If your website’s only purpose is to look good and tell people what you do, then you have already lost.
The digital brochure approach – static webpage structure, ambiguous wording, and a Contact Us form that hides way at the bottom of the website (footer) – was acceptable in 2011. Back then, just having a website was a competitive advantage, but that time has passed.
Here is what has changed:
– How buyers behave is fundamentally different than it used to be. According to Gartner research, only 17% of B2B purchasing decisions are made by meeting with potential suppliers. That leaves 83% of the decision-making process happening after the buyer conducts their own independent research on the suppliers available to them. Your website IS the sales conversation for 83% of how buyers reach their final decisions!
– The amount of time a visitor spends on your site before deciding whether to stay or leave has decreased significantly, while their expectations of your website have increased exponentially. A visitor will decide to stay on or leave from your site within 3-5 seconds! They are not looking around; they are evaluating YOU! Visitors expect to see answers, proof, and direction for a next step on your site — NOW!
The competition has already figured this out! Companies that build their websites as conversion engines receive 3 times as many leads for every dollar spent on driving traffic according to Hubspot’s Benchmark Data.
So if your site looks like a corporate capabilities presentation in a translation to HTML, you are not competing – you are simply existing online.
What a Conversion Engine Looks Like
Let’s clarify the difference – this is not about adding more popups or shoving CTAs into every paragraph or across every page (this is lazy). A true conversion engine is built differently than a brochure site from day one.
1. Each Page Has A Task
A brochure website contains pages that serve to “inform”. A conversion engine will have measurable outcomes for each page. Your homepage does not exist to impress; instead, it should route the right visitor to the next step in 10 seconds or less. Your service pages do not exist to display a long list of services; they exist to build trust with the visitor and tackle specific questions or concerns the visitor may have while motivating them to take action.
So, if you removed one of the pages of your website tomorrow, would there be a decrease in the volume of leads generated? If the answer is no, then that page is adding no value to you whatsoever.
2. Messaging Appeals to Pain, Not Product Features
“Leading provider of.” If brochure websites had the capacity to listen, I would tell them that’s all they do is waste time talking about themselves in that fashion. I would also tell them that no one could care less about that sentence when it comes to making an inquiry.
Conversely, a conversion engine will flip that paradigm. They will lead off with a buyer’s problem, articulate and explain their pain (as articulately and as clearly as the buyer can), and then — and only then — will they position their product or service as a solution.
Stripe will not state their business model as “Payment Processing.” They will state their business model as “Financial Infrastructure for the internet.” One statement describes them. One statement is indicative of their relevance.
3. Friction – Engineered Out
Every additional form field equals lost conversions. Every page that loads in 4 seconds instead of 2 seconds equals lost conversions. Every navigation menu that has 14 items equals lost conversions.
The web development of conversion components obsessively engineers the removal of friction through fewer clicks to value; faster load times, better form logic, and progressive profiling instead of asking someone for their life story on the first visit.
The Baymard Institute states that simplifying your checkout flow can recapture 35% of lost ecommerce conversions by eliminating frictions within the checkout process. Similarly, in the B2B space, streamlining your inquiry or demo requests will generate a comparable increase in conversions from your current process.
4. Social Proof is Structure, not Decoration
On your homepage, some company logos and a link to a testimonial page that no one has visited is (decoration) type of social proof. It looks nice, but it does not really provide social proof that people will trust when making a buying decision.
In a conversion engine, social proof is incorporated throughout the context. There are case study snippets on the same page as the service. Client results appear at the same time visitors are deciding whether to continue. Video testimonials automatically play in a location that creates the biggest impact rather than being hidden away in a media library.
The social proof should be accessible throughout their journey and should not just be located in a corner of the site to be found later.
5. Data is the Driver for Iteration, not People’s Opinions
Most redesign projects go sideways at this stage. The CEO wants blue. The Marketing Director wants a hero video. The Designer wants more white space. Everyone has an opinion, there is no one that can back any of these opinions up with actual data.
A conversion engine is launched based on a hypothesis, not an assumption, and then tested (heatmap data, session recordings, A/B tests on headlines, CTAs, page layouts) in order to produce the highest conversions possible. Monthly audits on conversion rates, quarterly updates (based on actual metrics) on the surveys for the marketing content are used.
The best websites I’ve worked with do not launch as the most perfect website; their strength is from consistent improvement until they reach their maximum potential at the conversion rate.
Passive web sites are costly
Mathematical examples often provide credibility for making budgetary decisions.
For instance, if you were to spend $8000 per month driving traffic to your website through paid search engine ads, content (written and video), and/or LinkedIn ads, you’d probably get 5000 visitors monthly. The average conversion for an average brochure-style website is about 1% (which is generous); therefore, you’d expect 50 leads per month.
If you were to rebuild your site to be a conversion machine and improve the conversion rate to 3% with same traffic and spend as previously indicated, you’d expect 150 leads per month.
This isn’t simply a small increase in pipeline; rather, it’s an increase of three times your current pipeline without incurring any additional cost for lead generation. Then, when you consider the compounding effect of this increased revenue over 12-months, the numbers are enormous, and therefore each other investment in marketing will yield greater rewards.
The real cost of a passive website isn’t how much you paid for it to be built, but rather every lead lost, every opportunity lost and to some extent, every dollar not made by missing out on the revenue generated by having an active site that does its job.
Most website redesigns begin with a design brief, but this is the wrong way to begin. The right way to start a redesign is by conducting an audit of your website’s conversions. For example, find out where visitors are leaving your site (which pages create engagement and which ones don’t), and determine what the actual user experience is in relation to what was intended as per your site map.
You must have a team that understands both the creative aspect and business strategy simply because you can’t just hire designers who create beautiful design nor can you hire developers who only know how to write clean code. You must work with partners who understand how a page functions before they decide how it looks.
At Yeasinarena, we develop a conversion-first philosophy when building websites. All of our creative and design work is based off of how the site will drive business results rather than using trends or templates. We conduct user journey maps, audit conversion paths, and build websites that are not only a source of passive revenue but also can be used every day as tools for growing your business. This type of strategic thinking creates a website that both wins awards but also takes your business to new heights; ideally, you want both but if you must choose, always choose growth over awards.
The change is strategic rather than merely technical
Let me clarify the difference between developing a conversion engine versus developing a website. It is not only about building a new website; it is about changing how your organisation thinks about your online presence.
Your website should now be viewed as a part of revenue generation. This will change how Sales and Marketing align around a common set of conversion metrics. Your website will evolve as a living entity rather than just being launched and forgotten for three years.
Not only do companies that shift their thinking and implementation have more leads, but they also have faster sales cycles because the prospects are better educated before they reach out. They also have greater average deal sizes because the website allows for intent to be qualifed before the prospect contacts the sales team. Finally, companies that change this way have greater alignment between their marketing spend and their revenue because they can trace every marketing dollar spent to its ultimate revenue results.
Summary
The success or failure of your website affects your business. There’s no in-between.
If you have created a website that is nothing more than a digital brochure (with zero conversion opportunities), then it will cost you money daily through lost sales. That does not mean that the look of your website is poor; it means that you are not taking advantage of the visitors that come to your website every day.
Winning companies today consider their website to be their primary revenue generation tool. They design their website with purpose; they measure its performance with determination; and they are consistently working to improve its functionality.
The age of the digital brochure is over; your website must now be a tool for generating revenue or you will continue to wonder why you don’t have enough sales.
If you are looking to take a critical look at your website and determine if it is nothing more than a very expensive pamphlet, start with a conversion audit. Trace the path of your visitors; locate any leaks in the path; then redesign your website with purpose and intention (not just design). If you need assistance with this, you can contact Yeasinarena to start that conversation.