When you’re creating or redesigning a B2B website, getting the content right is crucial. Content is the cornerstone of your website’s success. It influences how easy your site is to navigate and your bottom line. If customers and prospects can’t find information, place orders or access important resources quickly, they’ll bounce. Ensuring your content is well-organized, informative and accessible is key to engagement and business growth.
To keep visitors on your site rather than turn to a competitor’s, prioritize content over design.
But content-first doesn’t mean design takes a back seat. Instead, this strategy recognizes that effective websites come from content and design collaboration. In short, planning content upfront avoids potentially expensive surprises.
Developing a B2B website before mapping out the content is like buying materials to build a house without a blueprint. You don’t know if the materials will fit or if you’ll have all the necessary supplies. Similarly, if your website content isn’t defined, the design could lack essential elements or feature irrelevant ones.
If you’re thinking, “What’s the big deal? We’ll readjust,” think again. A design-first approach can cause scope creep, missed deadlines and blown budgets. Consequently, never force content to fit the design for your B2B website. It doesn’t allow you to think about your business goals, website strategy and content plan. As a result, you won’t engage your audience. Moreover, you’ll drive them away with a poor user experience.
Here’s the 14-step road map to create a winning website every time:
- Identify your ‘why’
- Stick to your business goals
- Know your audience
- Collaborate with your team
- Research competitors’ B2B websites
- Review favorite sites
- Consider content types
- Create a site map
- Audit your site content
- Perform SEO research
- Plan your content
- Write targeted content
- Ensure website accessibility
- Add, update and promote content
1. Identify your ‘why’
Do you know the purpose of your B2B website, or your “why?” Define your goals clearly. Do you want to attract and retain top talent, increase sales or improve your reputation? Creating a website just to have one or to copy competitors won’t give you the engagement or results you want. Knowing the purpose of your site is essential for its success.
Suppose you’re a logistics provider that focuses on regional transportation. You recently expanded to offer international shipping. Your website highlights your regional expertise, but now it needs to promote your global capabilities as well.
Here, the objective is to demonstrate your expanded services without alienating your current audience. The site should balance promoting your new global reach while maintaining your strong regional presence, with tailored content for each market.
2. Stick to your business goals
Before starting your B2B website project, ensure that your site goals align with your business goals. Let’s say your No. 1 business goal is to increase revenue. That could mean prioritizing content that drives lead conversions. Thus, you’d want to create clear calls to action (CTAs), compelling product pages and streamlined contact forms. Every aspect of your site should support your business objectives.
3. Know your audience
Before creating content, consider the following:
- Who is your target audience? Find out if your audience includes prospects, current customers, job seekers, vendors or potential partners.
- What are their pain points? Recognize your audience’s challenges and frustrations. Tailor your content to address these problems.
- What motivates them? Create original, actionable content that speaks to your audience’s goals and interests.
- What do they want from your site? Determine if they seek thought leadership, product information or insights into your company’s culture. Provide high-quality, relevant content to meet these expectations.
- How do they consume content? Find out if they prefer videos, podcasts, how-to guides or blog posts. Offer content in various formats to cater to different preferences.
Furthermore, instead of relying on buyer personas, talk directly with your customers and prospects. Buyer personas are often based on general assumptions and outdated data. Having real conversations gives you up-to-date insights that better reflect your customers’ actual needs and preferences.
4. Collaborate with your team
A content-first strategy is a highly collaborative process. Rather than working separately, copywriters, content creators, designers and developers work as a cohesive team. This collaboration will ensure the content aligns with the design and functionality for an optimal user experience.
Regular meetings and brainstorming sessions promote open communication and idea sharing. Team members can contribute to the discussions based on their expertise. In addition, involving stakeholders from departments, such as sales, customer service and IT, will provide valuable feedback that can help identify potential issues early on. Therefore, you’ll ensure everyone’s needs are being met and that your B2B website will be polished and effective.
5. Research competitors’ B2B websites
Explore your competitors’ websites to understand current content trends and topics within your industry. Look at how they share customer success stories, the originality and relevance of their thought leadership articles, and how they handle their recruitment sections.
Next, make a list of what you find appealing and decide if you want to use similar strategies or try a different approach for your content-first B2B website. The aim is not to copy their work but to see what you like, what matches your business and content goals, and how you might do it even better.
Competitors’ sites can inspire new content ideas or offer fresh perspectives on topics you haven’t thought of. They might also show content gaps you can fill to set your business apart. Even if you don’t use these insights right away, they could be useful for future content.
6. Review favorite sites
Take a fresh look at some of your favorite websites and assess what makes them stand out to you. They don’t have to be in your industry to offer valuable insights. Consider aspects such as:
- How they package and personalize content
- How they treat design elements
- What strategies they use for site engagement
- How they organize their information
- Whether they use multimedia content, such as videos and infographics
Could you adopt similar techniques or put your unique spin on them for your B2B website? Look for common themes or features you admire.
While this exercise may not be as critical as analyzing your competitors’ sites, it’s an excellent way to spark creativity and inspiration. By reflecting on what you enjoy about these sites, you can discover innovative ways to enhance your content.
7. Consider content types
Next, use your research from the previous steps to make a list of the kinds of content that might work well for your site. Examples include:
- Articles
- Blog posts
- Charts, tables and graphics
- Customer case studies
- Customer reviews
- Customer testimonials
- e-books
- Employee stories
- FAQs
- Forms
- How-to guides
- Infographics
- Interactive content
- Job openings
- Leadership and employee profiles
- News and events
- Photos
- Podcasts
- Product catalogs
- Videos
- White papers
Most importantly, it’s more effective to have a small amount of high-quality content that’s professional, educational and relevant than to have a lot of poorly done material. Thus, focus on creating content that addresses your audience’s problems and provides valuable solutions. Regardless of the categories you choose, always strive for excellence when crafting your B2B website.
8. Create a site map
A site map is a visual representation of all the pages on a site. It will show what content you’ll include and how it will all fit together. You can use an artificial intelligence (AI) tool or a site map generator to build one. Generators include Slickplan, GlooMaps and WriteMaps. If you’re updating an existing site, review your analytics to help you figure out which pages you’ll need and how to prioritize them.
Determine:
- The sections you’ll need and the order in which they’ll appear
- How they flow from one to another
- The purpose of each page
- How visitors will navigate to each page
If you’re unsure where to begin, check out your competitors’ sites and your favorite websites to see how they organize their content. By defining the elements listed above, you’ll create a clear and easy-to navigate structure for your B2B website.
9. Audit your site content
Assessing your current B2B website content is a crucial step in creating a content-first website. Determine if you can repurpose existing content or if you need to start fresh. First, find evergreen content that stays relevant and that you can use on new pages. Second, check your site analytics to see which pages visitors spend the most time on. These pages probably have valuable information that resonates with your audience.
After that, think about giving a fresh spin to popular blog posts, case studies or articles to attract new traffic. This approach maximizes the value of your existing content and helps you stretch your budget by reusing and repackaging material effectively.
When repurposing content, prioritize quality over quantity. Ensure that each piece aligns with your business objectives, site goals and audience needs. Consistency is key. Make sure all content maintains a unified tone and voice that reflects your brand. Additionally, update any outdated information and refine the content to match your current standards and messaging.
10. Perform SEO research
Search engine optimization (SEO) helps your target audience find your content by improving your site’s visibility in search engines. If your B2B website is SEO-friendly, people will find you faster. At a minimum, perform a keyword analysis. Then, incorporate targeted words and phrases that you want to rank for. However, keep in mind that if your content is full of keywords but not relevant information, prospective customers will bounce.
To enhance your SEO efforts, considering using AI-driven platforms. These tools can help you conduct comprehensive SEO research efficiently by analyzing large volumes of data quickly. You’ll be able to identify high-performing keywords, trending topics and content gaps. In the same vein, you can use AI to generate keyword-rich headlines and meta descriptions. Including AI-infused insights in your content strategy will help you drive organic traffic to your site and stay ahead of the competition.
11. Plan your content
Planning gives you a road map to reach your destination. The same applies to creating content for a website. Using your site map and all the research you’ve done, decide the following:
- The content you’ll repurpose, how you’ll reuse it and where you’ll place it
- The new content you’ll create, how you’ll use it and where you’ll put it
- The key elements for each page by creating wireframes – a visual guide for the layout
- Who will create, edit and proofread content
- Whether you’ll use internal resources or seek outside help
- Who will oversee and approve the content
- Content deadlines
- Whether you’ll use original or stock photography, like royalty-free iStock images
- The graphics and supporting visuals you’ll need
- Where content will live as you’re building your site. Tools like Slickplan allow you to gather and stage content before posting it to a development site.
- Who will upload content to the development site
12. Write targeted content
Crafting targeted content that addresses your audience’s needs and provides value is essential for your website’s success. Here are some tips to boost engagement:
- Focus on prospects and customers: Show how your products and services solve their problems. Frame your content around benefits, improvements and potential outcomes if your audience doesn’t act.
- Use direct language: Speak directly to your audience using “you” and “your” rather than “we,” “our” and “us.”
- Answer questions: Ensure answers are easy to find throughout your site, on a FAQ page or both.
- Highlight key information: Place the most compelling information at the top of each page. Don’t bury the good stuff.
- Make content scannable: Break up text for short attention spans and mobile users with bullet points, callouts, charts, graphics and images.
- Write for humans: Be informal yet professional. Vary sentence lengths, but keep most sentences short.
- Maintain consistency: Use the same tone and voice across all marketing initiatives to ensure brand recognition.
- Incorporate SEO naturally: Use keywords where they fit organically. Avoid keyword stuffing, which can hurt your rankings.
- Avoid jargon: Don’t use technical industry terms. Write in plain English.
- Use strong CTAs: Include a strong call to action on each page. Clearly state what you want your audience to do, like contacting your company, registering for a demo or downloading an e-book.
- Include customer testimonials and case studies: They build trust and give prospects confidence in your products and services.
13. Ensure website accessibility
Making your B2B website accessible improves usability for everyone, including those who have disabilities or vision issues. Use descriptive links like “read more,” add alt tags to images, and include subtitles in videos. Ensure your body text is no smaller than 16 pixels and maintain high color contrast. Scan your site for accessibility problems and consider adding an accessibility widget to provide an inclusive digital experience.
14. Add, update and promote content
Refreshing your content regularly keeps visitors engaged and enhances your site’s search visibility. Whether adding blog posts, case studies, employee features or other material, ensure your content aligns with your business and site goals and addresses your audience’s needs. Aim for timeless content to prevent it from becoming outdated.
Moreover, promote your new content through email and social media to attract visitors to your B2B website and show off your hard work. Add links to related content to encourage visitors to explore more pages, boosting engagement and time spent on your site.
Get started!
In conclusion, developing a content-first website often requires more time than anticipated. Therefore, plan well in advance and incorporate flexibility into your schedule to handle the various moving parts and potential challenges. Anticipating these obstacles and preparing for them now will set you up for a successful website build.
