Posted 13.01.2023
The B2B sales process is different to the B2C sales process. It technically follows the same procedure as B2C in that brands must identify and target new customers and assist them down the sales funnel to purchase, as well as maintain relationships with loyal customers and entice them to return and make another purchase. However, the timeline, lifecycle, profit and conversion rate often differ considerably.
Compared to B2C brands, B2B companies usually find that:
So, with all of that in mind, how do you leverage conversion rate optimisation (CRO) to increase your sales, revenue and, most importantly, profit?
CRO is an acronym for conversion rate optimisation. This means instead of focusing on how many sales you’re making a week, month and year, you’re calculating what percentage of your website traffic is buying from you – or converting into customers.
There are numerous reasons why CRO is vital for eCommerce brands operating in the B2B space, including:
If your website is ranking well in the search engine results page for relevant search terms, you’ll likely be seeing an increased number of potential shoppers coming onto your B2B website. But if there isn’t a clear journey of what they should do next, and if your website isn’t organised in a way that’s easy to use, you’ll be missing out on potential revenue.
CRO strategies ensure that the road from landing on your site to investing in your products is as smooth and straightforward as possible.
Customers are more likely to choose a company that has a fantastic product or product range, maintains fair prices and can prove that they know what their customers want and need.
With B2B brands it’s a little more complicated than that, as you need to prove that you know what your immediate customer wants and what their target audience wants too. With CRO, you’re putting information like this front and centre in a way that is more likely to grab and keep your target market’s attention.
Following point two, CRO efforts can include competitor research. With so many companies selling incredibly similar products online, it’s vital that you find a way to stand out from the crowd.
That involves discovering what unique selling points (USPs) your competitors are talking about on their websites, knowing what matters most to your target customers and showcasing that in a way that is better than your competitors, will attract attention and convince them to choose you.
CRO is important in eCommerce and particularly for B2B brands because website visitors are generally of lower volumes, so it’s arguably more important that the quality of these visits be as high as possible – which you can measure through conversion rate.
If your conversion rate suddenly drops but the amount of traffic to your website hasn’t changed, it’s likely a lead quality issue.
Historically, marketing teams and their marketing strategies have revolved around choosing a selection of words people search for regularly that are relevant to the products they sell, and incorporating these into their website in such a way that when someone searches for that term on Google, Bing or elsewhere, their website shows up as close to the top of the screen as possible.
Today, it’s a lot more complicated and requires brands to create fantastic experiences for their audience, showcase their authority, trustworthiness and more. All of these factors are targeted through the website’s conversion rate optimisation.
These are just some of the ways CRO can convince your site visitors to take the desired action to ultimately increase sales to help you hit your conversion goals.
The great news is that Google does this on your behalf and you can measure your conversion rate in Google Analytics. However, if you want to know how to calculate conversion rate to do it yourself, it’s a relatively simple equation.
You simply gather all of the interactions (these are known as sessions in Google Analytics) for a particular page or group of pages and divide the total by the number of conversions (sales).
[Number of sessions] divided by [sales] equals conversion rate.
As an example, say you wanted to work out the conversion rate for a group of product pages under a specific category. You had 600 people click on those pages over the course of a month which resulted in 200 conversions. Here’s how you would calculate the conversion rate: 200/600= 0.33 – your conversion rate is 0.33%
What is considered to be a ‘good’ conversion rate will differ from industry to industry and even between B2C and B2B. According to WordStream, the average conversion rate of pages they reviewed was 2.35%
However, we would recommend not aiming for a blanket figure and instead, calculating what your average conversion rate was over a specific period and using that as your benchmark to measure success against.
Bear in mind, too, that not all landing pages will be built with the sole aim of increasing conversions. Some web pages will be generated to educate your target audience and move them towards making an investment in your brand.
There will also always be specific landing pages that are underperforming, so it’s worth uncovering these first and prioritising them in your CRO plan. Targeting any landing page that is ‘underperforming’ and improving this will generate faster results than planning, researching, building and publishing additional pages – so it may be worth tackling these first.
So, now you know what CRO is and may even have an idea of what web page or group of web pages you want to tackle first with sales strategies that focus on CRO, how do you actually do it?
Well, as with most things surrounding digital marketing, there are an array of options at your fingertips. All you have to do is decide which approach is right for you. To help, here are a few examples that can help you get started:
A great way to generate more leads is to use lead capture forms. Smartly position these on your web pages for users to fill out should they wish. Make sure you inform them of how their data will be used in line with GDPR, and once they’ve issued consent, you can target them via an email marketing strategy.
This is one way to start building holistic marketing strategies that can help increase sales and conversion rates.
If you’ve had great feedback about a product or your brand, ask permission to incorporate this into your site. It will act as a trust signal and showcase that previous customers had a great experience with you.
And because these testimonials or reviews are freely given, shoppers are more likely to believe them and turn into paying customers.
What calls to action (CTAs) are on your important pages? Where are they positioned and what do they say? For example, is it worth changing up a CTA that targets newsletter sign-ups with something that will increase conversions – like referencing a sale that’s currently running? Changing the wording on your CTAs is a simple task that can be highly effective.
In eCommerce, the quality of your images is incredibly important. The aim is to create the illusion that the shopper is holding the product in their hands. They need to be able to zoom in and see the detailing of the product. They may want to see it from all angles. A video may even be a good option in some situations.
Your images should also be well-optimised for the image SERPs, have relevant alt tags, and be as small as possible in file size without compromising the quality of the images.
If your B2B eCommerce site has a customer order portal, it’s worth reviewing this to ensure it’s operating smoothly. Ideally, you want to create smooth journeys so that users can log in, do what they need to do and log out quickly and easily. The less ‘hassle’ the better.
You may want to do some testing with volunteers to tease out any potential problems or pain points your site visitors might come across. The easier it is for shoppers to use your customer order portal, the more likely they will be to reinvest in your brand rather than look elsewhere.
Split testing is where you show two different versions of the same landing page simultaneously. Which version of the page is shown to which website visitor is automated, and at the end of the test you’ll be able to tell which version your audience preferred.
You could change the structure of the page, the design and even the wording to understand which version increases the likelihood of a desired action being taken – i.e a conversion.
Be warned though, that if you want to test multiple things, you will need to run multiple tests. Don’t change more than one thing at a time otherwise you won’t know what change is having an impact.
If you have the budget to invest in heat maps, you can see precisely how your website visitors are interacting with your pages. This can help you restructure so that you’re providing potential customers with everything they need and weeding out the stuff that they aren’t actively interacting with.
If you have enough employees, implementing live chat functionality on your website is a great way to shorten the sales cycle. As a shopper is looking at your product, they can ask any questions they may have, receive an immediate response and make a decision there and then if they want to either engage in more conversation or invest straight away.
Is the content on your product pages dry, duplicated and focused mainly on your brand? Or does it accentuate problems your potential customers may have, emphasise how your products can help them and highlight other reasons why they should buy from you (great price, quick delivery etc.)?
Striking the right balance in your content is not an easy thing to do, but it’s a vital component of transforming website visitors into paying customers. You should always strive to gain a better understanding of what your target customers want and need and evidence this in your product page content.
While you don’t have to incorporate all of these into your B2B eCommerce marketing plan, starting with the one you think will result in a higher conversion rate in the shortest timeframe will set you off in the right direction.
Evolve Trader is an award-winning B2B eCommerce platform that helps you get the most out of your website.
We specialise in a number of B2B industries, including:
We assist with creating flexible ordering that reflects your business branding. Our software can integrate into a number of different platforms with secure access 24/7. Why not get in touch or book a demo to see how our software can help improve your site visitors’ experience and even assist with increasing conversions?
