Notice Anything Different About Our Website—Or at Least Our Blog Page?

Meg Hoppe
Posted by Meg Hoppe on July 16, 2014

inbound-marketing-valueLast Friday, around 3:00 pm, we flipped the switch on an entirely new website – “Same URL, Great New Look & Features!” Anyone who’s launched a “replacement” site knows that those first few hours of propagation can be unnerving, but everything seems to be working as we’d intended, so we hope you’ll take a look around.

People seemed to like our last site, which we launched about 3 years ago, and we did, too – at the time. But in that time we’ve accumulated more and more knowledge about inbound marketing and prospects’ and clients’ needs, some of which weren’t accurately reflected on the old site; eventually we came to the conclusion that we needed an overhaul.

In developing a strategy for the new website, we drank our own KoolAid, as it were, and got rid of stuff clients and prospects don’t care about, added features and content they do, and made sure the site was powered to act as a vibrant attraction device and lead conversion machine. And, we did that all while underpinning everything we did with a focus on delivering value to visitors.

Here’s a bit deeper look into what we did and why:

We made it fully responsive.

Have you ever used your mobile phone or tablet to look at a website, only to find that the navigation bar can’t be seen in its entirety, that images are cut off and that viewing the page as a whole was impossible?

Weidert-Group-home-page

Technology has evolved significantly and today allows the contents of a page to adapt to changes in the user’s screen size, reorganizing all a page’s elements so they fit the screen appropriately. According to eMarketer, the number of local searches done on mobile devices is expected to reach 85.9 billion in 2015 and exceed the number of searches done on desktop computers, currently about 84 billion. So if your site isn’t responsive today, you’re losing mobile visitors who come to your site – then leave because they don’t want to bother with the work involved in trying to navigate it.

To make our new site fully responsive we utilized the power of HubSpot’s Content Optimization System (COS), which deserves a separate blog article all in itself to explain all the game-changing features it offers as a website platform. In a nutshell, the COS offered us the ability to create a single website that offers a beautiful user experience on any device and we now have the ability to create a more contextual experience for our site users with different page content – once we learn who they are and their role. Similar to an Amazon-like experience.

We’re talking exclusively to—and about—clients and prospects.

One of the most common mistakes we see on B2B sites today is the inclination to present what the company wants the world to know, not what its best prospects want to know. Sure, you have to tell people what you do and why they should buy from you, but you need to do it in a way that answers the questions they’re asking, addresses the objections they may have, and presents a compelling answer to their question, “Why should I buy from you?” If your prospects have questions about cost, process, value or proprietary benefits, answer them on your site.

in-depth-resources-page The best way to understand what your prospects want and need to see on your website is to develop target personas, a process that’s reflected in the site we have today. By understanding our personas’ role in their companies, the challenges they face each day, the obstacles others in their organizations put in their paths, their perceptions about inbound marketing, and many other qualitative points, we were able to hit their nails on the head, making a strong case for ourselves and for inbound marketing, making our message relate and align with their needs.

We added information that helps visitors understand what we do and how we do it (and do it differently).

You’ll find general information answering the question, “What does inbound marketing cost?” (most businesses are reluctant to share numbers, but people appreciate being given ballpark figures), a graphic that helps explain the process we go through with clients after they determine inbound marketing is the right approach, a company overview, and a listing of the inbound marketing certifications each of our employees holds.

Weidert-Group-teamWe’re still working on it.

We’re in the process, already, of adding enhancements to the site, like a Portfolio of our inbound work and a Resources page that’s categorized to make it even easier to find content related to topics you’re looking for. A site should never be treated as a static thing that’s “done.” Rather, it’s a powerful tool that needs sharpening regularly to stay effective and relevant to your best prospects.

This is where metrics and monitoring comes in; because we use the HubSpot COS and inbound marketing software platform for our website, we can review real-time analytics that tell us what pages are getting the most views, what offers are most valuable to visitors and much more data that tells us how effective every element of the site is. Pages we see aren’t getting eyeballs will be rewritten, reconfigured or removed entirely. The same with content offers.

As an evolving tool that demonstrates our expertise and approach and articulates how inbound marketing can accelerate the growth of your business, we’ll never be done with our site. To that end, we’d love to hear from you: is there anything you’d like to see included on our site? Is the information provided enough to answer your basic questions about us and inbound marketing? Your input is very valuable in presenting the most compelling picture to the world, so we welcome your thoughts and ideas.

Before

Weidert-Group-old-site

After

Weidert-Group-new-site

Website usability checklist for inbound marketing

Topics: Inbound Marketing, Website Design

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