Every small to medium-sized business (SMB) needs a digital presence to stay relevant. While some SMBs are able to make their presence known solely through social media pages, for most businesses this means having a functional website. And your company probably has a website, but what is its purpose? How does your website serve your business and how do you measure how successful it is?
Few small business website owners know are experienced marketers who know how to attract eyeballs and create internet leads from their website traffic. It’s a familiar story and a common frustration. Offline business goals are far more straightforward compared to achieving online goals and objectives. Yet 81% of consumers search online before they even consider physically visiting a business[1].
This guide aims to help SMBs realize the significance of a business website as a tool for strengthening their brand and increasing sales. It’s presented in easy-to-grasp sections to help struggling businesses focus on building the foundation for a new or revised site.
#1 Business Website Design and Quality Content
B2B website goals aim to enhance credibility, improve branding, and increase lead generation. But first, it’s crucial to understand what does and doesn’t work. One misstep can disrupt your website performance even if you check most of the right boxes.
Here are seven of the most common SMB content and website design errors and fixes:
AVOID THIS | DO THIS INSTEAD |
– Focus is on the company, not the customer – No storytelling used to engage the audience – Cluttered web design, difficult to navigate – Old web development, not optimized for mobile – Unhelpful, poorly written, difficult-to-find content – Consistent lack of new content – Poor on/off-page search engine optimization | – Focus on the customer, not the company – Use storytelling to engage your audience – Easy-to-navigate uncluttered web design – Use responsive web design – Well-written, helpful, skimmable content – Publish fresh content regularly – Use on/off-page SEO to improve search |
All issues in the left column are a turn-off for visitors and will have website traffic hitting the back button in seconds. There are tools you can find online to help audit and evaluate your web pages. Or, partner with an agency like Bold Entity’s B2B marketing experts to review your site against the most updated best practices and who can help you implement improvements.
#2 Setting Website Goals & Objectives
A well-designed website with great content isn’t enough alone. You must consider what is the purpose of your site? First-time visitors to your business website should know what it represents on arrival. For example, if it’s an eCommerce website, what are you selling to the target audience? Neither you or your website visitors should have any question about the purpose of your website.
Don’t Confuse the Visitor
You won’t drive traffic to your site and funnel them towards you goal if they receive confusing messages. Your SMB website should provide answers to these five critical visitor questions:
- Who is behind the virtual curtain; who am I dealing with?
- What does this person or company offer?
- Why do I want or need this product or service?
- How will this product or service improve my life and make my business more profitable?
- What action do I take to learn more or make a purchase?
Try to answer these questions on your existing site. And, make sure you answer them as you design a new company website, blog, or internet store.
One of the best ways to start is by learning from other successful online brands.Notice how well they cover the above points to drive more traffic, increase online sales, and provide a good user experience (UX). How can you translate their successful execution into your website?
Consumers Happy to Pay for a Great Customer Experience A 2021 customer experience study found that around 86% of those surveyed were willing to pay more for a product or service that offered a great customer experience [2]. |
Understanding Website Goals and Objectives
Every company sets business targets it works towards. These goals and objectives should also include your website. Your website’s purpose is to introduce new prospects to your business and grow existing areas of your business. So whether you’re trying to increase sales, raise brand awareness, or improve user satisfaction, the end goal is the same. That is, happy customers, an improved reputation, and increased profits.
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#3 Track Metrics Using KPIs
The way to track progress—or lack of—is to measure Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These critical metrics gauge the effectiveness of your live project. The ones you implement depend on your business model, the areas that need work, and what you want to achieve. Our nine examples below show you how to use your KPIs to get the most out of your website.
Tools to Measure KPI Goals
Both free and fee-based KPI measurement tools do a pretty good job as a business reporting solution. They offer clean, easy-to-navigate user interfaces that allow you to easily create new campaigns. Google Analytics is presently the most popular free platform for tracking, monitoring, and generating actionable insights from KPIs.
Keep Your KPIs Simple
Try not to overcomplicate your website goals with KPIs. The secret is to decide which ones best assess your goals and keep your campaigns simple. Many inexperienced marketers tie themselves up in the micro-details. But hyper-focusing on minor points is unnecessary and often unproductive.
Let’s break this example down into nine popular KPIs over three critical areas:
MARKETING KPIs | SALES KPIs | USER EXPERIENCE KPIs |
Conversion rate Brand awareness level Number of qualified leads | Sales conversion rate Time before purchase Average order value | Customer satisfaction Bounce rate Page views |
There’s a more comprehensive list of marketing, sales, and use experience KPIs at the end of this guide.
#1 Conversion Rate (CVR) KPI
LEAD CONVERSION RATE | 38% |
Lead conversion rate (CVR) KPIs measure the number of visitors to your site that take the first step towards making a sale by converting into a lead. Reported as a percentage, this is the amount of website traffic that makes a step towards purchase. CVR is a critical top-of-funnel metric that no SMB website should ignore.
What to Measure: Your site’s ability to a) attract an audience and b) turn them into leads. First, learn what works and doesn’t work, then fine-tune your strategy as necessary. There are typically three areas where SMB websites fail when it comes to CVR.
One: Wrong or unfocused target audience
Two: Website content ranking for search terms unrelated to your business offeringsThree: Lack of call-to-action marketing prompts to lead traffic towards sales
#2 Brand Awareness Level KPI
Digital marketers set these KPIs to measure how others perceive their brand and brand messaging. Brand awareness is vital for promoting new or existing products or services and reviving older brands. There are several metrics to track these.
What to Measure: Brand awareness metrics measure visibility through mediums such as social media followers, engagement, and growth. You also want to track impressions, brand name mentions, branded search volume, earned media, and other KPIs.
#3 Number of Qualified Lead Generation
There are no guarantees that a lead will become a customer or client. But a marketing-qualified lead (MQL) meets certain qualifying criteria before they move towards sales. Various levels of engagement and qualification move them further down the sales funnel, making them potential customers.
What to Measure: There are many KPIs to measure MQLs. Some of the most used are bounce rate tracking, average time on page, cost per customer acquisition, and Marketing ROI. Get familiar with all the available metrics that help tailor targeted marketing strategies.
#4 Sales Conversion Rate
The sales conversion rate KPI is a powerful metric that shows how many leads end up purchasing at a glance. For example, if only 3% of new leads convert to paying customers, 97 out of 100 slip through your sales net. In this case, it’s evident that something’s not working, so it’s time to assess your tactics and potentially rethink your website sales strategies.
What to Measure: The number of conversions and conversion rates are the most obvious, but there are other valuable metrics. Cost per acquisition(CPA), conversion value, ROI, sales funnel metrics, and revenue is the most significant.
#5 Time to Purchase
Time to purchase lets you know how long it takes site visitors to become customers. It’s the end-to-end ordering process and a valuable metric to track. You will want to know how long the average purchase time takes to build your marketing and sales communication to match.
For example, Point-of-Sale stands with drinks, candy bars, and gift cards tend to be impulse buys. Someone decides whether they are going to buy an item within seconds of seeing it. Much different than a B2B purchase such as a commercial building high-speed internet installation. Decisions on these types of large projects often take months and involve many decision stakeholders.
What to Measure: These KPIs allow you to track behaviors in various ways. For instance, eCommerce analytics lets you drill down into specific purchasing routes. This valuable data reveals where you may most need to optimize your campaigns.
#6 Average Order Value (AOV)
Divides($) total revenue /(#) number of orders placed =($) AOV.
AOV is an excellent metric for driving critical business decisions. Think advertising expenditure, online store layout, and product pricing. You can view this metric as often as weekly for busy B2C storefronts. You can use your AOV to determine how much to spend on marketing by subtracting the average cost associated with converting a customer from first touch to payment.
What to Measure: This KPI helps you identify, track, and watch the purchasing patterns of your online customers. Use this metric to calculate a consumer’s lifetime value(LTV) and to decide which pricing, marketing tips, and strategies to use.
#7 Customer Satisfaction
Satisfied customers often result in repeat business and recommendations. The best way to collect and measure customer satisfaction KPIs is from feedback. The easiest means to gather responses is to ask for opinions directly after a sale or from a follow-up survey email invitation.
Customer experience or CX matters more now than ever. The participants of a 2019 business study expected their CX budgets to rise by more than 75% [3]. A smart investment since it’s easier to keep a customer happy than convert a new customer. Especially when that investment can fuel a word-of-mouth lead generation engine.
What to Measure: Online surveys are a popular way to measure customer satisfaction. These surveys typically collect data using Customer Satisfaction Scores(CSAT), Net Promoter Scores(NPS), and Customer Effort Scores. Combining all three scores gives you the overall satisfaction of the survey participant.
#8 Bounce Rate (Lower Is Better)
The bounce rate KPI will tell you which web pages entice people to move deeper into your website and which cause users to “bounce” off your site. A high bounce rate suggests minimal engagement, lack of interest, and low conversions.
Typical causes of a high bounce rate on SMB websites are:
- Slow-loading pages or sites not optimized for mobile screens
- Missing or confusing on-page navigation
- Page content irrelevant to their search term
- Poor quality or hard-to-read content
- Lack of enticing content links and CTAs to encourage further engagement
However, a high bounce rate doesn’t necessarily mean a page isn’t meeting its goal. For instance, a blog with an associated resource to download can often stop a visitor from proceeding further into the website because they received what they were looking for, but they also completed a lead conversion action!
What to Measure: Track the number of visitors who leave a landing page without navigating elsewhere on the site. These are single-page sessions divided by the percentage of all sessions. For B2B websites, aim for an organic search bounce rate under 70%, which is considered the low average[4].
#9 Page Views
The more page views and refreshes there are, the more popular the content is with site visitors. Time spent on a page is another excellent indicator of its appeal to users.
What to Measure: You can learn a lot from high page views. For example, you get an insight into the content on your site that’s most interesting or accessible to users. This metric reveals your audience’s interests and how well those pages are optimized for internet search. Learn from these metrics to create and optimize new content or update old pages.
Below is a more comprehensive list of Marketing, Sales, and UX KPIs, arranged in alphabetical order for quick reference.
MARKETING KPIs | SALES KPIs | USER EXPERIENCE KPIs |
Average conversion time Average cost per lead Average new deal size/length Average profit margin Average purchase value Average sales cycle length Brand awareness level Conversion rate Customer acquisition cost Customer lifetime value Lead-to-sale %Monthly calls/emails Monthly sales bookings Monthly sales growth New and expansion MRR Number of monthly onboarding Number of qualified leads Product performance Quote-to-close ratio Retention and churn rates Sales by contact method Sales opportunities Sales per rep Sales Target | Average order value Average purchase value Average revenue per Unit Average sales cycle length Customer acquisition cost Customer churn rate Customer lifetime value Incremental sales by campaign Lead conversion ratio Lead-to-opportunity ratio Number of sales opportunities Opportunity-to-win ratio Profit margin per sales rep Revenue per sales rep Sales conversion rate Sales growth Sales opportunity score Sales targets Time before purchase Upsell & cross-sell rates | Bounce rate Customer satisfaction (CSAT) Net promoter score (NPS) Page views Real user monitoring Search vs. navigation System usability scale (SUS) Task success rate Time-on-task Usability metrics User adoption metrics User engagement User error rate User retention |
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Takeaway | Website Goals 2022 and Beyond
Successful SMB websites are never static. The way to manage and maintain reputation and a good customer experience is through continual updates and critical site reviews. Thus, thriving business websites carry out periodic tweaks and updates to meet site goals and objectives. And if it all seems too much, consider outsourcing your online projects to experts.