Creating Sticky Sites for B2B Companies

by Ivy Hastings

Many B2B companies are wondering how they can make their web presence much more valuable to their clients. Good marketers know that the days of the web site as online brochure are gone for good. So how does one go about creating a valuable user experience? One tactic is to make the site "sticky" meaning users come back to your site more often and stay longer.

An essential part of creating a sticky site is understanding one's target audience. Before you start thinking about what kind of content or features might be valuable to your users, start with a thorough Target Audience Analysis. An effective Target Audience Analysis includes first determining who the audiences are. They might be clients, the press, or employees of the company, or even all three. Once those audiences are identified, you need to understand their motivations. Why are certain target audiences on your site? What are their motivations? And most importantly how will you fulfill their needs? What about creating new needs your audiences didn't even know they had? During this process, eliminate the guesswork and go straight to your clients and ask them what they want to see.

So now that you understand their motivations, how are you going to fulfill them in the most effective manner? Take for example an engineering company whose clients want technical white papers. Let’s say this is the user’s top motivation for being on your site. You’ll want to ensure that these engineers can get to their white papers as easily as possible. Do this by putting links directly on the homepage, create many ways for users to get to the content with cross links. Develop strong calls-to-action. And make sure that your engineers can get to that content with only one click. In other words, identify key user paths.

Many companies make the mistake of using their sites to brag about themselves. One of our current clients was convinced that they needed an extensive About Us section with Mission, Values, Executive Summary, a Timeline of the company, Executive Bios, and Accomplishments. What user outside of an investor is really going to read all of that?

Rather, take the time and offer information that is priceless to your customers and that really gets them engaged. You can do this by offering white papers, webinars, video tutorials, forums, RSS Feeds, etc. Allow them to interact with you. Your clients will thank you by becoming lifelong clients.



Ivy Hastings is a Project Manager at Fusionbox, a Denver web design and development company.