The Big 5 Mistakes: how not to make an effective B2B website

No one says building a website is easy. But when it is often the largest single project in the yearly budget, why do so many companies make the same mistakes and end up with less return on their investment? This document highlights the 5 commonest errors, so we can all avoid making them.

Written by Paul Hatcher, Base One

Copyright Base One 2012 - The Big 5 B2B Website Mistakes

Einsteins definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and again but expecting different results.
It is a definition that will resonate with many digital planners. During the process of website development, the same issues and mistakes seem to crop up over and over again. But what can we do to stop the madness?
Most website re-design projects by their very nature arise because the site is not working as it should. So over the years, we have seen a lot of them, in different industry sectors, geographies and company cultures. Yet it seems like the same reasons and excuses crop up time and time again for the reasons why it got to where it is, why its not working as well as it should, and why they need to redevelop. And amazingly enough, sometimes the redesign process simply leads to the same thing happening, requiring a further redesign two years later. The fact is, most of the mistakes are not down to technology, but happen behind the website and are a function of client and/or the agency. Let me quickly point out, however, that the aim of this whitepaper is not to suggest that we are right and everyone else is wrong. Nor is it to suggest that any particular person is to blame (client or agency) for web projects that fail to fulfil their potential. Over the years weve made some pretty big mistakes too. But we hope weve learned something during the process, because we dont make those mistakes any more and our work is better as a result. This document is all about sharing those learnings with you.

Copyright Base One 2012 - The Big 5 B2B Website Mistakes

A huge challenge
First though, we should acknowledge the challenge of building a website. Creating an effective site that successfully positions and differentiates your business is not easy, of course. The length and complexity of the process brings in enormous margin for error and if you ask those involved to say what the main problems are, youll get a wide variety of answers. Many are personal opinions: designers, developers and project managers will always have their own take on things. But for me, there are more fundamental issues that will derail a sites effectiveness, which well discuss below. View the following items as a compendium for avoidance: successfully navigate the issues and youre going to have a pretty good platform for success and a competitive advantage too as you can pretty much guarantee your competitors will have failed on at least one of these points. As a quick side note, Im not going to cover things like project management issues that cause a site to be late, for example. Its a fact that most sites are unrealistically scheduled. These faults are widespread, but the end result may be a great and effective site just late. Similarly an on-time website doesnt mean a good one. In fact, often the opposite: rushed, bug-ridden, incomplete. A site may involve a longer-than-expected design process. (Design scheduled for 1 week? Youre kidding right?) Coding may have taken many late nights. Testing may have taken a lot longer. But its OK, its good. You have an effective site and in any case, the agency is usually happy to take the hit on the extra few hours. So lets look at whats really behind the bigger issues. In no particular order I rate the top five reasons behind the lack of website effectiveness as follows:.

You can pretty much guarantee your competitors will have failed on at least one of these points.

Copyright Base One 2012 - The Big 5 B2B Website Mistakes

Big Mistake #1: Ignoring user needs and usability

Ill start with my favourite. All digital agencies worth their salt will have a good user definition process where the audiences needs, goals and behaviours are clearly aligned to business requirements and an information architecture process can evolve from this. For a big brand, this process can go to real levels of granularity, involving techniques such as well researched personas, prototype usability, user councils and a host of UX (user experience) techniques. For smaller businesses, such in-depth planning may not be feasible but there are still important methodologies that can be employed to ensure the user is represented in the planning and design process, such as assumptive personas and assigning user advocates within your business. Make sure your planning puts your users at the centre. But where does it go wrong? Here the things to watch out for: - not spending enough time providing enough information about the audience, making too many assumptions or just copying structure/info from existing sites (a design refresh) or (worse still) copying competitors. - not crafting content from the users perspective, but writing from the viewpoint of the business itself. - not thinking about user funnels through the site, which leads to many users left unengaged on the homepage and then to high bounce rates. - designing through a technically-led wireframe: this may be technically and functionally sound, but wont think like your audience and you may end up with a generic site. Lacking the brand, lacking the personality. - lack of time, the rush to get things moving onto the next, more exciting design stage. - lack of genuine interest in the users, just wanting to get it done based upon subjective assumptions. Sad but occasionally true. We find it a shame that usability testing is seen as an optional feature of site builds and therefore is often the first item to go during any necessary budgetary belt-tightening. However we understand why this is necessary, and the good news is that you can perform user testing at any stage in your website lifecycle.

Copyright Base One 2012 - The Big 5 B2B Website Mistakes

If your site doesnt involve complex transactional process, Im less convinced of the need to usability test on early wireframes or prototypes. I am a BDUF kind of guy (Big Design Up Front) meaning that you get your initial design done and then refine it over time with usability. The BDUF mantra is: usability wont get you the right design, but will help you get the design right. Have solid user insight, a good IA process, then lets give the design team enough rope to explore the optimum route, rather than a wireframe to colour in. Then test.

Usability wont get you the right design, but it will help you get the design right.

In fact, for businesses who need to develop on a budget, Id argue that testing is better done later once you have a working site. The results will more often than not involve a series of simple tweaks that you can implement that will dramatically improve effectiveness - be it first impressions, reducing bounce rate, competitor benchmarking, improving form attrition, boosting conversions, or just knowing if people actually understand your site. User testing can give you huge insight and firm direction into what you should do next. Just make sure you do it. Usability testing can also be employed earlier to help you circumvent our next issue

Big Mistake #2: Lack of agreed vision

Probably the most important thing is to have a good collaborative team and a clear vision that everybody involved can buy into, and to keep sight of this throughout the process. Things will change as the site takes shape. New, unexpected factors will appear. People will argue, and it will be tough to keep the team working in the same direction. But a clear site vision from the start will help keep things on track and will help gain consensus on decisions. Without it, theres no chance.

Copyright Base One 2012 - The Big 5 B2B Website Mistakes

And of course there is the political dimension. Probably the main curveball that gets thrown at the web development team is the need to accommodate the needs of those higher in the organization who are not close to the project. Theres nothing wrong with this in principle; its often their business after all. And sometimes you get reasonable demands. But, sometimes these come a little too late, often they can be a little strange, and occasionally they are out-right bizarre. Such requests might include the one to change the colour of the site (blue) because it looked a bit too green on the CEOs (faulty) monitor. Or the subsequent re-design to please the boss in Japan (instead of his audience). Or even the complete u-turns ordered from above just one week before launch. Thankfully, such instance are rare but they do happen.

Last-minute requests include changing the colour of the site because it looked green on the bosss faulty monitor.

IT teams provide another challenge. We find most are good partners, though sometimes unsuitable IT policy, often hidden around a veil of jargon and technobabble, causes unnecessary and costly delays, such as in the selection of a technology platform. Also, internal structures may create diverging interests, for example when web teams are departmentally separate to marketing, or in different regions. So how to get around the political requests? The truth is that this is the hardest of all, as every organization is different and no one wants to lose their job by ignoring ingrained management hierarchies. In our experience it works most effectively when you can get a clear vision and measurable objectives established early on, then to find a way to drum this in. The key is to get everyone involved early, for example by ensuring all key players are present at (or at least invited to) the workshops held at the outset.

Copyright Base One 2012 - The Big 5 B2B Website Mistakes

Other ways round the political problem include: - to allow a decent time for concept sign off, and get consensus then, not later - if its a design consensus you need, try some user firstimpression testing, whether by group or individually. This can be fairly ad-hoc in nature and therefore inexpensive. - to present and agree as a group. Using the upwards-chain presenting method is no better than Chinese whispers - to get properly framed feedback, ask Does it work for our stated objectives? rather than Do you like it? - to have a clear explanation and rationale for designs within the presentation its amazing how often designs are just presented without any context. Once again, the key lies in getting a clear vision and alignment, although this takes time and may seem an unnecessary luxury when faced with the harsh realities of a set budget.

Big Mistake #3: Poor content

Thankfully recent years have seen the long-overdue elevation of content from a sideshow to the primary driving force of the website. Businesses are far more appreciative of the impact that content has on and off their websites, and are developing proper content budgets. But its not yet the norm. Things that derail content are: - its seen as a silo: no thought about how it links with content marketing, thus heavily limiting the mileage youll get from it. - its tricky to edit on CMS - its just not engaging: not very interesting, recycled from brochure, not relevant/old, - no SEO, or SEO team brought in last minute, and too late. So, what to do: - have a content strategy - have a content budget - appoint a content editor: often this gets tacked onto the responsiblity of a poor overworked marketing team member who has a million other things to do. Help them out by providing proper editorial resource.

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Big Mistake #4: not maintaining the momentum

A website is for life, not just Christmas. But often after the initial excitement of launch, the site just sits there, with very minimal development. The reasons why may be manifold. Often ambition is too much for budgets. Often marketers have to get on with next project. Often no one has actually thought about who will maintain the site. Or no one has ownership of the site. Maybe the birth of the site was so traumatic that they just cant go back there. Maybe the importance of subsequent development is just not realized. Or its someone elses issue. Two years later: lets do it all again!! Its hard to overstate the importance of constantly refining a site once its been put live, and there are two key ways in which this can be done : 1 creating ongoing content that engages your audience, as part of your larger marketing strategy 2 by user testing and insight: to refine the usability and to help identify and improve functionality. To do this, its best to assign a very clear plan for website management and improvement, and to make sure you do the following: - Get your KPIs defined and your measurement criteria in place early; have some real data. - If you only have an annual budget, dont spend it all on the build; try to spread it out a bit instead and go for the work that will have maximum impact. Clearly, this may involve some sacrifice. - Keep testing. - Have an incremental improvement roadmap that identifies quarterly improvements. - Actually implement the content strategy. Its no use if not actioned. - Find out if content is effective and evolve where necessary

Dont spend all the annual budget on the build.

Copyright Base One 2012 - The Big 5 B2B Website Mistakes

Big Mistake #5: bad advice

It may be seen as disingenuous for an agency to have a pop at the role agencies play but the client-agency relationship is your foundation for effectiveness and this needs to work effectively to get the best site. Sometimes the relationship with the agency especially with regard to the advice and production quality they provide can be the biggest mistake. Heres why. Team competence and attitude. Producing a website requires a wide range of skills: the gathering and interpretation of business needs and user requirements, UX and IA planning, design understanding, content planning, technical understanding, attention to detail through testing, ability to motivate a wide range of people, and the drive to keep going when things get difficult, and - most of all - the aspiration to produce a site thats great rather than just knocking one out. The truth is that most project managers are not fully equipped with this full range of skills in order to deliver an effective website. Theyll have specialisms in particular areas, for instance information architecture, or client management, or marketing, but its a rare beast who has the polymath skills across all areas. An effective web team needs to comprise a lead project manager and other team members who will supplement them where needed. If you are running a web pitch Id recommend all clients to interview the lead producer or PM who is going to work on the site specifically. You really should be pretty chummy with them by the end of the process, and should be able to identify (and ideally have met) all the wider team. Better personal relationships will help not only to give you a better idea of who is doing what, but will motivate the team to do a great job rather than just a satisfactory one. Myopic planning Planning or advice that focuses either on technical or design, or pushes clients down a particular solution, or ignores the bigger picture, will handicap effectiveness. Its difficult but necessary to ensure the website fully considers the full marketing requirements, and plans for the future, yet is flexible enough to deal with the unknowns that the future may bring. The requirements should be business-driven not technology-driven. Some of the advice Ive seen given to businesses is mad. For instance, it still beggars belief that many clients are told they need a bespoke CMS system. Maybe 15 years ago there was some argument in this, but nowadays there are a series of excellent, almost-ready-to-go open source platforms that you should deploy.

Copyright Base One 2012 - The Big 5 B2B Website Mistakes

Often a sites effectiveness can be compromised by the technical platforms its built upon, or the teams availability. One business I encountered had a bespoke system written by one developer, and when the poor soul had a heart-attack the site pretty much froze. No one else knew how it worked. The more bespoke it is, the fewer people know about how it really works. Also there is a tendency for agencies to be guilty of impenetrable specifications that no one can really understand and therefore no one reads properly, leading to later issues such as but i thought it was going do to.... A human-readable requirements and/or functional spec should clearly describe the site - if you cant understand them then they shouldnt be signed off. And the devil is in the detail. Our other pet hate is poor production values that just compromise the overall quality and feel of a site. This is (generally) the responsibility of the agency. If the site produced doesnt look like the designs due to the coding only approximating the design, or is difficult to evolve, or manage, or very costly to make changes to, then your effectiveness is compromised. Thankfully this is getting less frequent, but we still hear it costs me 500 whenever I need to make a change for some things that should take 5 minutes for non-technical staff. When planning a site, be clear on what is going to be easy or difficult to change, and when assessing a design, spend time to find out how much its going to change once its coded (hopefully very little!).

Conclusion
When youre highlighting pitfalls in a document like this, its easy to paint a picture of gloom. Of course its not all this bad. In the B2B world, there are many shining examples of great web usability, of careful digital planning, and stunning on-line design and superb agency relationships. But my point remains that when a site slips below the standard expected of it, you can usually put it down to one of the above. And I hope that, having read this paper, it is your competitors who fall into those traps and not you...

Harlequin House, 7 High Street, Teddington, TW11 8EE Tel: 020 8943 9999 Fax: 020 8943 8222 www.baseonegroup.co.uk info@baseonegroup.co.uk

Hope that helps. If youd like us to help you build better B2B sites or just to discuss anything raised here please feel free to get in touch.Email us or call and ask for Paul or Ann-Maria. Thanks.

Copyright Base One 2012 - The Big 5 B2B Website Mistakes