But one question that many leaders and marketers have is exactly how much they should spend on a modern, high performance website.

Of course, the cost of redeveloping a website can vary for several reasons. The scope of the project, the features you want, and the goals you want to achieve will impact the overall investment. A basic website with minimal features will cost less than a complex website with advanced features such as custom integrations, custom mapping or filtering, and high-end design elements. Also, using pre-developed templates can save a great deal of money, though they may come with performance tradeoffs such as customization, less relevant user experience and brand differentiation.

Also the experience and expertise of your website design and development partner can impact the cost. Working with top-tier designers, industry experts, and developers will usually cost more, but they are also more likely to produce a higher quality end product and positive business impact.

So how much should you plan to spend when developing your next B2B website?

In this article, we aim to cover all the factors that can affect the cost of developing your next website and the top considerations you should acknowledge as you begin the planning process. But first let’s consider some of the reasons decision makers hesitate to invest in a new website.

Why Leaders Hesitate to Invest in a New Website

For most businesses, a new website is a big decision with major financial implications—and there are several concerns that business leaders might have when considering redeveloping their website.

One concern we hear all the time is how a new website may become outdated quickly and how the cost of regular updates and maintenance can quickly add up. Many business leaders and marketers have horror stories from working with the wrong website design partner who set them up on a difficult content management system (CMS) platform. So it’s reasonable to worry that a new website could cause too many new headaches or become outdated too quickly.

There also might be hesitation regarding the time and resources required to plan, design, build, and launch a new website. The website design process can be long, and leaders may worry about the impact that a website redevelopment may have on their day-to-day operations, particularly if they have a limited in-house marketing team. This is particularly true for larger businesses with many different stakeholders, business lines, and sub-brands that want to be involved in the process.

And of course cost is often a primary factor in any decision-making process. Creating a high-performance website that meaningfully differentiates your brand comes at a cost. This is why it’s important to understand the expected outcomes of the website redesign. What are your business objectives and how can a new website deliver a worthy return on investment?

To overcome these hesitations and be able to decide how much to spend on a new website, you need to consider your desired return on investment. Let’s explore this topic next.

10 Ways a High-Performance Website Generates ROI

Any business leader and marketing team looking to invest in a new website will surely be thinking in terms of return on investment (ROI). High-performance websites can be big investments so it’s essential to understand how your website’s performance fits into your business goals and marketing plan.

Below are 10 ways business leaders can expect ROI on a high performance website:

1. Improved user experience (UX): A new website with a modern design and user-friendly interface can greatly enhance the user experience for customers, leading to increased engagement and conversions. Improved UX design will keep your audiences on your website longer and create a more memorable experience.
2. Increased credibility: A professional, well-designed website can improve the credibility of a business in the eyes of potential buyers or job candidates. Differentiated design and messaging can provide website visitors with a positive impression of your brand and help you stand out from your competitors.
3. Better search engine visibility: A new website built with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind can help a business rank higher in search results, leading to increased organic traffic and visibility. Not all website design partners can provide this service though. So it’s important to work with a partner who can assess your current SEO strengths and weaknesses and outline a path for improvement.

Moreover, a website built with a strong SEO foundation and methodology will be able to respond and stay ahead of the constant changes driven by Google and any other platforms relevant to your audiences.

4. Mobile responsiveness: With the increasing use of mobile devices, it is crucial for a website to be mobile-friendly and responsive to different screen sizes. A new website can be built with this functionality baked in, helping you reach and engage a wider audience. If your website hasn’t been updated in more than 5 years, it’s quite possible that it doesn’t meet today’s standards for mobile responsiveness.
5. Better content management: Nothing can spoil digital marketing efforts like a bad content management system (CMS). A website built with a robust CMS can make it easier for businesses to manage their website content and make updates in real-time without always having to go through a website developer for support.
6. Improved lead generation: A new website with features like contact forms, landing pages, and conversion pages can help a business capture and nurture leads. For B2B and professional services firms, this is often an underutilized aspect of how their website can support their marketing efforts.
7. Increased awareness of services: A strategically designed website can help a business build brand awareness in a way that communicates its value proposition and makes it easy for users to understand the range of services the business offers. Design emphasis on content organization will help guide users to the most important information sooner.
8. Better conversion rates: A new website optimized for conversions can help a business turn more visitors into paying customers or leads. High performance websites are built to drive all kinds of users towards a conversion even if they are at different stages of the buying process.
9. Improved customer engagement: Features such as live chat and interactive content can help a business engage customers and build relationships with them. Websites that are built with your comprehensive marketing and business development strategy in mind will enhance your customer’s ability to engage directly with you without running the user experience.
10. Competitive advantage: In today’s digital landscape, having a professional, well-designed website can give a business a competitive advantage over rivals that have outdated or poorly designed websites.

With all these positive outcomes in mind, how should you budget for a high performance website?

Planning Your Website Budget

As you begin planning your website budget, there are a number of steps you’ll need to take to ensure your process goes smoothly. We recommend you follow these steps to help get the budget planning process started.

Step 1: Build your internal team and assign your project champions

Redesigning your corporate website inevitably comes with many stakeholders. C-suite executives need to ensure the brand positioning is accurately communicated; marketing and business development team members will want to be sure the new website engages users, drives leads, and integrates with the rest of the marketing system; and human resources will want to make sure that the new website supports recruiting and talent retention efforts. You’ll want to identify the points of contact who will provide feedback on these fronts as the website design process gets started.

Although many may be involved along the way, it’s best that you assign a small group of champions who will carry the website development process forward and take responsibility for working directly with the website developer. You want to avoid a “too many cooks in the kitchen” scenario. So while there may be pressure to include everyone at every stage of the website design process, you’ll get better results if you entrust a small team to go through the process.

Step 2: Assess your current brand positioning and messaging

Websites are the center of your digital marketing and business development efforts. Your buyers not only use your website to find your business and learn more about you, they will return again and again as they consider you as a potential service provider. Therefore it is essential that your brand positioning and messaging is clear and differentiated from your competition. If you have branding challenges, you’ll want to address them BEFORE you start the website design process.

Brand challenges arise in many different ways. From mergers and acquisitions to generational changes in leadership, it is common for professional services firms to reevaluate their brand positioning regularly. As the marketplace evolves, it’s natural that brand messaging and design elements grow outdated.

Do your key messages still resonate with your buyers? Is it time to update your logo? Is your color palette too one dimensional or undifferentiated? Businesses with more outdated messaging and brand elements may need to consider working with website designers who also specialize in positioning and rebranding. These services will add to the budget, so plan accordingly.

Step 3: Define your website goals

Once you have established the overall needs of your brand, you can look back at the list of high performance website benefits. What areas do you need to prioritize? Some of the more common items include the following:

• Improving the visual representation of your brand
• Improving brand integrity with unified positioning and messaging
• Increasing your visibility in search engines
• Improving the user experience
• Increasing lead generation
• Improving the functionality and ease of use of your CMS
• Increasing engagement from job candidates

Before approaching a website design partner, you’ll want to document exactly what outcomes you expect to see once your new website is launched and working. Not all website design partners are equipped to handle all your issues. Identifying your goals earlier in the process will help you rule out design partners who are not prepared to help you meet all your goals.

Step 4: Prepare a list of needed website services and desired features

What features will your new site need? And what services will your design and development partner need to bring to the table? There is far more to a high-performance website than its appearance.

Consider what services your team can contribute. For example, how much new copywriting is needed as a part of the redesign process? Is this something your team can do yourself or will you want your website design partner to support?

Some examples of additional services include the following:

• Brand guidelines and design support
• Keyword research and SEO support
• Professional copywriting services
• Technology integration audit and support
• Review of key competitors’ websites

Next are the features that you’d like to see implemented on your website. For example, if you’re an AEC firm, do you want to include an interactive map that shows the locations of your completed projects? Do you need a sophisticated project portfolio? Custom features or artwork can greatly enhance your website’s quality and user experience, but they will come at a cost.

If you’re unsure about the kinds of services and features you’ll need through the website design process, then it’s essential that you work with a partner who can provide you with strategic advisory—grounded in industry understanding—to guide you in the decision making process. Nevertheless, you can always do a little research yourself to see what other top performing firms in your industry do on their websites. Perhaps there is something worth imitating.

Step 5: Begin researching website development partners and soliciting estimates

If you’ve followed these steps so far, you’ll be prepared to start speaking with potential website design and development partners. You will have outlined your team members, the brand assets that need to be updated, your website goals and expected outcomes, and the services and features you want most.

With all of these assets on hand, you can summarize everything in a scope of work statement you can supply to possible partners. At this stage, you’ll be ready to get more accurate estimates for the kind of services you need.

But not all website design and development partners are created equal. Next let’s explore how to select the right partner for your business.

Selecting the Right Website Development Partner

When planning your budget for a new website it is important to spend time evaluating your potential website partners. Choosing the wrong website development partner can be a major risk for professional services and B2B firms, especially those with a more diverse set of service offerings.

Similar to other outsourced industries, website development comes at every price point and level of quality. Many freelancers and website development firms compete aggressively on price. However we would suggest that price not be your only consideration.

Here are a few questions, aside from cost, that you should consider answering when selecting a website design and development partner:

Are they promising a set cost or monthly subscription service?

Many low-cost website developers aren’t transparent about what you get for the quoted cost. While their fee may include design, development and hosting, each of those activities likely includes shortcuts and tradeoffs that won’t be apparent until you are well into the process. Some, such as hosting, may involve performance or security tradeoffs that you will never see until a problem emerges weeks or months after launch. Others, such as using predesigned templates or themes, can make it difficult to differentiate your firm visually.

A low, set cost is usually an indicator that the provider will take a less collaborative and strategic approach during the website design process. For them to remain profitable, they have to take more control in the decision-making process—in turn providing a service that results in less performance and most B2B firms will outgrow the end product quickly. There may be security issues that being hosted in this manner may raise, as well.

We recommend you search for a website partner that provides a base cost and a very specific set of assumptions about what that fee includes. They should also be very transparent about what factors might change the scope and increase costs. This approach is more flexible, and it is more likely to produce a website that aligns with your goals and includes the services and features you need. Moreover, it will take into consideration how much your internal team can contribute to the process when it comes to things like content creation and migration.

In summary, you want to be sure that you work with a website design partner that is more responsive to your specific needs.

Do they understand your industry and your clients?

Not only will the right partner take time to understand your business, goals, and your target audience, they should have a proven understanding of your industry. Have they worked with other firms in your industry? What were the results of those engagements? They should be able to speak your language and understand your unique positioning.

Do they have the right experience and expertise?

Look for a service partner with a proven track record in designing and building B2B websites. The company should have a deep understanding of the unique challenges and opportunities that come with this type of project. Heck, look at their website. Does it reflect the quality you are looking for?

Take the time to look at the other websites in their portfolio. Find examples of the work that are similar to what you aspire to—and if those don’t exist, they might not be the right partner for you.

Also, ask for references and check out the company’s online reputation. Seek out reviews and testimonials to get a better understanding of their work and the results they have delivered for other clients.

Are they strong communicators?

A successful website project requires close collaboration between your team and your design partner. Look for a company that values open and transparent communication and is committed to working with you every step of the way.

While you are assessing them, ask them to specifically outline their plan for communicating with you during the website design process. Will it be at least weekly? Who will be your point of contact? Answering these questions up front can save you a lot of anxiety later.

What is the expected timeline of the website development?

You want to be sure that your website design partner can give you a specific timeline to complete the project. Ask them to provide a roadmap with key milestones for the website development process.

The questions you ask your potential website design partners can ensure that your B2B website project is a success and that your investment delivers the results you need.

The Cost of a High Performance Website

Now that we have considered what goes into the planning process of your new website, let’s turn to what it will cost.

By this point, you understand that there is a lot of planning that goes into the development of a high-performance website. And building it may include more than the base design and development costs. You may need to rethink your brand messaging, explore your audience behaviors, and even redesign your brand identity. In short, many factors can affect cost.

The following estimates are based on our experience building hundreds of high-performance websites and are informed by our understanding of where the website design industry stands today. Below are four general price tiers that cover a range of budgets and expectations.

Under $40,000 – Functional Template Based Site

There are functional websites that website developers can build for you that are not high performance websites. They can be attractive and present your services clearly, but they are often unlikely to include a foundation of research, strategy, and design expertise aimed at generating new leads or contributing much to enhancing your firm’s reputation. In our experience, new websites that are designed for less than $40,000 will not include many strategic elements that maximize the impact of the new website.

Are these websites functional? Probably, yes. But it is unlikely that they will produce additional visibility in search engines, provide a relevant and engaging user experience to your most important audiences, or showcase attractive calls to action that prompt users to contact you.

Websites designed for less than $40,000 are likely to use inflexible templates or themes that have been used again and again for many firms in your industry—limiting your ability to differentiate your brand and or deliver website features that support your marketing program.

$40,000-$80,000 – High-Performance Website

When you begin working with website design and development partners who offer more holistic and bespoke services, the cost of that website development project will likely exceed $40,000.

At this price range, you can expect to receive dramatically more value, service, and flexibility. You should expect not only to work with top-tier designers and website developers but also experienced advisors who understand your industry and who can guide you through a process that takes into account your brand identity and business goals.

Moreover, additional services like professional copywriting and search engine optimization will be available and customizable to your needs. From the features you include on the website to the services you need for support, website development partners at this price tier will customize your scope of work to maximize the value you receive from your new website.

$80,000-$120,000 – Advanced High Performance Website

Website scopes that exceed $80,000 will take all the elements of the high-performance website listed above and add custom design assets and integrations that take your website functionality to a premier tier of performance and user engagement.

This level of work may also involve a full rebrand of your organization. For organizations that have multiple sub-brands, these initiatives could also include a multi-site strategy, providing a unified backend across multiple external-facing websites.

Over $120,000 – Fully Custom High Performance Website

Engagements over $120,000 includes everything in an advanced high-performance website but also may include the highest level of customized features. You’ll find functionality such as deep integration with internal and external databases, HR and recruitment systems, marketing automation and CRM platforms, extensive copywriting services, sophisticated interactive design elements, custom photography and video, and powerful content suggestion algorithms.

At this higher tier of website development, $120,000 is the floor upon which these sophisticated integrations and advanced customization can be applied. Cost can increase quickly to the mid six-figures as these elements are combined together in scope. With larger website trends moving toward headless CMS and built-in A.I., it’s important for future focused firms to evaluate all of the benefits and costs associated with this level of investment.

Final Thoughts on B2B Website Cost

As we’ve discussed, a high-performance website is crucial for any professional services or B2B business looking to establish a strong online presence and drive conversions. However, creating such a website requires a significant investment, and the starting cost can often far exceed $40,000.

That may seem like a lot until you understand what value you are truly getting for your money. That value might include working with top-tier—often award-winning—designers and developers, experts who understand your industry, and advisors who bring a wealth of experience, skill, and knowledge to the table. They understand the complexities of B2B websites, including SEO, lead generation, customer engagement, and analytics, and they are able to integrate these features seamlessly into your new website.

In the end, the cost of working with partners who can deliver a high-performance website is worth it for one reason: it leads to better outcomes. They will help you create a bespoke website that will not only help you stand out from the competition but will also be more efficient, providing a better user experience for your visitors, generating a steady stream of high-quality visitors, converting those visitors into leads, turning many of those leads into loyal fans, and eventually converting some of these fans into valuable new clients.

Keep in mind that developing a website is longer about building an obligatory online presence! To compete in today’s increasingly digital business environment, your website needs to be findable in online search—and deliver the features and content your buyers are looking for in a firm like yours.

Finding a website design and development partner that truly understands the importance of this connection between website design, business development, and marketing will ensure that your website investment, regardless of budget, will yield positive results and a strong ROI.

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Creating a high-impact, lead generating a site can seem like an impossible task, but if you start with these three foundational building blocks you will be well on your way: 1) The support of your firms’ leadership; 2) a talented team to carry it out, and 3) a website design process that will enhance your overall user experience and content strategy and get you to your goal.

In this post, we’re going to focus on the last of these requirements. The first, you will have to find within your firm. The second, you can hire. The third binds the first two together and drives the process forward.

If you are about to embark on a web redesign journey, the road ahead is bound to have a few potholes — a modern high-performance website can be very complex, after all. But with the right process in place, you can avoid the pitfalls and misadventures that plague so many web projects. In this post, we’ll lay out a process that we’ve refined over more than a decade to deliver the website you’ve always wanted, without the angst. And along the way, we’ll share some of the hard lessons we’ve learned.

Informed by research and validated by years of experience and analytics, this is a process that works.

Who Is This For?

This post is for people involved in the planning or execution of a new professional services website, especially the marketers and stakeholders responsible for seeing it through. And it’s for anyone who wants to demystify the website design process and start off on the right foot.

Why Professional Services Websites Are Different

We’ve been a part of many website design processes, spanning many different business configurations —content-driven, B2C, B2B, and web apps. What is different about professional services websites?

With professional services, there’s a fundamental need to convey credibility. Companies buy services from experts they trust. Even strong referrals are not always enough to get you in the door. Our research shows that buyers will check out your website to verify a referral, and will readily discount a referral based on the information they find (or don’t find). Your prospects know they are buying complex service offerings that tend to be big-ticket items and come with considerable risk. They are the opposite of an impulse purchase you might see in the B2C (and sometimes B2B) world.

Since the professional service sales cycle can take a long time — often months or even years, many potential buyers encounter your firm long before they are ready to buy. So your website also needs to address prospects at every stage of the buying process, from initial discovery to imminent sale. In between, a lot of nurturing goes on.

That being said, it is also crucial to speak to the many audiences your site will interact with, all while supporting a unified, firm-wide brand message. For example, you’ll often find that varying service areas need to convey different messages. It is important that a potential client can easily find relevant and timely information and you can achieve this through cross-linking and a thoughtful user experience strategy. Of course, you can’t forget one of the most important audiences for a professional services firm, the prospective employee. Since most firms struggle to keep up with their demand for talent, it makes sense to consider the new hire perspective while designing your website.

Keeping these things in mind will help you develop a dynamic, multi-purpose platform that builds visibility, encourages engagement, and gives you tools to monitor your performance and make adjustments along the way.

Why Website Projects Go Wrong

Before we get into the right way to approach a website design process, it’s instructive to look at what can go wrong.

There are some surprisingly consistent reasons that website projects take a turn for the worse. These reasons apply to firms large and small. Whether you provide accounting, finance, architecture, engineering, technology, or government services, you’ll want to avoid these common pitfalls.

Too many decision-makers

When it comes to making decisions, more is less. The larger the group, the longer it takes to wade through opinions and reach a consensus. If a group is too large, or if it includes individuals with strong opposing opinions, decision-making can grind to a halt, effectively putting an end to the project. A better approach is to assemble a small team of 2-4 people who are empowered by stakeholders to drive the process and make decisions on behalf of the larger group. It’s okay to present your progress to the larger group at two or three key junctures along the way — but on the condition that those are status updates only, not opportunities to change course. 

The “torpedo” team member

This is one of the most common — and potentially devastating — challenges we encounter: a high-ranking leader doesn’t have time to participate in the day-to-day website design process, but they must approve the site before it launches. The problem with this scenario is that when key decision-makers are not part of the process, they have no visibility into the myriad of small decisions that were made along the way. They often bring unrealistic expectations or unexpressed values to the project. Lookout. Here come the torpedoes.

Scope creep

Every firm that sells services is familiar with this. So it should come as no surprise that the same danger lurks in your own website redesign process. That’s why it’s important to clearly define the project’s scope before setting out — and remain disciplined throughout the process. As new ideas arise, think about how they fit the scope of work. You can always plan a second phase of work to incorporate new features. Scope creep, and the unrealistic expectations that fuel it, produce schedule delays, unneeded stress, and embarrassing mistakes.

Unrealistic expectations

We can’t count how many times we’ve heard a client ask for an Amazon-style predictive algorithm or a website like Apple’s. Things that seem simple can be devilishly complicated. So be careful what you wish for. On the flip side of this coin, technology is evolving every day. Some functionality that was once out of reach is now available at a reasonable cost. It doesn’t hurt to ask about cutting-edge technology, but you can’t assume it will always be easy or affordable to implement.

Hidden technical requirements

Documenting a website’s technical requirements can be harder than it seems. In fact, if your website is particularly complex, your web agency might charge you a separate fee to untangle the intricacies of your new site. In the case of simpler sites, however, a careful review of your existing site and a collaborative technical review will uncover the major pieces.

An agency that doesn’t own the process

Unless your firm has an in-house team of marketing and branding experts, designers, and developers, you will be working with an agency partner to guide you through the website design process. If, however, your agency is more concerned with pleasing you than leading your firm through a time-tested process, you are in for a wild ride. The process is critical to the quality and timely delivery of your site. If you find your agency partner bending to your every whim, your website project will quickly lose its way. 

A Website Design Process that Works

So now that you know what to avoid, how do you do this website redesign thing the right way? Before you even reach out to agencies, begin sketching out a roadmap. This will help you think about your site strategically — and find the agency that is the best fit for your firm. Here are some topics you may want to consider:

1. Set high-level goals for your new site. For instance, do you want to:
   • Increase visibility through search engines and relevant social platforms?
   • Build credibility?
   • Attract new talent?
   • Generate leads?
   • Create a platform for thought leadership?
   • Increase traffic?
2. Evaluate your firm’s current website.
   • What’s working and what isn’t?
   • What content will stay, what will go and what needs to be re-written? Don’t ignore deep areas of content, such as blogs & company news.
   • Is your current content optimized for search engines?
   • Conduct an assessment of your thought leadership content.
3. Decide what functionality your firm needs and what its requirements are.
   • Break your technical requirements into two prioritized lists: your “must-haves” and “like to haves.” Examples include CRM Integration, advanced filtering or search functionality, ATS integrations, blog/news/content feeds, and so on. 
4. Plan for sufficient time. 
   • Typical professional services’ website redesign projects take 4-8 months, start to finish. Complex sites for larger organizations can take longer.
5. Set a realistic budget.
   • Most professional services sites cost between $35K and $250K.
6. Plan for content.
   • Even if you aren’t ready now, plan to incorporate a content marketing strategy in the near future. Content marketing is here to stay.
7. Skip the RFP.
   • RFPs actually make it harder to find a good fit. Why? First, you may not know upfront if you are asking the right questions. Most RFPs get them wrong, are overly specific, or overly general.
   • They make it difficult to identify what makes a responding firm unique.
   • You see, RFPs make it hard to evaluate a firm’s intangibles — their personality, true expertise, and other important attributes. Many great firms simply won’t respond to RFPs. Instead of writing an RFP, go out and look for firms that match your needs — agencies that have worked with companies like yours, produce high-quality work, or have been recommended by respected peers and partners.

Choosing an Agency

If you aren’t developing your website in-house, you’ll want to find a great web partner. Take a critical look at their portfolio. Do they understand your industry, or will you need to educate them? Then talk to them. Ask how they keep from going over budget. What is their approach to website design and what role will your new site play in your overall marketing strategy? And ask if they use data, research, or benchmarks to inform their recommendations.

If possible, spend some time with the agency. For an extended project like a website, finding a good cultural fit is just as important as a team’s technical chops. Finally, be sure to call the agency’s references to gather a variety of perspectives on the firm’s expertise and service.

Congratulations! You’ve selected an agency – now what?

Now the real fun begins! Your agency will take your team through a carefully crafted website design process. Each web firm has its own take on this process, but most of these processes are similar to the one we use here at Hinge, outlined below.

1. Project discovery
   • This initial meeting should include all decision-makers.
   • You will be asked to clearly define your goals for the website.
   • Discuss the site’s technical requirements and identify any next steps. Consider third-party integrations, such as CRM, marketing automation, HR systems, intranets, or other internal systems.
   • Discuss aesthetic preferences and style guidelines (if any).
   • Discuss content, messaging, and SEO goals.
   • Discuss analytics. (Be prepared to share your analytics login credentials and research with the agency team before the kickoff.)
2. Competitive landscape
   • Identify key competitors’ websites so that the design team can take your site in a different visual direction.
   • Review their user experience.
   • Review their service and markets breakdown.
3. Develop a new site architecture (or site map)
   • Aim to keep your site structure and navigation simple and easy to follow. Don’t make visitors guess what a navigation button means or where it will take them.
   • Consider adding a blog if you don’t have one. Expert content is the engine that drives new traffic and leads.
   • Consider adding a library or resources section. This section will house valuable content you use to engage visitors and build your list.
   • Lock the site map down before starting the design.
4. Develop a creative brief
   • Identify what elements will appear on key pages, beginning with the homepage.
   • Articulate the creative direction the site should take.
   • Describe creative or functional characteristics you would like to avoid.
5. Begin the writing process early
   • The more live text the designers can work with, the more “real” the design concepts will feel — and the easier it will be to evaluate them. This means the writer will need to get working on key pieces of text right away.
   • Start with the homepage. Pay particular attention to headlines that express your positioning and key messages.
   • It’s important that your team evaluate the messaging and design elements together. That way you can get the full user experience.
6. Design 2-3 initial approaches
   • Different agencies take different approaches to establish a site’s initial design direction. Some begin with wireframes to map out each page type before filling in the details. Others present mood boards to establish the project’s aesthetic boundaries. Still, other agencies will tackle the homepage first, using it as a visual reference for the rest of the site. In addition, some agencies will design a subpage or two at this point, as well.
   • Ideally, your agency will be able to provide objective data to support key design decisions. For example, they may have learned from your Google Analytics that a majority of visitors look at your leadership pages — and as a result, the agency may recommend that you feature key people on your homepage.
   • If you are presented with multiple design concepts, one should push the limits a bit and challenge you to take a more daring approach. The other concept(s) can be more conservative — though avoid common clichés. No matter what, each approach should differentiate your firm visually.
7. Select a design approach
   • If the design team has done its job and listened to you, you should have at least one visual approach that feels about right. Even if you aren’t 100% happy with it yet, select that design as the basis for future revisions. Of course, if all of the concepts miss the mark, you may need to go back to the drawing board. Just be prepared to provide specific feedback the team can use to develop a new approach.
   • Don’t get too caught up on imagery at this point — it can always change. Instead, consider the merits of the design as a whole.
   • In most cases, you should be able to get to an overall design approval within 1 or 2 rounds of revisions.
8. Design the remaining page layouts
   • Unless you have particularly complicated pages (such as a shopping cart or custom learning management system), the rest of the layouts usually go fairly quickly.
   • Review key features such as filters and tagging mechanisms to make sure you are including/providing feedback on any relevant information needed.  
   • This is the time to approve imagery for your pages. Be sure to work closely with your design team, because finding the right images (especially if you are relying on stock photos) can be a time-consuming exercise. If you are commissioning custom photos or illustrations, you should be able to approve the images as they are produced.
   • Your web development team should be engaged at this point, as well. They can identify aspects of the designs that might pose practical challenges — before they go to code.
9. Finalize responsive layouts
   • Optimizing your website for mobile devices is essential in today’s on-the-go marketplace. And that means employing responsive design — a development technique that uses a single set of code to adapt your website to many different devices and browser widths. To deliver the best user experience, your design team should present designs that show how different pages will appear on a phone and tablet.
   • To provide a good experience on a phone, page elements may be presented in a different order than on a desktop layout, may be simplified, or may be eliminated altogether.
   • Typically, your site navigation will take a different form (often collapsed into a “hamburger” menu) on mobile devices.
10. Develop site
    • It’s most efficient to send all files to development at once — when all styles, designs, and requirements are solidified and approved. This makes it easier to catch inconsistencies and reduces development time.
11. Test site
    • Get multiple teams involved, including developers, designers, and individuals who know nothing about the site.
    • Begin testing early — even before the site is completed. Then give yourself a full week or more to test the finished site before launch.
    • Pay special attention to the content. It’s easy to overlook embarrassing typos, formatting problems, and broken links.
    • Keep an ongoing log of bugs — bugs are a natural part of the process. There are bound to be some even after the site launches. The team should be prepared to squash them right away.
12. Launch site
    • If possible, consider a soft launch. This means launching the site without fanfare at first to give you and visitors a chance to find and report potentially embarrassing bugs. Then after a week or two, once everything seems to be working as expected, you can formally announce your new site to your list.

Other Important Considerations

So that’s the website design and development process in a nutshell. Here are a few more things to think about as you plan a website redesign.

Do your keyword research before writing the content

While it’s possible to shoehorn keywords into a web page after it’s been written, you’ll get much better results if the writer has the keywords upfront. The resulting copy will read more naturally — and it will be a better reading experience.

Plan for security

We’ve seen many professional services websites get hacked. The results can be embarrassing or outright damaging. Most of these situations, however, can be prevented with little foresight and care. Make sure your agency takes security seriously and has a plan to secure your site against malicious attacks. If nothing else, be sure to use secure passwords and keep your website software up to date.

Plan for speed

Site load speed affects both your users’ experience and your site’s visibility in search engine results. In fact, Google explicitly favors sites that load quickly, and it is backing new mobile speed-enhancing technologies like AMP. Factors that affect site speed include the size (in bytes) of your images, video, javascript (and other client-side scripts), and server speed, to name just a few. A CDN (Content Delivery Network) can improve the load speed of almost any site, and many excellent free options, such as CloudFlare, are available. The size of your page code can also affect speed, so make sure your development team has the discipline and experience to write clean, compact code.

Redesigning your website should be an exciting and fun experience. Unfortunately, many web projects often go off the rails at predictable points. It doesn’t have to be that way.

For the best experience — and a final product that will make you proud — keep the following points in mind:

1. Assemble a small team that can make executive decisions
2. Follow a proven website design process like the one outlined in this post
3. Allow your agency or design team to lead the process
4. Communicate well and often
5. If you aren’t doing the work yourself, choose an agency that is qualified, understands your industry and is a good cultural fit

Your website is your most valuable marketing tool. At your next redesign, make the most of this opportunity to connect with and engage your future prospects, partners, and employees online. Having a great process in place will not only bypass many of the most common web design obstacles, but it will also deliver a better website, too.

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The post A Website Design Process that Works: How to Get the Professional Services Website You Want appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

Before we get in too deep, let’s take a step back to Google Analytics 101 to make sure we understand a few metrics that will be talked about throughout this post.

Sessions: These were previously referred to as visits and are defined as a group of interactions that take place on your website within a given timeframe. Let’s say someone comes to your homepage, visits three pages, then leaves. That is one session.

Then someone else comes to your homepage, and leaves without visiting another page. Again, that’s one session. So now you should see two new sessions displayed in your Google Analytics account (if you have it set up correctly).

Pageviews: This is a measure of the total number of pages viewed. Repeated views of a single page are counted. The same person who came to your homepage, visited three other pages, and then left would again be one session registering four pageviews.

Pages/Session: This metric is also referred to as average page depth. It is the average number of pages viewed during a session. If someone comes to your site and visits one page while they are there and the second visitor registers four pageviews, your pages/session would be 2.5 based on those two sessions alone.

Average Session Duration: This one is pretty straightforward. Just as it says, this will show you the average length of a session. Your first visitor stays on your site for three minutes while your second visitor remains for only one minute. Your average session duration will be shown as 00:02:00 in Google Analytics.

Bounce Rate: Google defines bounce rate as the percentage of single page visits. Basically, sessions in which the visitor leaves your site from the same page they entered on without interacting with that page.

Now that we have a solid understanding of some of the most important and informative metrics within Google Analytics, let’s take a look at some common scenarios where your data is wrong and some quick fixes.

Scenario 1: You have a Google Analytics account set up, but aren’t seeing any new data being recorded.

Most Likely Cause: You do not have your Google Analytics code installed, you have the wrong code installed, or you have it installed incorrectly.

Quick Fix: Always make sure that the correct code is installed for the account that you are in. Simply go to your “Admin” section located on the right of the top level menu within your account and select ”Tracking Info” then “Tracking Code” in the Property column.

Here you will find detailed instructions, including copy and paste-ready code that should be installed on every page you want to track. In most cases, your developer should be involved if you are not comfortable with the back-end of your site.

Scenario 2: Your Google Analytics data seems to be populating correctly, but you have a very low bounce rate.

Most Likely Cause: You have your Google Analytics code installed twice. Sometimes, this may be due to the fact that more than one person is working on your site, or possibly just put the code in twice for “good measure.” Whatever the reason, it is not only affecting bounce rate, it is doubling your pageviews, and pages/session since it is counting pageviews twice for each page.

Quick Fix: Ensure that all pages on your site only have the proper Google Analytics code installed once. You can probably see below when the duplicate code was removed from this site based on pageviews, pages/session, and bounce rate:

Scenario 3: Your Google Analytics data seems to be populating correctly, but you are starting to see a huge increase in referral traffic.

Most Likely Cause: As much as we’d all like to believe that our traffic has miraculously increased by 30% in one month without doing anything different, it usually is not the case. Enter referral spam. This is essentially fake traffic coming from web indexers that have a number of different intentions. I’m convinced that their main intention is to make my life more difficult. Below is two months of referral data that was hit hard by two main referral spam sites:

This is a problem on multiple levels. For example, in June, total sessions are far more than they should be. Also, all of those sessions have incredibly low pages/session, and average session duration. Additionally, they are recording bounce rates near 100%.

Quick Fix: There are numerous articles that have been published that are very helpful in explaining how to properly filter out referral spam from Google Analytics data. One of my favorites can be found here: Geek guide to removing referrer spam in Google Analytics. This is a great resource to learn more about spam bots as well as step-by-step instructions on how to filter this data from your reports.

Scenario 4: Your Google Analytics data is populating, but the total number of sessions seems very low.

Most Likely Cause: Your Google Analytics code is installed correctly, but only on a select few pages. You can identify this by going into your account and looking at “All Pages” under “Behavior.” All of the pages on your site should be represented here for the most part. If you are only seeing a few pages, you probably have an issue.

Quick Fix: Ensure that your Google Analytics code is properly installed on ALL of the pages on your site. Be sure to remember to separate sections of your site including your blog if you have one.

So there you have it. While there are many other issues that can arise with your Google Analytics data, making sure that these four scenarios are handled on your site should put you in a great place to evaluate accurate data and make informed decisions.

Are there any other scenarios that you’ve seen? Please feel free to comment and share other experiences or problems that you’ve had.

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The post Why Your Google Analytics Data is Inaccurate and How To Fix It appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

The Hinge Research Institute has found that 9 out of 10 professional services buyers will rule out a firm before ever speaking with them and more than 8 out of 10 will check out a firm’s website to evaluate them as a potential provider.

If you’re an architecture firm, your website needs to accomplish three things: present your body of work, demonstrate your expertise and clearly communicate your ability to address a buyer’s challenges. While architects understand good design, their websites need to deliver more than aesthetics.

In this article, we’ll explore eight essential components of good architecture firm websites. Let’s dive in!

1. Strategic design

The best architecture firm websites use their brand strategy to inform their design choices. Strategic design means using imagery, typography, color and layout to tell your story and engage your audience in a way that builds credibility and trust. Strategic design also allows you to communicate important brand attributes visually and reinforce your positioning, differentiators and key messages.

Ultimately, design strategy forces you to take your brand in a more innovative direction and deliver a user experience that is sophisticated and rich in meaning. At the end of the day, prospects will be more likely to remember your website and firm. And in a competitive talent marketplace, it helps attract top prospective employees, too.

2. Breathtaking imagery

Beautiful, vibrant photography plays a critical role on an architecture firm’s website. We are visual beings, and gorgeous, compelling images convey credibility and stimulate desire for your services. While many of the images on your website will illustrate your portfolio and showcase your body of work, others may serve a purely aesthetic function. Because of the visual nature of your industry, your website imagery should be of the highest quality.

You should invest in a professional photographer with extensive experience shooting architecture in daylight and at night. This is one of the best investments you can make. If you simply have no budget for custom photography (it’s not cheap!), try reaching out to partners you worked with on key projects to see if you can use or license their photos. This can be an affordable way to get top-drawer imagery.

3. A project portfolio/case studies

Project photos are important, but don’t forget the descriptions of the projects themselves. Be sure to explain the client’s challenge and how you solved it. Try to tell a compelling story. You may even want to connect your case stories to the appropriate team bios, putting faces and specific expertise to your best work.

Powerful case stories or project descriptions can help establish the credibility of your firm and highlight your team’s expertise. When a client is trying to choose a firm to work with, the perceived strength of your past performance can make a tremendous difference.

Don’t skimp on the details. Photos, testimonials, videos, key accomplishments and specific results and metrics will all help bring your stories to life and persuade those who might be on the fence.

4. User experience

From site architecture and content organization to broken links and slow-loading pages, a great user experience is one of the most critical elements of any architecture firm’s website. Simply put, a website that isn’t user-friendly can frustrate and deter potential clients and job candidates. Architecture firms often focus far too much on the dazzle of the design, leaving their website visitors to puzzle out hard-to-find navigation and make their way through a confusing and poorly marked labyrinth of pages.

And as more and more users access websites from their phones, architecture firms need to build sites that are just as beautiful and functional on mobile as they are on desktop computer screens. Responsive design—building your site to adapt organically to a wide range of screens—is more important than ever.

5. A blog for educational content

Your blog is not the place to feature recent hires, project awards or press releases. Instead, your blog should be the distribution channel for free, frequently produced educational content. Posts should address the design issues that are most important to your firm’s target audiences, trends that are facing the industry and other design insights that your clients and prospects will find relevant to their business challenges. By producing educational content, your team can demonstrate their expertise and build a reputation as a resource for smart, timely advice.

Once you’ve mastered blogging, you can develop other valuable educational content for your audiences, including executive guides, whitepapers, webinars, research studies and more. You can put some or all of these “high-value” assets behind a registration form to capture leads and grow your email list.

6. An SEO strategy

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through search engines like Google. By optimizing pages for specific keyword opportunities and applying a variety of strategies to build your website’s domain authority, you can develop greater reach and credibility over time.

Now, the competition for the best industry keywords among architecture firms can be tough, but according to Hinge’s 2022 High Growth Study, only 39.2% of professional services firms reported that they use SEO activity as part of their marketing strategy. Having an SEO strategy is a great way to increase your visibility and set you apart from your competitors.

Applying an SEO strategy will help the blog posts you write and the services pages on your website become more findable in search engines. And by optimizing your thought leadership content with keywords that your audiences are searching for, you can make your expertise more visible to prospects seeking that information.

7. Team member bios with headshots

Architecture firms sell expertise. You should want to do everything in your power to highlight that expertise and showcase the very capable people on your team. And yes, that means headshots all around! Putting a face to a name is incredibly important in an industry where a firm’s most valuable asset is the knowledge of its people.

On average, after the About Us page, a firm’s team page is the second most visited page on their website. Prospects want to know who they will be working with. And you want to establish trust with an audience who probably hasn’t reached out to you yet. Your people’s expertise is the key to building that credibility. If a visitor can’t find any bios of the people that work at a firm, particularly those of the leadership team, they are less likely to include your firm in the bid.

Furthermore, from an employer brand perspective, the development of an professional’s personal brand has gained importance over the past few years—particularly to that ambitious mid-career employee who is looking to carve out his or her place at an up-and-coming architecture practice. Prove to your employees you are invested in their success by giving your top experts the opportunity to build their reputation.

8. Call-to-actions/Offers for more engagement

What good is your architecture firm’s website without a mechanism that will excite the user to take a next step or action? While a “Contact Us” button is a call-to-action (CTA) of sorts, you can do better.

The most effective architectural websites from a marketing perspective feature various offers for further engagement. Maybe it’s a free consultation or an offer to download a premium piece of content, such as an in-depth guide. Whatever you offer, require the interested party to provide contact information—their name and email address at the very minimum—so that you have a means to contact them in the future with additional content and offers. But don’t hound them with sales pitches. Instead, nurture them over time with more free, valuable content. That way, when they need to hire an architect, your firm will be top of mind.

Many architecture firm websites are visually stunning but do little to build their business. They are wonderful brochures but utterly fail to meet the needs of today’s buyers, who increasingly rely on the internet to find and evaluate firms. What’s more, traditional referrals are in a slow but steady decline, so architects that want to build the thriving business of tomorrow need to start developing their online reputations today.

And there’s no better place to begin than by building a website that not only meets your high aesthetic standards, but addresses the needs of the modern buyer of architectural services.

The post 8 Essential Features of an Architecture Firm’s Website appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

Inbound lead generation’s potential is real, but it requires a radical shift in mindset, marketing priorities and financial investment. Sponsorships and in-person networking just aren’t going to cut it anymore. Instead, start thinking about an asset you already have—your team’s expertise—and how you can use that pool of knowledge to attract and engage an audience that wants what you have to offer.

Inbound Marketing Techniques Defined

Inbound marketing is the process of helping potential clients discover your firm by making your relevant expertise and insights easy to find. It allows prospects to encounter you, in the channels they prefer, when they are ready to learn and engage. Inbound marketing messages tend to be educational in nature rather than self-promotional. 

By giving away some of your knowledge for free, you can quickly build a prospect’s trust. When they are ready to buy the kinds of services you offer, they are likely to think of you—their trusted resource—first.

Inbound marketing contrasts with outbound marketing, where you try to locate potential clients and interrupt them to gain their attention and deliver your marketing message. Outbound messages are typically more self-promotional and focused on your products or services and less focused on the client’s issues.

Advantages of Inbound Marketing

An inbound marketing strategy has many advantages over traditional marketing. Here are just a few:

• Prospects engage when they are ready, so you don’t have to convince them of a need
• Since they are self-selected, prospects tend to be more motivated
• Your content can explain your thinking and approach, so when prospects reach out, they are looking for exactly what you are offering
• Inbound leads are typically easier to close
• It’s often less costly than outbound marketing
• It expands your reach to new markets and prospects—including people you weren’t even aware of before and never would have found you otherwise

Top 21 Inbound Marketing Techniques

How do you put all the advantages of inbound marketing to work for your firm? Try incorporating some or all of the following top techniques into your marketing program.

1. Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (often just called SEO) is the process of making your online content, such as blog posts and services pages, easy to find through search engines like Google. As much art as science, SEO can involve a wide range of tactics (such as keyword research, page optimization and link building) to achieve its ultimate goal: delivering a steady stream of high-quality traffic to your website.

How you might use it: No inbound marketing strategy can ignore SEO. If you publish educational blog content, use keyword research to make your blogging more strategic. Then use on-site and off-site techniques to build visibility for your content.

2. Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Another way to drive qualified traffic to your website and generate inbound leads is to invest in pay-per-click advertising (PPC). Most commonly used on search platforms like Google and Bing, PPC allows you to appear on relevant search results pages for search terms of your choice. Unlike the traditional advertising model, you pay only when someone clicks on your ad. You have complete control over your target audiences, keywords and budget. Once you have your campaign set up, it works immediately. And you can track results in real time.

How you might use it: Many companies use PPC to supplement their SEO program. If you aren’t able to rank for certain critical keywords using SEO, you can target them with ads that look very much like organic search results. This technique is also very helpful when you need quick visibility, such as with a new product launch or rebranding exercise.

3. Lead-Generating Website

Driving traffic to your website and blog isn’t enough. You still need to convert that valuable traffic into leads. Unfortunately, most professional services websites aren’t set up to do this very well. A lead-generating website, on the other hand, makes it easy for a visitor to understand what you do, read, watch or download educational materials, and reach out if they have a need. This kind of website is not just about CTAs and conversions (though those are important). It is designed to be easy to read, ooze credibility and build trust.

How you might use it: We won’t beat around the bush: it’s almost impossible to have an effective inbound marketing strategy without a lead-generating website. If you aren’t ready to invest in a soup-to-nuts redesign, you can try retrofitting your current site with some of the features of a high-performance website. But eventually, you will probably want to rebuild it from scratch to deliver a powerful, cohesive experience.

4. Online Networking

There is still a place for in-person networking, but in most industries the spotlight has moved into the digital realm. From Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn, there are well-established platforms where you can meet—and influence—hundreds or even thousands of potential clients. Like its analog counterpart, online networking centers on making connections with the right people, building a reputation and generating referrals, but it is far easier to scale and reach a large group of interested individuals. It has the added benefit of breaking down geographic barriers and exposing you to audiences in distant markets. 

How you might use it: Online networking is not magic. To achieve results it requires some dedication and a consistent approach. If you are new to it, or have only dabbled in the past, select just one platform and be realistic about the level of effort you can sustain. In almost every professional services industry, LinkedIn is your best bet. Try to add a few qualified new connections each week or two. Engage with other people’s content, and publish pieces of your own. When it makes sense, reach out to individual people in your pool of connections to further the relationship.

5. Webinars

Webinars offer almost all of the benefits of an in-person educational event, while adding a host of new advantages. Like an in-person seminar or educational training session, you can demonstrate your expertise, answer questions, and build a rapport with your audience. You can also collect attendees’ contact information so that you can follow up with relevant offers. But unlike in-person events, you can invite people from anywhere in the world, easily conduct live polls, include presenters from multiple locations, and record your presentation to engage people who weren’t able to attend. On top of all that, webinars are easy and cheap to produce.

How you might use them: Consider teaming up with a partner in a related industry that also serves your audience. They will bring their own audience to the presentation, expanding your reach. Or try presenting with a client who can bring a point of view that will resonate with your attendees. End each presentation with a call to action that gets people to take another step. This could be a downloadable piece of content or a free consultation. Experiment and see what works for you. 

6. Research Studies

A research study on your target client’s industry is one of the most powerful tools a firm can use to build credibility and position itself as a thought leader. Besides the valuable insights they gain, firms that use research as a marketing tool are seen as more knowledgeable and trusted for their expertise. Research studies also make exceptional lead generators. 

How you might use it: You can conduct your own original research, usually with the help of an experienced research partner. Or if that’s too rich for your budget, you can sponsor a study being conducted by a third-party. An even less expensive option is to license existing research. Whatever type of research you invest in, you can use it in many ways. You can provide reports for free download behind a contact form or, if you did custom research, you can offer it for sale. But that’s just the beginning. All that data can be used to inspire blog posts, webinars, speeches, social media posts, infographics and more. One study should provide months of material for your marketing program.

7. Online Marketing Videos

There is no more perfect inbound marketing medium for professional services firms than video. It allows your audience to see and hear your experts in a fully controlled environment. In this way, potential clients get a taste of what it might be like to work with your firm before they buy. That’s powerful.

How you might use it: Video can be used to deliver educational content, explain complex services or introduce a firm’s team of experts. High-value video content, such as how-tos, webinar recordings and short courses, can also be put behind a registration form to build your list and generate leads. You can even enlist clients to describe how your firm solved a thorny problem or contributed to their success. By the way, you don’t have to spend a fortune on video. Today, you have many options to choose from.

8. White Papers

White papers have been around for decades—and for good reason. Even today, they can be fantastic lead generation tools. People look to white papers for a serious exploration of a technical or practical topic in a compact format. And many people who need to understand an issue at that level of depth will gladly trade a small amount of personal information to access it. 

How you might use them: Promote white papers on your website, such as your homepage, applicable services pages and relevant blog posts. If you want to use them as an inbound lead generation tool, create a landing page with a short form to turn readers into new contacts for your email list. Another option is to distribute your white paper through a third-party service, expanding your visibility. The focus should be on educating your audience, not self-promotion. You are trying to build credibility and trust, not close the sale today.

9. Guides

Guides are similar to white papers, but they differ in two respects: 1) they tend to cover a broader topic in depth, often consisting of multiple chapters; and 2) they are usually less technical, speaking in plain English to an executive-level audience. A guide explores a topic in enough detail to give a senior-level influencer or decision-maker a high-level understanding. At the same time, they signal to the reader that your firm knows its stuff and would be well qualified to solve their problem.

How you might use them: Use guides to target executives similar to how you would white papers. White papers tend to have a more technical slant. Guides also make excellent lead nurturing content in email campaigns.

10. Ebooks

Like guides, ebooks explore an issue in depth, but they dive even deeper. While there is no minimum length for an ebook, most contain multiple chapters and run at least 50 pages. Many are full-length books running well over 100 pages. Works of this length have a great deal of perceived value, and people will gladly exchange personal information for a free digital copy. To increase the value of the free copy even more, you can use a print-on-demand publisher (such as Amazon KDP or Ingram Lightning Source) to produce physical copies that you sell on Amazon or at other stores. 

How you might use them: Promote your ebook in conventional on-page offers or in pop up offers. You can also market your ebook on your website like you would a traditionally published book, positioning your firm as thought leaders.

11. E-Newsletter

E-newsletters may sound like a quaint relic from a simpler time, but you don’t have to look very far to realize they are still going strong. Chances are, you subscribe to one or two or more, yourself. That’s because they work. The difference is, today you have a lot more platforms to launch yours. While many people use traditional email platforms, like MailChimp and Constant Contact, to deliver their e-newsletters, others have moved to integrated platforms such as Hubspot and Salesforce Pardot. Still others manage them on popular social media platforms like LinkedIn. Why are e-newsletters so effective? For one thing, they provide a dependable outlet for your thought leadership. And by their very nature, they keep you top of mind as new issues arrive on a regular schedule. 

How you might use them: E-newsletters should not be a vehicle for company news, new employee announcements and teambuilding pics. Only the most doting client will care about any of that. To be a truly valuable inbound lead generation technique, each issue should focus on a topic your clients and prospects care about. Usually this means educational content. Promote your newsletter on your website and social media. To minimize friction and encourage the most people to subscribe, require as little information as possible at signup. Many e-newsletters require nothing more than an email address.

12. Blogging

By itself, blogging isn’t really a lead generation technique. But as part of a larger system that includes SEO and gated valuable content, it is the most powerful driver of leads to your website. That’s because people who find your blog posts through Google are likely to be interested in other content on your website—especially if you promote a relevant free guide or whitepaper download alongside your post. That’s how you turn web visitors into leads. And if you get your SEO and blog strategy right, you’ll attract a lot of qualified prospects—people who are highly motivated and interested in your services.

How you might use it: Be sure to host your blog on your website, or you will waste all the Domain Authority “juice” it generates. Promote your posts on LinkedIn and Twitter to maximize your exposure. 

13. Guest Blogging

Your blogging activity doesn’t have to be restricted to your own blog—nor should it be. A great way to amplify your blogging strategy is to guest blog on respected, high-authority third-party sites. This strategy exposes you to new audiences and, if the blog allows it, can supply valuable backlinks to your website. It also helps position you as thought leaders in your industry.

How you might use it: Look for blogs that speak to your target audience. These could be standalone blogs, online business publications, industry organizations or businesses at the periphery of your industry (for example, attorneys and CPAs often serve the same clientele but don’t directly compete with each other). When you contribute to high Domain Authority blogs, you can often target keywords that you would otherwise have little hope of ranking for. 

14. Podcasting

Podcasts are more popular than ever, and this medium is only expected to grow. Fortunately, the cost of entry to podcasting is low—you can buy a quality microphone for less than $130 and several popular audio software apps are available for free (such as Audacity or Apple’s Garage Band). You’ll also need a podcast hosting service (many excellent low-cost options are available—we use Libsyn). A podcast is an excellent vehicle to showcase your firm’s expertise, build trust and connect, in a personal way, with your audience. If you distribute your episode to even one or two of the popular directories (such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or TuneIn), you have the potential to reach hundreds or thousands of new listeners—many of whom may never have heard of you before.

How you might use it: Use your podcast to explore current issues and trends that are important to your audience, discuss how you solve specific problems, interview other experts, or even invite clients to share their challenges. 

15. Visible Experts^®

Your firm is filled to the brim with experts. What if you could make some of them far more well known, even outside your marketplace? What effect would that have on your firm’s growth? At Hinge, we call these upwardly mobile individuals Visible Experts^®. They not only bring more visibility to your firm, they can often command higher fees. But that’s not all. Visible Experts also help your firm attract better, more profitable clients, close business faster and attract top talent. In short, they can elevate your firm to a new level of prominence. But how do you build your experts’ reputations? They can either follow a self-guided process or hire an outside consultant to mentor them and step them through the process.

How you might use it: If your firm is small, elevating even a single professional to Visible Expert status can make a huge difference. Larger firms may want to put a team of professionals through a formal program to multiply the impact.

16. Pop-up Offers On Your Website

Pop up offers aren’t just for B2C websites. They can be a powerful lead generation tool for professional services firms, too. Use them to convert your website and blog visitors into leads. If you use a flexible dedicated tool, such as OptinMonster, you can easily set up different offers that align with the content on your pages. 

How you might use them: Experiment with a variety of offers (many of these tools even allow you to conduct A/B tests) such as white papers, guides, e-newsletter subscriptions, webinar recordings, live demos and free consultations. Just be sure that each offer is relevant to the content on the page, includes clear, enticing benefits and requires the person to fill out a form to access the material.

17. Dedicated Landing Pages

An offer should always lead to a place where it’s fast and easy to complete the conversion. In most cases, this means a dedicated page with language that quickly orients the user, continues to “sell” the product and minimizes the roadblocks to completing the download or other action. 

How you might use them: Writing and optimizing landing pages is always as straightforward as you think. You may need to test different copy and visuals to optimize conversions. You can set up Google Analytics (or a CRM like Salesforce/Pardot or HubSpot) to see not only how many people reach the landing page, but how many actually follow through with the download. Some tools will even allow you to A/B test different landing page versions concurrently. 

18. Live Chat

Prospective clients are on your website every day. A live chat app gives them a way to interact with your team in real time (at Hinge, we use Olark, but many good options are available). Unlike chatbots, which rely on AI or preprogrammed responses, live chat allows web visitors to have conversations with designated employees. In marketing, responsiveness can be critical to a firm’s success. This low-friction tool allows people to ask questions and get answers right away, dramatically improving lead generation. 

How you might use it: In most cases, installing a Live Chat app is as simple as adding a plugin to your website. If you have a CRM, you may be able to integrate it with that, as well. To start, assign one or two people on your staff to monitor the chat app. Select people who are both familiar with your services and have business development skills. You’ll be surprised how often simple inquiries turn into serious opportunities.

19. Online Course

Today, more and more professionals are looking online for high-quality training and education. That makes producing an online course of your own an attractive inbound lead generation technique. Whether you hire a professional videographer or do it all in-house, producing an in-depth course on a topic of interest to your buyers can be a great way to widen your market exposure and show off your expertise. Now, producing a high-quality course takes a lot of planning, time and effort. You will need to navigate a large number of factors, including video, audio, slides and other visual aids, video hosting, quizzes (if you want them), worksheets or other supplemental materials, and the platform you will use to deliver your course to your online audience. But there are few better ways to show people how you think and solve problems. It’s not unusual for buyers of online courses to later become buyers of your services.

How you might use it: You can either give the course away as a powerful lead magnet and marketing tool, or you can sell it online as a self-serve product. Use the size and scope of your  course as a guide in making this decision. An 8-hour video course with quizzes and supplemental materials is a huge investment—and probably worth charging for. A 2-hour webinar-style training, on the other hand, is a perfect piece of valuable content to give away for the price of a name and email address. Whatever topic you choose to cover, make sure it is of real interest to your target audience and dovetails with a service you offer.

20. Email Nurture Sequences

While not technically a lead generation technique, an email nurture sequence makes your lead generation program far more effective. When you acquire a new email contact through any of the techniques described above, you can use a pre-programmed sequence of emails to send out highly relevant educational content over a period of days or weeks, as well as provide opportunities for the prospect to take a next step in the relationship. If you are a firm of any size, chances are you’ll need multiple email sequences to address different interests, service lines and audience segments. The benefits? You stay top of mind, keep your contacts engaged for a prolonged period of time and continue to provide the trust-building thought leadership that turns a casual interest in your firm into raging fandom.

How you might use them: You’ll need a tool designed to handle sequenced emails. Do you have a marketing automation platform such as Hubspot, Marketo or Pardot? Then you already have what you need. If not, look for a cloud-based tool specifically designed to deliver nurture sequences (ConvertKit is a popular option). If you have a library of educational content, look for pieces that would address a common issue or set of related issues. If you don’t have a library of content, create new content (it doesn’t have to be lengthy) or repurpose existing materials, such as blog posts, speeches and webinar recordings.

21. Digital PR

Digital Public Relations is a collection of techniques used to broaden your firm’s exposure, promote your thought leadership and strengthen your website’s Domain Authority. It can include many tactics, including publishing articles and press releases, engaging with reporters and providing expert answers to their questions, researching and addressing trending topics, building relationships with bloggers, podcasters and other influencers, developing greater social media presence, and more. Not long ago, Google’s Search Advocate John Mueller said that digital PR is even more important than technical SEO to your website. So ignore it at your own risk.

How you might use it: Digital PR can seem overwhelming at first. Start with one or two techniques and build from there. Don’t worry about churning out press releases—they’ll have little or no impact without a solid strategy behind them. Instead, try reaching out to a few influencers and see if they might be willing to publish a guest blog post or host one of your experts on their podcast. Perhaps you can arrange a joint webinar with a strategic partner. Small incremental steps can produce outsize results.

These 21 inbound lead generation techniques would make a formidable marketing plan by themselves. But if you have limited resources, you can still make great strides toward developing more quality inbound leads by picking a few to focus on. They don’t have to replace any traditional techniques that are working well for you today. In fact, high-growth firms almost always use a combination of digital inbound and traditional marketing tactics to reach a wider range of people. By accelerating your transition toward an inbound-forward marketing strategy, you will be better aligned with today’s buyers—and become an active participant in the way they find, learn to trust, vet and select their professional services partners. 

The post Top 21 Inbound Lead Generation Techniques appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

As web users, why do we do this? Usually, we’re on a mission to answer a question we have. We don’t have the time (or patience) to read more than necessary. And frankly, we also know that we don’t have to.

Most of the time, we’re not interested in the entire page of content and are only looking for the sections that pertain to our interests. This is most relevant to informational sections of your website such as your services pages, “about us,” industries you serve, and contact pages. This is less relevant for longer-form content like articles, white papers, or blog posts.

In fact, an online study by Jakob Nielsen conducted some years ago but still holds true about reading behavior found that, on average, web users read just 28% of the words on a page.

So, what can professional services firms do to make their website copy user-friendly? Most importantly, format web copy to support user scanning. If we know users spend most of their time scanning text in search of something, then how you format your text can make a big difference.

Here are seven best practices to keep in mind:

1. Use plenty of headings.

Well-written headlines act as the informal outline of a page. Creating headings that summarize the content of that paragraph(s) lets the user understand what that section is about before deciding whether or not they want to read it.

2. Use bullet points.

Bulleted lists allow for optimal readability and allow users to easily understand and store that information.  Almost any series of items separated with commas has potential to be formatted into a bulleted list.

3. Keep paragraphs short.

Long paragraphs are dense and hard to scan. If you review a long paragraph, you can almost always find a place where you could break it up in to two paragraphs. This makes the information easier for the user to digest.

4. Frontload important information.

Start with the content that is most important to your audience, then provide additional details. In journalism, this technique is referred to as an inverted pyramid. By starting with the conclusion, you give the user the ability to stop reading at any point and still leave with the main point of the page.

5. Call attention to key terms and phrases.

By utilizing text format tools like bolding or highlighting, you allow the user to easily find key terms/phrases within a paragraph of copy. It’s important, however, to remember to use this technique sparingly, as you run the risk of it becoming distracting and less useful.

6. Know your audience.

Use words that your audience is familiar with. Using complex or internal jargon will most likely confuse the user. Audience appropriate language is key to allow the user to easily scan and understand the information.

7. Omit unnecessary words.

Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.

If it sounds excessive, it’s meant to be. Web copy is not like conventional writing – it must be concise and succinct. Most of the time you can remove about half the words on a web page without losing anything of value. By getting rid of unnecessary words, you not only reduce the length, but you also make the content more prevalent and easier to scan.

Now that you’re armed with these website copywriting best practices, take a look at your own professional services firm website. Does your website copy pass the test?

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A website should be a powerful and silent partner in a firm’s business development process, their recruiting program and even their service or solution delivery. In this post, we’ll cut through all the fluff and explore practical website design trends that can help you stand out from the pack. Let’s get started.

A Professional Services Website that Works

In the professional services, expertise is your product and experience is validation. So website visitors who are looking for services like yours want to learn about your firms’ experts and understand the projects they’ve worked on. Without much difficulty, visitors should be able to get a sense of how your firm can help them solve the specific challenges they are grappling with (even if your firm offers hundreds of services across many markets). Consumer-facing businesses deal with a different set of issues, so they build their websites with those in mind. Naturally, an effective B2B website design strategy needs to address the unique needs of the professional services firm and its buyers. But there are still lessons to be learned from B2C websites that can apply to your next redesign. Here are a few ways professional serves websites are different.

• The importance of offline events – While the biggest changes in professional services marketing have come in the digital arena, some of the most impactful techniques used by the fastest growing firms are traditional offline tactics, such as public speaking and writing books. The best performing firms use their digital marketing assets to promote their offline activities.
• Connecting experts to experience – Both business prospects and potential recruits are looking for clues that suggest the firm they are considering is a cultural and organizational fit. Beyond the information on a firm’s bio-pages, these audiences want to understand how your teams work.
• Visible Experts^® – The more you can make your firm’s experts visible and accessible, the more valuable they will become — and the more you firm as a whole will benefit by association with them. Your website should facilitate both of these goals.
• Longer sales cycle – The professional services website must be designed for the long sale. That means building in features that address every point of the sales funnel, from first-time, casual visitors to companies that are ready to buy. As a result, it needs to address awareness building, nurturing and conversion over an extended period of time. Of course, speed and responsiveness are crucial, too, lest an interested party lose interest and move on to a competitor.

Compelling content, positioning and a clear differentiation strategy is universally important, but getting it right can take some digging for professional services firms. It pays to commit to a strong foundation before breaking ground on a new website.

Relevant Professional Services Trends Online

As you approach your website redesign, it is useful to understand what other firms are doing today. That way, as you plan the features and goals for your site, you have a full toolbox to choose from. Below are some of the trends we are seeing on recent professional services websites.

• Professional services firms are adding more self-service products – In addition to the continued trend toward more integrated online and offline buying behavior, many professional services buyers are becoming accustomed to purchasing services directly online. While adapting to increased competitive pressures and the evolution of cloud-based systems, some firms have begun to deliver supplemental services and paid access to proprietary data directly through their websites, apps and other connected portals. Whether or not your firm has productized any of its services, these changes in buying behavior — and corresponding expectations for immediate delivery — will have an impact on the professional services industry.

• A new generation of leadership will drive significant change – A younger generation of leaders is entering the C-suite and board rooms. This new generation grew up online and with social media, so they search for expertise, validate referrals and use technology differently than their predecessors. Social media integration and higher expectations for user experience and engagement are the new normal. Gen-Xers and Millennials are the deepest part of today’s pool of professionals, and their motivations and validation methods can differ significantly from the baby boomers trying to hire them.

• Artificial intelligence and machine learning will improve professional services marketing efforts online – With so much buzz and hype around these technologies, it’s hard to tell fact from slick marketing spin. Machine learning and AI will have a dramatic impact on account-based marketing. Artificial-intelligence-infused platforms promises to gauge buyers’ intent and adjust priorities dynamically. The professional services website will serve a crucial role in this process by gathering information on relevant intent as visitors move through content and interact with the site. Ideally, this has the net effect of increasing a return on effort and producing higher-quality leads. At the same time, this process will have to be counterbalanced with adequate privacy protections.

• Natural-language search behavior is mainstream – AI and machine learning are also impacting the way professional services work and find information. Whether queries are typed or spoken, natural-language interaction is becoming more mainstream (and effective). As audiences become comfortable with natural language platforms like Siri and Alexa for common tasks, they will expect to have the same “discussion” with online search engines and websites. Professional services brands will need to adapt to this emerging opportunity.

• The talent shortage is real – Finding and keeping top talent is a top challenge for professional services firms. As the economy has improved, competition for the best recruits has become fiercer. Firms need to respond by upping their online recruiting experience and employer brands.

• Mergers and acquisitions are changing competitive forces and challenging brand identities – Consolidation continues to drive growth and change the competitive dynamics across the globe. Mergers and acquisitions are fueling increased competition from above and below as organizations vie for position. Our own primary industry research identified increased growth momentum at mid-large size firms. In fact, firms’ top concern in the next 3-5 years is the need for new skills. In this rapidly shifting environment, many websites must contend with increasingly complicated brand identities (and corporate structures) to attract top talent following the Great Resignation.

Strategies for professional services website design

Help your visitors experience your expertise

Just like many professional services engagements in in the real world, a visitor wants to know about you as much as you want to know about them. To help them find answers, think about how to use your site’s design, structure and integrated technology to make your content easy to find and consume. The more visitors can sample your expertise, the more quickly they will come to admire and trust you. Many B2B and professional services websites lean on industry jargon or buzz words in an attempt to sound authoritative and impressive. This is a mistake. Keep your language simple and conversational. The true mark of expertise is a person’s ability to translate complex issues into simple words and concepts. Your website should facilitate this process.

The best B2B websites deliver content that leads to productive conversations (and conversions) between a firms’ experts and its target audiences.

Be bold and plan to take chances

One of the biggest factors holding back professional services websites from standing out from the pack — and applying the lessons learned in other industries — is cost and risk aversion.

It’s easy to see why many professional services firms shy away from taking chances. Their products and services are complicated, and they are priced to cover the high costs of their development and delivery. Most firms believe they can’t afford to take risks if it might mean losing a few sales. But in a fast-moving economy fueled by disruption, you really can’t afford not to take some risks. If you don’t want to be left behind, it’s the only path forward. Your website is an ideal place to take some risks because it is relatively easy to monitor the effects of your “experiments” and make adjustments along the way.

The website design process for a groundbreaking website can be time consuming, resource intensive and expensive. Many firms fall back on an approach they use in their own work to get the highest quality with the lowest investment — they seek out “best practices.” The problem with best practices in web design, however, is that most professional services websites end up looking incredibly similar. It becomes a self-defeating game of imitation rather than innovation.

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To break this mold, you need to think of a website as a dynamic and flexible tool. It is important to plan beyond launch day, especially if you deploy a design, feature or strategy that has a chance to be extraordinary.

To mitigate undue risk, adventurous teams define success, but also plan for… not–quite-success. What if the content you worked so hard on doesn’t show the engagement gains your team was planning on? Plans B, C and D should already be in the wings. Of course, that means you need to launch with a way to measure success when the website goes live. Sure, you can test features and designs with focus groups, but we find this sort of pre-testing can produce misleading results. The only true laboratory is in the wild. So it’s important to have a plan in place to monitor your results and adjust your approach post-launch.

Bold website design decisions also begin with the right team. Successful teams are usually small but carefully selected. Choose an internal team of trusted experts who understand your organization’s market strategies, audience behavior and information systems. It’s important for a firm’s leadership to carefully consider internal teams and external consultants before ceding control to the project team. But once you select a core team, empower them to make decisions. Nothing is less satisfying and effective than a website designed by committee.

Design to drive engagement

A number of B2B website design strategies translate well to the professional services. But they should never lose sight of two critical principles: 1) keep things simple; and 2) drive visitors toward engagement and conversion. Here are some great examples of elements small and large that can make a difference:

• Sticky menus add value as an element of responsive design. Use this technique to keep important navigation elements in sight at all times. Some sites are even pinning secondary navigation or filtering options to the bottom of the screen to provide access to important features when browsing websites on a mobile device. When they appear only in certain situations (such as when a site is viewed on a phone) elements like these can add welcome convenience and improve the user experience.

• Location awareness is becoming pervasive in other industries and it’s time that professional services website caught up. Have you ever noticed that Google magically shares the best local sandwich shops when you’re looking for lunch? There are sophisticated systems at work across the web to identify the location of desktop and mobile users. This has become a cornerstone of many consumer website SEO strategies, but it can be valuable to professional services firms, too. For instance, what if you could present the most geographically relevant expertise, talent and events to a website visitor? The value to firms with multiple offices is clear, but it can deliver more engagement and business to single-locations firms, as well. The technology is not without its caveats, but marketers and business developers are finding great opportunity to increase relevancy and improve brand experiences by making use of this maturing capability.
• Dynamic content for returning visitors. A well-planned offer strategy can nurture returning visitors and increase conversions. But the evolution of marketing automation tools can make these interactions far more relevant and flexible. If you deploy a marketing automation tool like Pardot or Marketo, you can implement sophisticated dynamic content triggers, contextual drip campaigns and powerful engagement tools into your website platform. By giving your website the power to serve more relevant content to your visitors, you can dramatically improve the way people experience and think about your brand. GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act require more explicit “permission-to-track” interactions, but this is another opportunity to be transparent about your website’s desire to strike up a relevant conversation (and frankly, something brands should be doing without the threat of regulatory oversight).
• Advanced conversational search features. AI technologies such as Google Assistant, Alexa and Siri are changing the way people interact with the web. Audiences are being trained to “speak naturally” to computers and mobile devices in their everyday interactions. It won’t be long before that these tools will be used to search for and work with professional services firms. Contextual searching, natural language processing and adaptive search algorithms will be another powerful technique to provide visitors with relevant content and engagement options. These tools are not ready for prime time today, but they are coming soon. Stay tuned!
• Chat features and supporting business processes. With all of the interest in deepening visitor engagement and interaction, it is amazing to see the relative scarcity of chat options on professional services websites! Chat features are often dismissed as being too “salesy” or demanding too much support from business development teams. But the data speaks for itself when it comes to engagement and results. Visitors who use live chat are 20% more likely to buy. At Hinge, we recently tested live chat and found it profoundly useful — and relatively inexpensive and painless to deliver.  As visitors’ buying behavior evolves, they become more likely to take a first step through chat. To a time-constrained audience, firing up a chat is less commitment than scheduling a call – but more immediate and engaging than filling out a contact form. Applied strategically, an option to chat can open a direct conversation that may have otherwise been missed.

• Video and animations can help you tell a richer story. It’s no secret that video has become a more attractive medium for websites and online promotion as streaming technologies have improved. YouTube is ranked second only to Google in its reach, and visitors flock to the platform for easy-to-consume “how-to” information. And B2B firms are catching on. The main obstacle is video’s high production costs. while accessible hardware and software tools continue to evolve and reduce the learning curve, creating high-quality video content still requires technical and story-telling skills — a challenge that technology is unlikely to solve any time soon. Using animation in video can engage audiences and improve understanding. And with advances in HTML 5 techniques, SVG graphics and compression algorithms, it is easier to build crisp animations that look great on high resolution monitors and mobile devices without affecting download speed. Like any other form of content, video and animation is only as strong as the strategy behind it. Whatever approach you take to video, the strength of its story and clarity of its message will be the true measure of its success.

Amplify and measure real-world marketing and business development efforts

Whether your teams are speaking at an industry event or working a recruiting booth, websites present an opportunity to support traditional, boots-on-the-ground marketing tactics and measure immediate results. Offline techniques are an important component of a successful professional services marketing plan, and high-growth firms know it.

By employing some of the engagement-driving features outlined in this post, a website can present tailored content to event attendees and provide relevant content to deepen and extend audience engagement. Using analytics and marketing automation tools in conjunction with these techniques provides an additional layer of intelligence and can trigger follow up actions that further deepen engagement.

Easy social sharing for educational content

Investing the resources needed to build and sustain a compelling website is no small feat, so make sure it’s easy to share the educational content you produce. Social sharing tools make it easy for your team and your readers to share content with their networks. After all, people are always looking for high quality content to help solve their business problems — your job is to deliver it to them.

A roadmap for professional services website design

1. Gather relevant intelligence

You may be disappointed with your current website, but chances are it has at least some value. Your first job is to analyze what you’ve got and determine what’s worth keeping. Next, look around at competitors and try to understand what they are doing. How are they positioned? What technologies are they using on their websites? What, if any, content are they offering to their web visitors? Finally, think about what your prospects are looking for. What opportunities can you think of to satisfy their wants and needs? Document all these findings so you can refer to them during the redesign process.

2. Assemble your team

The right project team can make the difference between success and failure. While marketing leaders usually assume the role of project champion, it is important to include key strategic and operational perspectives (for example, practice leaders or roles that are involved in strategic hiring decisions). If you don’t have an in-house army of website design experts and developers, choosing a consultant will be a critical decision. You will be working with this firm for a few months, so consider both technical skills and a cultural fit. Do you need a firm that will drive you through the process with a firm hand, or one that takes a softer, more collaborative approach?

3. Roll up your sleeves

Developing a B2B website is complex process with many moving parts. You will need to be scrupulously organized. Prepare detailed schedules and milestones to communicate progress and keep the teams’ efforts and timing on course. Be aware that the most common bottleneck and schedule buster is your site’s content. In fact, you can’t start on the content too early. Identify what will move to the new site unchanged and what will need to be created new. Assign experts and/or writers to tackle each assignment and provide firm but realistic deadlines. And don’t forget to include time to review and approve any new pages.

4. Prepare for life beyond launch

Stringent testing and a well-planned launch process are just the beginning of your websites’ journey. Plan to update your content over time, monitor your hosting performance, and track key marketing metrics to see if you are achieving the performance you expected. Though you may not have the traffic of an AECOM or Amazon, search engines like Google continue to reward better user experiences, including loading speed and valuable content. If your budget permits, invest in top-tier hosting or a CDN (Content Distribution Network) to give your website a performance edge.

A Closing Thought

Professional services websites and the online systems connected to them will continue to evolve and borrow techniques from consumer-focused industries. However, the road to success is peppered with challenges and potential pitfalls, so it will take commitment and flexibility to lead the pack. Using the lessons in this post — and a deep understanding of your buyers — you have an opportunity not only to take you next B2B website to a new level of performance, but to reinvent the way people see and experience your firm.

The post B2B Website Design Trends that Work for Professional Services appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

But the role our websites play in our marketing and business development efforts continue to evolve. What worked five years ago to separate your firm from your competitors may not work today.

At Hinge, we audit hundreds of professional services websites a year. In this article, we’ll explore 21 traits of poorly designed professional services websites that we see on a regular basis. I provide links to relevant resources under each point.

Planning and Organizational Issues 

Poor design usually happens long before a single page has been published online. Whether it was a broken planning process or some other dysfunction, there are many planning and organizational issues that make it more difficult for marketers to keep their websites purring like well-oiled business development and marketing machines. Let’s explore some of these issues.

1. Leadership misunderstands the value of a great website 

While more and more firms are beginning to recognize the value that a high performing website could bring to their business, there are still some laggards who need convincing. Websites that are built with low investment will likely become outdated rapidly.

If your leadership team is still in need of some convincing, consider these facts from the Hinge Research Institute. 

• Today’s buyers are looking online for insights 66% more often than they did 5 years ago
• 72% of buyers use digital channels to evaluate service providers
• 90% of buyers will rule out a firm before even talking with them
• Each year, professional services firms generate more leads online than they did the previous year

The days of your website being an online brochure are over. Professional services marketers must continue to make the case to their leadership teams that it is time to invest in a more sophisticated website. Check out Hinge’s Lead Generating Website Guide for a compelling look at what a professional services website should be.

2. Inconsistent strategy and metrics applied to the website 

As your marketing plans evolve, so too should your website. One sign of a poorly designed website is when it is clear to users that the website has not been kept in alignment with the firm’s overall strategy. There are dozens of examples of this, including blogs or news sections that haven’t been updated in months, outdated event pages, and broken links. 

Your website is supposed to be your perfect marketing partner—silently making the case to your prospects that you have the solutions they need. If neglected by your internal team, your website will soon begin to tell an unhelpful story. Internal marketing teams need to review their website’s content and goals on a regular basis… ensuring that the site is aligned with the firm’s overall business strategy. 

In this article you can learn about some top B2B website metrics you should be tracking.

3. Inefficient process for engaging subject matter experts for content

Most firms are aware of the benefits of publishing high-quality and accessible content on their websites. In fact, content creation was listed as the number one marketing priority of professional services firms in our 2022 High Growth Study. Creating quality content is no walk in the park though! And many professional services marketers struggle to engage their firm’s subject matter experts (SME’s) — the very people your prospects want to hear from.

Have you ever noticed a firm’s blog that hasn’t been updated in months? This is an indication that their process for creating content is not working efficiently. Either the process is broken, their SMEs are not invested in the content creation strategy, or content creation is not a priority at that firm.

A high-performing website needs fresh content. For some tips, check out this article on the importance of a content calendar.

4. The website is too hard to update

You are a marketer, not a website developer. You don’t want to rely on a third party developer to make all your website updates for you. Your website has to be an accessible resource which you and other members of your team can update with ease.

But not all websites are created with you in mind. If you find yourself held hostage by a system that makes updates hard, consider redesigning your website on a friendlier content management system.

Read this article for more insight on B2B Website Strategy and what your content management system should enable you to do.

5. Form is hindering function 

Of course, we all want our websites to look modern and fresh — and represent the qualities of our brand. Just make sure your cutting-edge design doesn’t hinder the user experience. 

Distracting videos and intricate animations can overwhelm the main message. “Clever” navigation can be difficult to find or use. Don’t forget! You have only a few seconds to make a good impression for your website visitors. We don’t want them to get lost from the start.

Now let’s be clear! Your website doesn’t have to be plain or unoriginal. But good design isn’t just about good looks. It is easy for users to navigate and delivers your message with exceptional clarity (here’s just one example).

Top of the Funnel Website Issues

Your website should play a role at each stage of the marketing funnel. At the top of the funnel, your goal is to be found by users searching for your services. In the middle of the funnel, your website delivers the educational content (blog posts, webinars, guides, etc.) that build a loyal audience over time and keep your firm top of mind. And at the tip of the funnel, your website provides the case stories and hard offers (like free consultations or demos) that help seal the deal. How do we ensure that our websites are built to accomplish these goals? 

In this section we’ll explore some traits of poorly designed websites that affect the top of the funnel goals. We’ll look at the middle and bottom of the funnel a bit later.

6. No SEO strategy

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of enhancing your website to help its content be found in Google and other search engines. According to our 2022 High Growth Study, only 21.9% of high growth firms report that they plan to prioritize any kind of SEO activity as part of their marketing strategy this year. This means that there is an opportunity to outmaneuver many of your competitors by investing in some basic SEO. 

While it’s a good idea to optimize the main pages of your website for specific keywords, the competition for the best industry keywords can be stiff. An even more fruitful strategy is to develop searchable, keyword-optimized educational content, such as blog posts, that make your expertise more visible to prospective clients who are seeking information on the kinds of problems your firm solves. When your ideal prospect is looking for an answer, what do you want them to find? Your website. Invest in keyword research and watch your traffic climb.

Want to learn more about SEO? Check out Hinge’s SEO Guide for Professional Services.

7. No functional support for SEO

We know that Google favors sites that load quickly. Search engine optimization rules like this are always evolving. Savvy firms have a technology or marketing partner who keeps up with the changes and makes any needed structural changes to their site.

One way we think about our website strategy is the rhythm of testing, measuring, and learning. To stay on top of the pesky search engine algorithms, you need to always be testing new things on your website with the intention of improving your results. Without functional support for SEO and website optimization, your website will begin to fall behind today’s high standards.

Have questions about outsourcing parts of your marketing team? Check out this blog post breaking down some options.

8. Not mobile friendly

You may imagine that most of your buyers are sitting in front of their laptops when they search around on your site, but there’s at least a 50% chance that isn’t true. According to Statista, approximately half of worldwide internet traffic was on a mobile device in 2019. 

Most websites that have been redeveloped within the last 5 years employ responsive design and are mobile friendly. From time to time though, I come across older professional services sites that fail on mobile platforms. To find out if your website is mobile friendly, take Google’s mobile friendly test.

9. Poor content organization

How your website is organized plays a huge role in keeping users on your website and making it easy to find the information they need. Websites can become bloated or disorganized over time. If your users are not finding the information they are looking for, then they will quickly leave your website. Every three to five years, you should take a hard look at your website’s content and do some pruning and tidying. 

Check out this overview of information architecture from Amelia to learn the core principles you should follow.

10. Mixing company news and thought leadership

Speaking of content organization, one easy way to confuse your website visitors and dilute your expertise is to mix your company announcements with your thought leadership pieces. It’s great that your firm is celebrating two new hires this month… but that announcement should not be made in the section of your website you are using to educate clients and prospects. Dedicate a separate page or section for your company news. 

Continue exploring Hinge’s website and observe how we keep our news and events separate from our library section.

11. Poor content quality

Let’s not beat around the bush. Bad content is not going to be picked up by search engines and will discourage people from returning to your website again. To be found in a noisy digital environment, you need to stand out with high-quality content.

At Hinge, we recommend that you leverage the power of research to improve the quality of your content. For more information on using research to supercharge your content strategy, read Hinge’s free guide Research as Content: A Guide for B2B Marketers.

12) No automated filtering features

Automated filtering features make easy to selectively organize and find information. In fact, filters give your web visitors the power to quickly and easily sift through hundreds or thousands of possible results. Don’t let your visitors become exhausted looking for the right content. Provide them with tools to make their experience a breeze. If you have a large amount of information (such as blog posts or case studies) in a section of your website, filtering can be a huge useability boon for your visitors.

For an example, see how Hinge’s website allows users to sort case stories based on the different industries we serve. 

13. Visibility metrics go untracked

If the one of the main goals of your website is to increase your firm’s visibility, then it’s vital that you have a grip on its performance. Consider setting up a dashboard where you track key metrics on a weekly or monthly basis. 

What should you track? Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Organic search traffic
• Total website traffic
• Total form fills or conversions
• Inbound leads
• Top performing pages

Three of these metrics are already available to you in Google Analytics. Tracking conversions requires a bit of setup, but is a snap to see and use once you’ve done the up-front work.

Ignorance might be bliss in some aspects of life, but not when it comes to improving the reach of your website. Tracking is an essential part of maintaining a strong professional services website. Read more about the top B2B website metrics you should be tracking here.

Middle of the Funnel Website Issues 

In the middle of your marketing funnel, you want your website to establish credibility with your users. Do you know what you’re talking about? Can your firm solve the problems your web visitors are looking for? This is the stage where prospects are evaluating you as a service provider. Here are the qualities of poorly designed websites for the middle of the funnel:

14. Outdated imagery or style

Have you ever had the experience of visiting a website and immediately hitting the back button once the page loaded? Of course you have! And most of the time I find myself doing this because the website had such an outdated and cheesy look that my brain subconsciously decided that I could find what I was looking for elsewhere.

The overall aesthetic of your website matters. If your website looks like your competitors’, if you are using tired stock photos of chess boards, puzzle pieces and boardrooms, or if your site simply lacks sophistication, your firm’s credibility is probably suffering. Otherwise rational people make snap decisions based on visual cues. 

If your website’s design is looking out of date, then it might be time to consider building a new one. Here’s an example of a growing government IT contractor who rebranded and designed a new website that aligned more with the company’s ambitious culture.

15. Weak team member profiles

One question we receive all the time is this: “If we feature our experts on our website, won’t that make it easier for recruiters or other firms to poach them?” We understand. Recruiting top talent is a challenge and the last thing anyone wants is to lose their key team members. But Hinge is of the belief that you have more to gain than lose from featuring your experts.

Think again about the role your website plays in the middle of the marketing funnel. You are attempting to establish trust and credibility with an audience who likely hasn’t reached out to you yet. In professional services, the expertise of your people is the key to your credibility. 

By featuring your experts, their credentials and the content they’ve written, you not only support your claims of expertise, but you add life to your website. Professional services are people businesses. It is a mistake to keep them hidden.

See an example of how Hinge features their team members here.

16. No cross-linking between team members and content

Speaking of your experts, hopefully they are contributing to the content strategy on your website. A big mistake we see is when firms produce great content and build great expert bio pages but then don’t take the extra step of cross-linking them. You want your prospects to get to know your experts. When they draw clearer connections on your website between the experts and the content they’ve written, you’ll only benefit.

See again here an example of how Hinge cross-links our expert profiles with the content they’ve written recently. 

17. No connection between website and CRM/automation tools

Each year, more firms use marketing automation tools. But not all firms have successfully integrated this technology into their website. 

A high performing professional services website does more than describe a firm’s services. As users come to your website, there ought to be opportunities for them to connect and engage with you. Perhaps you host regular webinars? Or maybe you’ve written a whitepaper of particular interest to a large swath of your audience? Whatever it is, there should be mechanisms built into your website where visitors can access your expertise. And when they do, your marketing automation system is there to collect their contact information and start nurturing them. 

You can read more on marketing automation strategies here.

Bottom of the Funnel Website Issues

We finally arrive at the bottom of the marketing funnel, where your website plays a critical role. Your website is not only one of the primary ways prospects get in touch with you, but it is a resource they will refer back to as they make their final decision. Your website’s design, messaging and content must send the message that your firm is the right choice. Here are some bottom-of-the-funnel mistakes professional services firms make on their website.

18. Incomplete case stories

Powerful case stories on your website can attract new prospects, establish the credibility of your firm, highlight your expertise and help you close more business. But unfortunately, this is another area where many websites fall flat. Overly brief case stories are unlikely to provide sufficient detail to persuade anyone. 

Instead, your case stories should pop – each with their own unique message about how you solved a critical problem for a client. Videos, photos, testimonial quotes, listed key accomplishments and specific results or metrics can bring case stories to life. Each case story should be hosted on its own individual page on your website. 

Want advice on writing better case stories? Read this helpful article featuring 10 tips for writing case stories here.

19. Suboptimal landing pages

Landing pages should be powerful persuaders. If you are offering a free consultation, a gated piece of premium content, or access to an online event, you likely will use a landing page as your channel for driving conversions. Many landing pages, however, are not great.

Common pitfalls of poorly designed landing pages include super-long forms that users might hesitate to fill out, extra navigation options that distract from the landing page’s main goal, and messaging doesn’t drive the viewer to take the desired action. 

Check out this video on creating better landing pages:

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20. Poorly conceived call-to-action strategy

Poorly designed professional services websites make one of two mistakes: 1) not asking the visitor to take a next action; or 2) having too many many different asks that compete for a user’s attention. 

In the first case, many firms will only provide a “Contact Us” button in their main navigation. There’s nothing wrong with this navigation option… but is that it? What else can your website offer besides a way to get in touch with you? Maybe you could write a guide on a topic that interests your audience. In the second case, firms that pack their pages with forms and offers can have disappointing results. At the end of the day, your call-to-action strategy should be crystal clear for each part of your website.

Are calls to action more of a science or art? Reference this article for more information on making the most out of your call to action strategy.

21. No or very few offers for more engagement

Finally, some poorly designed websites will not feature any offers for further engagement. What if you asked them to contact you for a free consultation? Or perhaps a demonstration of your product in action? Professional services websites that have specific, relevant offers outperform their peers.

Check out Hinge’s Marketing Planning Guide for more information on planning your marketing initiatives to drive engagement. 

A Final Mistake

Poorly designed professional services websites come in many shapes and sizes. If your website isn’t getting the job done, you don’t have to settle. Identify where in the marketing funnel your website is lacking and begin making adjustments. And if you don’t have the time or skills to handle it in-house, reach out to a qualified partner who understands your business to help you out. The final mistake you could make is to do nothing.

The post 21 Traits of Poorly Designed Websites appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

So, how important is it? The Hinge Research Institute has found that 82% of professional services buyers check out a firm’s website to evaluate them as a potential provider.

This makes your website the most common source of information for buyers considering your services – far exceeding traditional references. Notably, other sources like online search and social media may ultimately lead buyers to your website as well.

But a firm’s website isn’t just important because of the information it provides. It also establishes credibility, and this dimension is more essential than many organizations realize. Our most current research suggests that 9 out of 10 buyers will rule out a firm before even talking with them. If your website doesn’t clearly communicate how you can address a buyer’s challenges, there’s a good chance you’ll get ruled out.

Why is that? Because individuals have grown so accustomed to highly sophisticated and engaging consumer websites that they expect the same of business websites.

The continued growth in digital consumption has propelled B2B websites to be more important than ever. But how do you create a successful site that builds credibility, informs your audience, and drives your overall online presence forward?

Let’s examine seven best practices that will help you do just that.

1) Showcase educational content.

When prospects visit your site, they are typically looking for information related to their problems and for evidence of your expertise has addressed those types of problems. By creating valuable educational content, you can address both information and past performance in one fell swoop.

Keep all of your content in an organized “library” or “resources” section that is accessible right from your homepage. This should be a top-level subpage, placed prominently in your site navigation. On the library page itself, users should be able to organize their content by topic or format type.

You should never include promotional materials like sales sheets, sales presentations, brochures, or company news in this section. Instead, this is a hub for genuinely educational resources: how-to guides, whitepapers, research studies, and webinars. Make sure your content is professionally produced and demonstrates your firm’s areas of relevant expertise clearly. The writing and design should build your credibility, not undermine it.

If you’re going to commit to content, you must truly commit, as well – never let your library page stagnate. Update your library consistently with new content to demonstrate an ongoing dedication to education and industry engagement.

2) Highlight premium content to generate leads.

An educational eBook is a more in-depth, “premium” form of content than a blog post. While a blog post should be freely accessible to anyone in order to draw visitors, you may ask for useful information such as a visitor’s email address before allowing them to download premium content.

This strategy is called “gating” content. Gated content requires a form submission of some sort. If you ask for too many personal details, visitors will be discouraged, but they are usually willing to exchange their names and email addresses for valuable content – and these are some of the most useful pieces of information you can collect. With this data in hand, you can continue to nurture and draw in target audiences via content that aligns with the various stages of engagement.  Relying on content that converts is a powerful and fundamental lead generation strategy. 

How will visitors find your gated content in the first place? Include attractive and relevant offers for premium content such as eBooks in your freely accessible content (i.e. blog posts) at the middle or the end, where it is noticeable without being intrusive.

3) Make your site mobile-friendly.

More and more people are accessing B2B websites through mobile. These screens are smaller, and site designs that are beautiful and functional on a laptop or desktop display may be jumbled and unintuitive on a mobile device.

To give visitors the best possible experience, it’s important to prioritize mobile-friendliness in your design. After all, users who have a bad experience accessing your site a mobile device will leave quickly and most likely not come back. And, Google does adjust rankings based on mobile-friendliness and displaying search results with “mobile-friendly” tags. Thus, leaving no question on the role of mobile as it relates to overall visibility in search results.

How can you ensure that your site is mobile-friendly? The answer lies in responsive design. This technique uses CSS to create sites that will adapt fluidly, elegantly, and functionally to the dimensions of a user’s device, creating a great experience for all of your visitors.

4) Optimize your site for search engine indexing.

Above, I mentioned that mobile-friendliness can impact your site’s ranking in search engine results. There are many other “ranking signals,” and using them deliberately is crucial for building visibility online and for maximizing your search engine indexing.

While effective search engine optimization (or SEO) is a massive topic, some of the most essential SEO best practices include:

• Be sure that your pages have unique titles and “meta” descriptions, so Google (and searchers) can tell exactly what each page is about.
• Use the “image alt” HTML tag to give context to images on your site. This will both improve accessibility for users and help Google understand the content of your images.
• Include relevant keyword phrases. Which phrases do folks search for when they’re looking for expertise like yours? Include these phrases in both your site copy and metadata. Don’t go overboard trying to cram in keyword phrases, though – instead, use only the most natural and relevant ones.
• Consider the page load time. Online, a positive user experience (UX) is a must. Make sure that your page design, plug-ins, etc. are optimally set up to take advantage of the best download speeds available by your host service provider.
• Use Google Search Console to monitor your site’s performance, leveraging the data to increase traffic and produce more relevant content. If visitors are flocking to blogs on a particular topic, this may be a good area for you to focus on.

Even more than other aspects of online marketing, SEO best practices are quickly and constantly evolving. Make sure your team is prepared to keep up with the latest SEO techniques and guide your strategy accordingly.

5) Create clear calls to action.

All too often, visitors who want to learn more or explore services on a B2B website are left without a clear idea of what they should do to proceed. If they can’t tell how to contact you (or whatever else they seek to do) easily, they will simply move on.

This is why it’s essential to include clear, attractive calls-to-action that usher visitors forward to a particular task, explaining what to do next. These typically take the form of bright, descriptive buttons. As you plan your website (or website upgrade), you should create an offer strategy that highlights which call to action will be placed on a given page, and why.  Think of this as setting forth a roadmap for the target personas your website seeks to connect with.

Wherever they reside, calls-to-action should stand out from the rest of the page and should be easy to understand. Their text should be descriptive, specific, and active – “Get my free evaluation” rather than “Submit.”

At their most effective, calls-to-action are part detailed science. Use A/B testing to compare visitors’ responses to variations on your calls-to-action experimenting with different text, colors, etc. to increase click and conversion rates.

6) Demonstrate your firm’s expertise.

Your specialized expertise is ultimately what sets you apart in the marketplace. Without it, no amount of marketing-savvy will help you succeed. With this in mind, your expertise should also lie at the heart of everything you do online. Our research suggests that buyers are placing more emphasis on firm expertise in their selection process today than just five years ago.

Use imagery and language that will resonate with your target audience. Your design and copy should reinforce your credibility, illustrating your firm’s knowledge and service offerings, and clarifying your expertise so visitors understand exactly what you know and how you can help them.

Help visitors get to know you by providing detailed bios of the people in your firm, including their pictures, background, experience, recent projects, professional associations, and any other relevant information. Video features and firm overviews are another way to engaging, “face-to-face” introduction to your organization, its people, and its culture. Depending on your firm’s culture and comfort level with social media, including links to social connections is useful and helps staff seem more approachable.

7) Make your site easy to navigate.

As we’ve discussed above, your site should provide a great deal of detailed information – but it must be clearly organized and easy to navigate. Otherwise, visitors might become overwhelmed, or may not find the right information in the first place. Unlike entertainment websites where visitors might be more willing to search for ‘hidden’ information, the website navigation architecture (information architecture) in a B2B website is not the place to get clever as it will only frustrate visitors – wasting their time and prompting them to bail out!

Be sure to keep your navigation menus simple and uncluttered, with no more than six top-level categories. You can guide users to more specific subsets of pages through dropdown menus – just make certain these menus are easy to find and use font that is large and legible. As a rule, you should avoid small text links throughout your site, and remember that user interface is very important for SEO considerations.

At the end of the day, your website’s structure and design are the means through which you accomplish the website’s ultimate goal – getting the right information to the right people, and eventually converting those visitors into buyers. As you consider a new site or site renovation, make sure the goals and the best practices outlined above are at the top of your list. If you follow these guidelines, you will be well-situated to stand out from the rest of the marketplace.

The post 7 B2B Website Best Practices to Enhance Your Online Presence appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

The reality is that not every professional services website is built with recruiting in mind though. And this is a mistake! In a competitive marketplace where recruiting top talent continues to be a challenge, optimizing your website so that potential hires have a positive user experience is essential.

In this post, we’ll explore the role your website plays in attracting top talent and highlight a few ways it can avoid scaring away possible recruits.

Your Website is at the Center of Your Employer Brand

The important role your website plays in the recruiting process isn’t speculation, but rather an insight derived from the Hinge Research Institute’s latest Employer Branding Study. In the study, we asked both job seekers and professional services recruiters what the top elements of an employer brand were. Here are the top five results:

You’ll want to address each of these issues on your firm’s website, but notice that the website itself was called out as a top element of an employer brand.

Similar to the journey buyers take when evaluating you as a service provider, potential employees are seeking information that will help them make the right career choice. Leading recruiting and job board companies like Indeed.com encourage job seekers to check a company’s website for information on its culture, leadership team, and services in preparation for a job interview. Will they be able to find this information on your website?

If your website is disorganized, outdated, lacking sophistication, or rarely updated, you risk scaring away potential recruits who are evaluating you as a possible employer. Your website is critical to your employer brand, so it is essential that you prioritize updating or redesigning it with future job candidates in mind.

Building a Strong Careers Page

Top talent is hard to come by in professional services. That’s why it’s important to have a dedicated Careers page on your firm’s website. You may even want to feature it in your main navigation. When a potential employee arrives at your website, you don’t want them to struggle to find your Careers page. 

But all Careers pages are not created equal! What are some ways you could strengthen this page? Here are some ideas:

• Use real photos of your team in action
• Film an overview video highlighting employee culture
• Feature current job postings (or link to your job portal)
• List common benefits and amenities
• Describe what differentiates your company culture
• Use videos or summaries to spotlight employees
• Provide the location of your office(s)
• Call out special groups (interns, students, veterans, etc…)
• Include a form to contact you with questions

This page may be a prospective employee’s first glimpse at your company culture. Make sure you put your best foot forward and tailor it to the kind of prospects you want to hire.

3 Places You Should Link to Your Careers Page

Apart from providing a clear link to your Careers page in your site navigation, there is ample opportunity for you to feature your Careers page on other parts of your website. With the goal of bringing more visibility to your Careers page, consider linking to your Careers page on these other locations on your website. 

1. Homepage – Your homepage will be the first landing spot for many potential hires. One common way to ensure they navigate to your Careers page is to dedicate a section to your homepage to job seekers. If the mainstage area of your homepage is a slider, then the Careers page can be included as a slide. Alternatively, you could add a small careers panel toward the bottom of your homepage.
2. The footer – Users generally expect to find navigation options regarding the company at the bottom of your website in the footer. If your website lists these kinds of links in the footer, consider including the Careers page as an option.
3. The About Us page – Almost every professional services website has an About Us page (whether it’s called that or not). As possible job candidates explore your website, many will navigate to your About Us page first. If recruiting is a top priority for your firm, you may want to dedicate a portion of your about us page to job seekers, including a link to your Careers page.

What are Job Seekers Looking For?

Job seekers are not just looking for open positions on your website. Instead, they are looking to make an assessment of your organization as a whole. Can they imagine themselves working for you? What would life be like working with your team? Is there an opportunity to grow? Selecting a place to work is one of the most important life decisions a person can make. And now that we live in a digital world, your website will play a critical role in that decision.

In the figure below, we see what drives decision-making for job seekers. Sure, they want to be paid well for the work they do. Who doesn’t? And perhaps you can call out your firm’s approach to providing competitive compensation on your Careers page. But most job seekers are looking for more than just competitive pay.

Company culture – Job seekers are looking for well-articulated company culture and a firm that clearly defines its values. Your About Us and Careers pages can help check this box! In the About Us section, dedicate a place to share the story of your firm. As you write these pages, appeal to the imagination of not just your buyers, but also your possible recruits. Tell a story that will appeal to them, as well.

Here is also where the imagery plays a crucial role. If your website is full of clichéed stock images, what message does that send to potential recruits? Not a great one. Real, custom photography and video of your staff at work can bring a website to life.

Opportunity for growth and career advancement – Again we see an opportunity for storytelling to play a role in your Careers section. Can you feature a story about a newbie you hired straight out of college who grew into a major contributor to your organization? Videos and articles showcasing how employees at your company have realized tremendous professional growth and success can be a powerful addition to your Careers page.

Doing a variety of interesting and challenging work – Excellent job candidates will likely explore your whole website. As they prepare for a possible interview, it will be essential for them to understand your services and how you’ve helped other clients. Provide detailed information about your service offerings and case stories to illustrate them. Case stories bring to life the kinds of challenges prospective hires might face in their professional life at your firm.

A clear vision for the future/strong leadership – Job seekers want to work with a strong team led by capable leaders. Strong leadership profiles share an individual’s background and credentials in detail. They also often link to a leader’s articles and speeches and can showcase notable projects and accomplishments. And some will even include videos highlighting the executive and their role at the company.

No Time to Wait

Think about your future employees as you assess the strengths and weaknesses of your website. The competition for top talent is fierce. And remember: as the shift toward a more digital recruiting process accelerates, your competitors are recruiting online, too.

There is no time to wait. If your website is missing many of the elements described above — and if recruiting top talent is a high priority at your firm — there’s no better time to make some critical upgrades.

The post Is Your Website Scaring Away Top Talent? appeared first on Hinge Marketing.