THE SURVEY
Here’s a unique survey done by our team which drives Digital Marketing for our clients. We call them the Marketing 2.0 team. They studied 70-plus websites belonging to our clients. All clients surveyed are from the core electronics ecosystem, and most are head-quartered in India.
THE GOAL
Identify common mistakes in B2B websites, which result in loss of enquiries and business!
Here’s what they found...
GET THE BASICS RIGHT
Let’s look at the simple aspects that affect whether you will receive an inquiry or not...
Contact Information Displayed Clearly?
27% of websites had not provided their contact details, or had put them in some discrete section, where only those wanting to sell to you would reach–but not your customers.
Wrong or Outdated Contact Info?
More than 50% of websites, which had listed their contact details, suffered from this problem! Either the telephone number or the email ID, and in some cases both, turned out to be wrong.
Confusing: too many contact details?
40% had listed multiple email IDs and phone numbers. Many of them bounced. Plus, as a customer, it leads to additional confusion–as to which one to use.
Contact Form Provided?
Good B2B websites have a form to facilitate customers to contact them. Shockingly, 55% of websites did not have the contact form.
Contact Form Working?
One-third of the websites that did have a contact form, had forms that did not work!
Emails or Contact Messages Attended To Promptly?
63% of websites, which either had an email ID list or provided a contact form, did not respond to our messages, despite us waiting for 4 working days!
Mobile Friendly?
47% of websites surveyed were not mobile-friendly.
CREATING A GOOD IMPRESSION
You hope that your website is making a good impression on your customers and prospects. But, is it? Here’s what we found...
Professional Email-ID?
More than 40% of the clients, despite having websites on their own domain names, had listed email IDs of gmail.com or other free-to-use email platforms!
Copyright Year Updated?
28% of websites had this error. Instead of the current year, their websites featured past years. Two websites had copyright years as old as 2015!
Product & Services Cleary Listed?
About 17% of the websites did not list their products or services clearly.
Key Clients Listed?
54% of websites failed on this front. No mention of their key clients!
Testimonials Displayed?
We realise that getting customers to share testimonials can be a challenge, especially in India. That’s why we were not surprised to see only 23% of websites having testimonials or feedbacks.
Chat Facility?
One of the easiest ways to generate inquiries and build lists of prospects is to use chat engines. Yet, 88% of websites surveyed did not have a chat service.
Chat Handled Correctly?
This was a shocker. None of the websites that had chat engines installed--had anyone online when we tested--that too, during office hours!
GETTING THE TECH RIGHT…
Few tech-related issues, which if handled correctly can boost the success of your digital marketing efforts...
Google Analytics Installed?
This was another shocking discovery! 62% of websites surveyed did not seem to have Google Analytics (or any other industry-standard analytics) installed.
SSL Certificate Installed?
32% of websites were lacking on this front. SSL certificate is now a must for all websites, as it indicates to the web browsers that your website is secure.
Easy to Update Website?
Only 35% of websites were on platforms like WordPress, which are easy to update. Rest, were using platforms like .NET, ASP or PHP indicating strong dependency on their agency or IT team.
