Building a B2B Marketing Website With Strong Design and Messaging

What are the benefits of good website design and messaging? 

The website is the most important salesperson on the team – the most immediate benefit of your website is in supporting your sales funnel. It’s an omnipresent sales communicator—it’s available 24/7, it’s accessible wherever you are, on whatever device, and presents an opportunity to completely control the message and lead people on a journey in the way you want them to consume the information. 

Your website differentiates you from competitors – competitors are always going to be looking across the landscape to see what they’re up against, and so will customers. The website helps you raise awareness of your solution and stand out from the competition. 

Your website is a powerful recruitment tool – business development is a two-sided coin, and recruiting the talent needed to grow the business is the other side of the coin. The website is the first place many candidates will go and you need a strong one if you want to build the right team to support the delivery of growth. The website can showcase company culture, and the impact of the work, and convey to candidates that this is an interesting company they should want to join.

What do you need to prepare before you start creating your website? 

Know your competition – you need to understand the landscape you’re competing in so you can know how to position yourself. To conduct this research, look at:

• Competitor websites
• Review site (e.g. Capterra) reviews
• Analyst feedback 
• Customer forums
• Social channels

Know your audience – understand who you’re selling to, where and how they’re buying, and what they’re like outside of the office. You want to know where they consume information and paint a picture of those personas as people, then build a brand and personality that resonates with them. You want to get into the movies they watch, the games they play, and the aesthetic that will resonate with them. Look at:

• Customer conversations with sales – sales should have a good sense of the conversations, tone, demeanor, and career stage of the buyers. 
• Understand executive decision-makers – oftentimes, the CIO or CISO signing the check is different from the end-user, so you have to understand what motivates them and who they are as people. 
• Customer interviews
• Customer surveys 

Know yourself – understand the value of your product, the impact that it delivers, and how that might be different from competitors. A lot of startups try to say they’re the first in their space—but there are almost always competitors trying to solve the problem in a different way. Know your product and where it is relative to alternatives. 

Create a positioning doc – get your research findings on paper and then you’re able to start thinking through the strategic steps of a website from information architecture through content and design. Defining your brand is like defining an operating system for your device or technology. Define the parameters by which customers will engage with your brand: message, tone of voice, and visual identity.

Loop in sales, product, and HR (not just marketing) – often, Sales and Product will work on the sales side of the website and HR on recruiting. This way you can use the website to bring holistic value to the business, it should support revenue growth and recruitment.

What is a value message statement? How do you find one that works well for you? 

The value message statement is the first message the buyer sees on your site –  this is the punchy statement that visitors will see when they first visit your site. It’s typically conceived using the framework “Who? For what? And Why?” 

Connect reason and emotion in your value message- the message should give a scientific account of what the product does and connect it with an impact of emotional resonance for your audience. It should tell readers why they’re there and why they should continue to browse. Connecting reason and emotion, left and right brain, is a powerful way to do that. 

Example: “Know who’s real” for a bot detection company – this statement tells readers what the product delivers and lets them make a decision on whether it’s of interest, but it also offers assurance and confidence that they’re making the right decision if they choose it. It’s an empowering statement but also describes the actual functionality. 

What are the component pages that your website should contain? What is the purpose of each?

Your website is never a finished product – there are some standard pages most companies have out of the gate, but there’s always opportunity to scale and refine. Continue to tailor your website to the needs of your audience and business as you grow and mature.

A standard B2B SaaS business website might include: 

• Homepage – this is the gateway into the rest of the site, it should give compelling information but not so much that a visitor has everything they need. You want to encourage further engagement with calls to action, and give opportunities to dig in deeper. 
• Product Pages – it differs between a services company and a product company—a services company will have more capability areas that are conveyed slightly different from product pages that are specifically about the technology. 
• Use Cases – think about user motivations and why they’ve come to the website and address them with use cases. Each should start by outlining key customer challenges, what they were out to solve, and tell why they chose you. Then it should connect back to the product page and talk about how the problems are solved. 
• Roles – some people want to see their own role and identify the product’s value and capabilities through that lens. 
• Resources – as your company scales, producing a lot of resource content is an effective way of spreading your message. It can be lead-gen content that’s repurposed as website information, or how-tos specifically for the website.
• Careers – even if you’re a three-person startup that isn’t actively recruiting, having a Careers or Recruitment page shows positive momentum and growth. It’s a great opportunity to control the perception of your company. Do you want to present yourself as large and growing, tech-heavy, or focused on culture and people? 

What key elements should go on the homepage?

Above the Fold
Element	Detail
Navigation lock at top of the browser	Users should have really easy access to information and navigation, regardless of where they are on the page.
Hover menu	The hover state lets you expand and visually see all the pages on the site, and then get anywhere within a click. On desktop, viewers should be able to get into an interior page relatively deep in the website structure from the home page. Make it easy to access important information and you can even include other informational calls to action in the menu.

Exemplary above the folds:

As You Scroll
Element	Detail
A strong leading message	It should connect reason and emotion—a scientific truth about the company with its impact.
Sometimes, there will be an explainer subhead on it	This can provide a bit more information to the leading message.
A video call to action in the homepage	A video can explain a complex subject or expand on a value prop statement using motion graphics and visual elements.
A clear call to action	This should be towards the top of the page – you can include persistent CTAs (like a demo or an evergreen content) as the reader navigates.
Customer logos	I like to include third-party validation early in the scroll experience. If customers are willing to display their logos, it can be convincing because no one wants to be the first to buy something. Displaying peers and brands they respect instills confidence.
Testimonial	If you can’t get testimonial pull quotes, analyst quotes can be powerful to include front and center.
Lead-hook content	Newer companies might have an e-book that plants the flag for what the company stands for and how it’s different. It allows someone to bring a part of the website experience home.
Blog roll	If a company is actively in the news, it’s nice to aggregate those articles and roll them up on the homepage —this is easily automated with most CMSs. If you’re not in the news or blogging often, I would not recommend this. You need to have fresh content if you’re featuring it.

Example DomainTools Homepage—see the full DomainTools Homepage here.

Bottom of the Page
Element	Detail
Footer	Include a scannable boilerplate navigation footer at the bottom. It should cover the company, social links, etc. That way when bots crawl the site, they have a clear finish line.

What key elements should go on other key pages?

The use of all of these pages is a call to action and progressing through the lead journey – you want to reveal enough information to get people interested, but still leave something for salespeople to drive home in human interaction. The purpose of each page should be to get to a call to action. Usually, that’s a demo, consultation, or contact form—structure content and narrative to persuade people towards taking action. 

About the Product

This is really about providing technical information – You should imagine the reader has a level of familiarity with the subject, so you can write in a technical voice for an audience who’s researching your company.

For examples of exemplary About the Product pages, see: 

• Cado Security
• HUMAN Security
• RevelStoke

Use Cases

Each one should begin with a customer challenge –  lead with the need for a solution, and explain why your product is the best possible solution for this particular use case. Describe the benefits of your solution, and then talk about what life is like after adoption. What is the light at the end of the tunnel? Include a Call to Action prominently on the page – this should lead them to a form fill, demo, or download. You can validate your use case claims with case studies – it’s one thing to talk about how great your capabilities are, it’s another to have it validated by real-world experience and deployment. They induce in-page conversions and content downloads because people will always be looking for proof points. Build a consistent sales message that’s followed by a message of information and research that validates the claim. If you have a lot of volume, include a sort and filter feature – for posts or resources so visitors can find blog posts or case studies that relate closely to their use case.

Example Flare use cases page—see the full page here.

Careers

The career section is where you tell the human side of the story – oftentimes, we’ll go into a client’s office and take B-roll video of people working collaboratively. Getting real photography and video boosts authenticity, nobody wants to see stock photography. It can make applicant management easier on HR – there are a lot of great applicant tracking tools that easily integrate into a website for creating job posts and managing applications.

See exemplary Career Pages for HUMAN Security and Revelstoke.

About Page

Companies with people-focused offerings need it more than others – for a services company, the about page is very important, because it talks about the philosophy of the company, the purpose, and mission; it serves an inspirational purpose.  A leadership page is important for an early-stage company seeking funding – because investors need to see the founding team and their experience to determine whether the company is a good investment.

See the example LeanLaw About Page here.

Pricing

Only put pricing on your website to encourage impulse buys with no sales involvement – for example, Asana sells their product (from a single license to an enterprise plan) without a single sales conversation. If you have a per-seat license model you can put pricing online and do fine. You’ll never know what a customer’s perception is until you observe it in the market. Don’t list pricing if you configure your offering – it doesn’t make sense to list pricing if it’s not connected to the reality of a transaction.   Services companies shouldn’t put it up unless they’re offering is productized – if you productize your services and have clear and defined pricing for each engagement, it can go on the site to set expectations for buyers.

Example SideChannel pricing page—see the full page here.

How should you think about designing your website lead journey?

The typical user journey in a B2B SaaS should end in a form fill – ultimately, you’re trying to show a few messages and get someone to fill out a form, make contact, or sign up for a trial. Allow people to have an experience with the product as they go along. They’ll do a ton of research online anyway before making contact. Use the website to present people with the information to inspire them to make that form fill. The typical journey goes: Home Page → Product Page → Use Case → Demo.

The journey will determine how you interact after the visit – if you use a CRM like HubSpot that does visitor intelligence, it can match IP to those that filled out forms and cater follow-up content according to the prospect’s journey through the site.

A B2B Services journey might look different – it will focus on the people and the organization, so it might look like: Homepage → About Page → Leadership.

Should all B2B businesses have a blog? How often do you need to post, and what should go on it?

Not all businesses need a blog, but those that do need to be active – if you can’t create content that is informative and valuable, then you don’t need to have a blog. If you’re able to produce high-quality content that people are going to read and enjoy, then absolutely maintain one.

The best blogs are written by practitioners for practitioners – you can hire a copywriter and get good work, but the best content isn’t about volume. Successful content answers a key question that your audience has. It is written intelligently and informs people who already know about the subject matter.

Internal research teams do good blog work – some of the best blogs we’ve seen have been security companies with internal research teams putting out blogs about the work they’re doing. Nobody wants to hear another top five reasons to do XYZ-type marketing blog. People spend their time reading when the information is new and valuable.

What are the different types of written content? How should you use each on your site?

All of your content will have a different purpose – the website is the house and there are multiple doors in and out. You have sales-focused content, SEO lead gen content, and takeaway content.

A clear and easy funnel for the intent buyer
Used For	For a  person who visited the site via a direct URL or a link. They know why they’re there and they’re following a journey to learn more.
Tips	This needs to be terse and informational but not instructional – Use compelling, short sentences, the active voice with present tense action verbs. Explain the problem people are dealing with, show the solution, and get them to the finish line.  You want them to go from Homepage → Product Page → Contact Form.

Example HUMAN Security intent buyer funnel—see the full page here.

A “net” for people searching for relevant information
Used For	Visitors who are not aware of the business or product details yet. They’re coming through a search engine because they have a problem to solve.
Tips	Topic or resource pages will appeal to this audience – these provide a good long form explanation of a use case and they can be built around a key phrase in their search that’s relevant to the product journey.  This is an opportunity to go deep and let the literary wheels turn – You want to expand the net of searchers you’ll capture and bring them into persuasive content that encourages the reader to dig deeper. Include some in-page links to create traffic between different sections of your site.

Example HUMAN Security “net” for searchers—see the full page here.

A takeaway for when they leave the site
Used For	To keep your brand present in someone’s mind after they’ve learned something on your site. Someone was engaging with the site and this hooks them as a lead.
Tips	It could be an eBook, market report, or white paper – it will go into more detail on a subject than would be appropriate for a single web page. Access to the resource should be gated behind a lead capture form on the browser – this is preferable to emailing a PDF and sending them out of the browser to find information. This content also has great legs outside the website –  You can build a campaign around it and share it on social. Give it a featured image that looks like an ad—so if anyone shares a link on social it looks natural and has the appropriate meta-description for promoted content.

How can you build a website that is SEO-strong without distracting from your messaging and branding? 

Google looks for human readable, clearly organized, structurally sound, well-written content – at the end of the day, there are no tricks. There is no spammy stuff you can do to game the system anymore. You can focus on building a clean, clear structure that leads people on a journey with quality writing, deep interactions, and fast load times. 

Make sure there’s a relevant keyword in the H1 and the first paragraph of body text – this will go a long way toward setting a good SEO foundation. Google is extra sensitive to the initial H1 text on your site. It is also important to create appropriate keyword density throughout the page.

Blogs are less of an SEO tool than they once were – 15 years ago, freelance blog writers could write SEO-focused blogs for 10 cents a word and jam as many words in as possible because that’s what the search engines looked for. Now, it’s about quality, accuracy, and engagement. If the content is good and it’s written for people, then it’s going to perform well.

For blogs make sure you: 

• Have the right keyword in H1
• Have paragraph text in URL
• Customize the meta description and SEO title using a tool like Yost or HubSpot
• Optimize images

How should you use testimonials, customer logos, or other social proof on your website?

Use them early and often – rather than telling the customer about yourself, show someone else doing the talking. It’s especially effective when you’re using them to reinforce a claim; e.g., “we are the industry’s leading threat intelligence provider, trusted by [top five logos]” Testimonials are less valuable in isolation. 

Get as much attribution on testimonials as possible – it’s a home run if you can get a name, role, and picture along with a written testimonial. The less information you can provide, the less valuable the testimonials are. In security, this is a little challenging because many customers view it as a liability to talk about the products they’re using.

How should you feature awards, press mentions, analyst reports etc. on your website?

There’s a hierarchy of third-party validation quality:

1. Analyst references are cream of the crop – if you’re a Gartner Cool Vendor or in the Magic Quadrant, those achievements really speak to the value of your product to customers. ReverseLogix does a great job of this.
2. Organic press media is powerful but doesn’t necessarily address buying decisions – there is a lot of great media placement you can get to raise your profile, but oftentimes it doesn’t specifically address the value you provide for customers. 
3. Growth awards are unimpressive to customers – an Inc 5000 award is a pat on the back for the founder, but it’s not direct proof of the value of your product. It does show successful sales and a strong trajectory. 

Add any workplace awards on your jobs pages – if you’re named as one of the top workplaces in your area, this is great validation that you care for your employees and should be featured prominently on your jobs page.

How and where should you use video content on your website?

There are two types of videos you can use: 

• Educational – these go into the detail of the product, what it can do, and what’s so good about it. 
• Contextual – motion videos that enhance the user experience and design of the page. This includes things like load animations, Lottie graphics, and animated SVG to illustrate concepts. You can use time and a load animation to do storytelling in a really interesting way while still loading fast and meeting Google requirements.  

Video is well received by viewers – videos increase time on page and they’re generally well-received and reviewed by those doing the browsing. 

What mechanisms should you consider for your website to capture leads? 

Ask for just enough information to qualify the lead – you want to make the process as smooth as possible for the potential buyer, so just capture enough information that Sales can decide whether or not they deserve a follow-up. That information is different for every company. If necessary, IP tracking can help you learn more about the prospect after the fact.

Lead capture options include: 

• Interest capture form 
• Demo request
• Downloadable content
• Chatbots (these are most helpful for support)

What should be in the tech stack for your website? How do you build a well-architected website?

In an ideal world, you would use:

• WordPress website – I’m biased because this is Punch’s preferred CMS,, but will support any B2B marketing website’s needs. .
• HubSpot CRM – it has robust visitor tracking, helps with the automation of follow-ups, and populates information to track leads. And, it’s easier to use than Pardot or Marketo.
• Google Analytics – GA4 is coming up soon and will create a whole new world that requires more configuration on the data-viewing side. Make sure your social tracking pixels are added as well.

Other tools can offer more detailed analytics – e.g., Crazy Egg and Hotjar can give you more detailed website analytics, user engagement, and visual net measurement. These can be useful but it’s a matter of what you do with that information. 

What user research and engagement metrics should you track to determine the performance of your website?

Data for data’s sake is worthless – there are many tools to gather analytics, but you need to know how to use them. It’s up to the company to be proactive in using it and reviewing it. The best metric is actually whether you see an increase of sales–increasing sales is the ultimate goal of the site.

Engagement is more important than traffic – traffic is not a good measure of performance. Especially when you get into more specialized B2B offerings where there is a limited number of customers; it’s not reasonable to expect 100,000 visits a month from a specialized niche audience. You probably wouldn’t even have the sales infrastructure to support that. Look at engagement metrics like:

• Time on page
• Views per visit
• Bounce rate
• Number of pages per site
• Conversion through the buyer pages

Make sure you measure engagement with the right content – high volume of traffic with the wrong content won’t yield positive results. For example, we’ve had clients whose #1 performing page is an old blog post that doesn’t relate to their current product offering—that’s not success.

For SEO purposes, your website needs to meet Google’s requirements in terms of:

• Keyword placement
• Keyword density
• Image optimization
• Page load optimization
• Accessibility information 

Your data should play a big role in the strategy of improving the website – a website is never finished, but the great part is that you can update the headline in 10 seconds and observe the difference in engagement. You have many opportunities to edit, measure engagement, and respond to user feedback.

What third-party resources can help you design, build, and generate content for your website? When should you use each? 

Hire an agency – the most effective resource is an agency. They will work to understand your business, your audience, and your differentiation, then turn that into a creative message that resonates with buyers. The whole reason agencies exist is to bring that extra special something that makes a good website great. They can help with copywriting and design, and there are groups who specialize in one or the other, but great agencies can write and design in parallel to create an integrated experience. 

Tools for democratized design – e.g. Canva—are decent tools and affordable but can’t replicate the quality, intricacy, and customization of an agency. 

Copywriters – good writers can help create content that is on-brand and on-message, and can help you tell a great story on your site. But good copy needs to be delivered via strong design in order to make the biggest impact.

What are the most important pieces to get right? 

Know your brand and message – before the website even exists, you need to have a differentiated brand identity with clear and resonant messaging. There’s no path to success without really understanding your audience, competitors, and yourself. 

What are common pitfalls?

Putting personal preferences over the customer perspective – we all have personal affinities for certain designs, concepts, and styles. Don’t let these seep into the design and branding process. Zoom out and look at the brand through the lens of the customer rather than the Founder. Ground your design in the buyer’s motivations and preferences to build a brand and website that support sales of the product. Have your conversations in language like “This works,” rather than “I like this.”