Signs your B2B website needs redesigning

Most B2B websites do not fail loudly. Traffic holds up, the form still works, and nobody in the company looks at the site because they already know what it says. The signs it needs redesigning show up somewhere else: in the sales team's inbox, in the size of the deals that come in, in the product changing faster than the pages that describe it. Here are eight signs, each with a test you can run today, and the one sign that is not a sign at all.

1. Sales sends decks instead of links

When a prospect asks what you do, your best salesperson should be able to send a link. If they send a PDF instead, it is because the deck says something the website does not: the real positioning, the current product, the price, the proof. The site has become the version of the company you show strangers, and the deck is the version you show people you want to win.

The test: ask two salespeople for the last thing they sent a prospect before a first call. If neither is a page on your site, the site is not doing its job.

2. The product has outgrown the site

Companies change faster than websites. A new module, a new market, a new price point, and the homepage still describes what you did when the site launched. Prospects read the old story and leave before anyone can tell them the new one.

The test: open your homepage and your most recent sales deck side by side. Count the things the deck says that the homepage does not. More than three and the site is describing a different company.

3. The pricing page is a form

A pricing page that says "contact us" is not a pricing page. It is a gate, and most B2B buyers will not go through it. They are evaluating four suppliers in four tabs and looking for a reason to rule you out, and a missing price is one. Even a range or a starting point rules you in for the buyers who can afford you and out for the ones who cannot, which is what the page is for.

The test: can a buyer work out whether you are in their budget without giving you their email address? If not, you are losing the ones who would have said yes.

4. Mobile is an afterthought

B2B buyers open the link from a colleague's message on the train, like everyone else. If the site was designed on a large screen and squeezed afterwards, that first impression is a wall of text, a menu that does not open and a form that does not fit.

The test: open your three most important pages on your phone with the wifi off. Time how long each takes to be readable. Anything over two seconds, or anything you have to pinch to read, is a redesign waiting to happen.

5. It cannot explain the product in one screen

Before anyone scrolls, a buyer should be able to answer three questions: what is this, who is it for, and why should I believe you. Most B2B sites answer none of them, because the first screen went to a tagline the board liked and a stock photograph of people pointing at a laptop.

The test: show the first screen of your homepage to someone outside the company for five seconds, then ask them what you sell and to whom. If they cannot say, your buyers cannot either. Servebolt rebuilt its first screen around three buyer paths, and the proof moved to where each of them landed.

6. The CMS fights the marketing team

A site nobody can edit stops being edited, and a site that is not edited starts lying. If a new case study takes a ticket, a developer and a fortnight, the marketing team will stop publishing case studies and start publishing LinkedIn posts instead, and the site will slowly go quiet.

The test: ask marketing how long it took to publish the last new page, from finished copy to live. Longer than an afternoon and the platform is the problem, not the people.

7. The enquiries are the wrong size

A B2B site should rule buyers out as well as in. If the enquiries are consistently too small, in the wrong sector, or asking for something you do not do, the site is not qualifying anyone. It is saying "we do everything for everyone", and everyone is taking it at its word.

The test: look at the last ten enquiries. How many would you have wanted? Fewer than half means the site is attracting the wrong people, and that is a positioning and proof problem before it is a traffic problem.

8. The site is slower than the product

Technical buyers notice speed before design, and read it as a proxy for how you build everything else. If the product is fast and the marketing site is a template weighed down by plugins and tracking scripts, the site is making a promise about quality that the product then has to repair.

The test: run your homepage and your product's login page through the same speed test. If the marketing site loses, the first thing a technical buyer sees is your weakest work. A properly coded site should arrive in under 20 milliseconds and be fully loaded in under half a second.

The site is the version of the company you show to strangers. If it is not the version you would show to someone you wanted to win, it is costing you them.

The sign that is not a sign

You are bored of it. Boredom is not a brief. If the site passes the eight tests above and your buyers are not complaining, spend the money on the product and come back in a year. We say this on first calls more often than you would think.

What to do if three or more apply

One sign is a fix. Three is a redesign, and it is a structure and content project before it is a design one: who the site is for, what each page has to say, then the design, the build and a migration that keeps the rankings you already have. The3Key came out of that process with 77% more conversions. What the work includes is on the website redesign page.

To turn the signs you ticked into something you can hand to an agency, our free brief writer drafts a one-page brief in about a minute. Send it to us or to anyone else. A founder replies personally.