Your website should help users research or buy quickly and easily. Each website page plays a different role. In Part 3 of our B2B4B series, we explain the key pages of a website and the role each page plays in a customer journey.
The homepage is often the first place your customers are going to interact with your site and is generally considered to be your B2B digital storefront. Your goal is to deliver content to first-time and ongoing users so that they continue deeper into the website. Users may want their questions answered. They may want to buy. They may not know what they need and want your guidance.
A strong Content Management System (CMS) combined with robust integrations can provide dynamic, fresh content to site visitors. This leads to improved SEO scores that direct customers to your website. When users see what they need, they reward you with more time on site, purchases, and positive reviews.
The work of a strong customer/user experience team (CX/UX) can help create logical and natural navigation in menus and button navigation as well. You’ll also want to consider what items (content or products) you set up above the natural “fold” or page break of the site. This is best determined by thinking about the different ways a visitor might encounter your site (desktop, mobile phone, tablet browser, and more).
The Product List Page (PLP) is quite simply a collection of products typically organized by a common concept such as brand or category. The PLP is also the place to bring together all the product data elements with an organized User Interface (UI) to show your customers the products they need immediately and provide tools to help them decide which to purchase.
The Product Detail Page (PDP) takes the user from the 10,000 ft level of the homepage, and the 100 ft level of a PLP, down to the 10-foot level of the actual Product. This page utilizes the integrations in place throughout the site to present Specifications, Attributes, Documents, Images as well as price and availability to the customer. Armed with this information, that customer can add the product to a Wish List or potentially add to cart and create a sales order.
The Cart Page starts the checkout process. Product Data and strong integrations with the ERP help guide the user through the checkout experience into creating the sales order. A good checkout experience includes providing information on the tax and shipping rates, and even suggested products. This page should be extremely intuitive and facilitate an easy purchasing, repurchasing and/or cross-selling experiences.
Integrations usually found in the checkout flow include:
Combining these pages creates a satisfying journey that continues to build momentum and value. As your customer becomes more engaged with your brand and website, some of these pages will get bookmarked and others will become unnecessary. Be sure to update your website on a regular basis to improve your website quality scores, and occasionally do research to spot check for friction in the online experience. A partner like Xngage can help you review your customer journey regularly and make sure you are meeting, and exceeding, your B2B customers' expectations.