Does the Internet have any limitations? We do everything from buying clothes to buying food to buying books (either physical or digital), from sending greeting cards to making vehicle appointments to watching television shows. Almost half (47%) of all consumer spending is transacted on the Internet. Furthermore, Google discovered that 90% of in-store purchases were made after an internet search and that this trend held for over a week.

Businesses that directly serve consumers (B2C) aren’t the only ones to embrace the digital age. And the same holds in the B2B (business-to-business) sector. Seventy-one percent of business-to-business customers start with a generic Google search.

But why does this really matter? Whether you’re selling to consumers or other businesses, most potential customers will first check out your website to learn more about you and your offerings before reaching out to you.

Use the following data about web design to improve your website and digital marketing methods, increasing your chances of making sales.

Decision-makers in the business-to-business market are increasingly from the millennial generation.

The millennial generation (20-35-year-olds) is far past the entry-level employment phase. According to a study published in the Harvard Business Review, 73 percent of millennials were involved in decision-making at B2B firms.

According to the 2019 B2B Buyers Survey Report findings, internet evaluations are the single most useful factor in the decision-making process for over half of millennial respondents.

The values of millennials are another topic of research. According to Forbes, as many as 80% of millennials who make B2B purchasing decisions care about a company’s commitment to the community, the environment, and charitable giving. Here’s what Google thinks will happen as a result:

More weight will be given to a company’s stance on social and environmental concerns, including climate change, diversity and inclusion, and sustainability.

Thanks to this study’s findings, your prospective customers are younger than you would have guessed, curious about your company’s guiding principles and values, and relying on your online standing before making a purchase.

Keep your target audience’s needs and values in mind from the beginning to the end of the web design process for maximum impact.

First impressions are crucial, and you must make them in less than a second.

Since people form opinions about a website’s aesthetic attractiveness in as little as 50 milliseconds, it’s crucial that your page immediately capture and hold their attention.

While it’s important to have engaging content throughout your website, research from the Nielson Norman Group found that most of your visitors’ attention was focused on the page section visible above the fold. The first two minutes accounted for 74% of the time spent watching. Above the fold, clearly communicate how your product will solve the user’s issue.

You may increase your website’s effectiveness by using A/B testing.

If you want your website to be as profitable as possible, it needs constant maintenance and updates.

Comparing two options through A/B testing is a wonderful method for finding improvement areas. During A/B testing, two variants are compared head-to-head to determine which yields superior results.

The A/B test case studies provided by CrazyEgg demonstrate how even little adjustments may significantly impact conversion rates:

The insurance giant Humana “saw a 192% boost in CTR (click-through rate) after switching the CTA (call-to-action) from ‘Shop Medicare Plans’ to ‘Get Started Now.'”

Changing just one thing, like an image or the wording of a call to action, may greatly impact conversion rates.

Conversion rates are unexpectedly affected by page load times.

The importance of a site’s loading time is often underestimated.

A recent study looked at the connection between site performance and conversion rates and concluded that pages that load in under 5 seconds have greater conversion rates. In addition, a 4.42 percentage point increase in conversion rate was seen for every one-second cut from the optimal five-second window. Wow, that’s a serious force.

Several factors may be tuned to increase site speed, including image compression, redirection management, and server response time.

Google uses load times as a ranking signal, regardless of whether or not they affect conversions. If your site loads slowly, you may see a drop in both your search engine rankings and your organic visitors.

Mobile-first design is dominating.

A recent CNBC story forecasted that by 2025, “almost 3.7 billion individuals,” or 72.6% of all internet users, will do it only through their smartphones.

Even if that isn’t reason enough to give responsive web design the attention it deserves, remembers that in 2020 Google switched to a mobile-first indexing strategy for the whole web. For this reason, the mobile version of your site will always be the first to be crawled by Google. A poor mobile design, or the lack of any design, will have a detrimental impact on your ranking.

It’s not just you if you’re reading this and realizing it may be time to give mobile marketing a higher priority. According to Forbes, “the percentage of marketing budget spent on mobile maintains its upward trend and is predicted to continue to climb” (73% growth over the next five years).

Effective lead generation relies heavily on digital marketing.

Traditional forms of advertising have been overtaken by their digital counterparts (email, websites, PPC) during the previous decade. In contrast to the predicted reduction in spending on traditional marketing channels, spending on digital channels is expected to climb by 13% over the next year.

Blogs, videos, social media postings, and other content marketing are all excellent ways to raise your brand’s profile and get people talking about it online.

The “Learn More” call to action appears at the end of the post. The blog informs the reader and encourages them to sign up for Slack. To further increase Slack’s exposure, they may post the blog on their social media accounts.

The power of blogs to propel rapid expansion cannot be overstated. “81% of organizations regarded their blog as crucial to B2B lead creation,” claimed Blue Corona. In addition, HubSpot found that “70% of marketers are actively engaging in content marketing” in the present day’s industry.

It’s crucial to invest money into SEO.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a form of digital marketing that improves the quantity and quality of organic visitors to a website. Regarding indexing and ranking sites for the SERP (search engine results page), Google considers various elements (keywords, site speed, build quality, etc.).

Researching and planning for creating content based on the keywords your intended audience will most likely use entails a bit of detective work.

Understanding Google’s current algorithm is a must for doing efficient keyword research. For example, Google’s BERT upgrade (October 2019) changed the emphasis from single keywords to search intent and context.

Is SEO worth the money it costs? Over 65% of B2B marketers claim SEO has the most influence on their lead generation goals, according to Blue Corona, while 64% of marketers spend on SEO, according to HubSpot.

By combining this data with current web design best practices, you and your team will be in a great position to make a groundbreaking website.