Optimizing for B2B & Behavioral design training-Review
Conversion optimization, in general, refers to improving the chances that a user will complete a defined task or goal on your website. The goal can be anything from buying a product, requesting a quote, or even subscribing to a newsletter.
Optimizing for B2B
But when it comes to Business-to-Business (B2B) companies and products, how can you implement CRO for improving lead generation? The sales cycle on a B2B SaaS company is often short and rapid. How do you improve or optimize the quality when you are dealing with fewer products with a limited time period? Some of the same underlying principles like Conversion research and Persona building will apply in B2B optimization as well. But there are some inherent differences in decision-making and sales cycle if you are in B2B. Hence applying the same methodologies from what we have learned in B2C optimization might not be a good idea.
Instead of simply increasing the volume of the leads on a homepage, you also need to look for quality in B2B. In order to maximize the quality, goals should be defined for each stage throughout the optimization journey.
In this post, I’m going to share my learnings from the CXL Institute’s Conversion Optimization Mini-degree on ‘Optimizing for B2B’ and ‘Behavioral design training’.
There are 5 stages on a B2B optimization model. To better understand, let us call this process Customer Value Optimization.
Determine the Market fit
Research on where your product or company stands on the market and how you differentiate from others. When your goal is lead generation, you need to be clear on which type of audience you are targeting. Doing Inbound and Account-based marketing will help you generate leads at this stage. Account-based marketing is something unique that you might want to look at in B2B. When you see a potential customer on your website and if the sale is worth more, then you will probably spend a lot more time to figure out who they are and what they were doing on your website than when a random person hitting your e-commerce site (in case of B2C).
Creating a Lead Magnet
It is a process of information exchange with your leads for opt-in. Sign-up is an example of a lead magnet where you get their information in exchange for providing something in return (Like a free trial). But remember e-books and newsletters are not opt-in.
The Tripwire
This is the stage where you convert the leads into your customers. It solely depends on the value you are selling. The Call to Action can differ on different B2B websites. Some products prioritize demo first while some prioritize a free trial.
There are a lot of sales and lead management tools which help you have the information at your fingertip for converting a potential prospect into a customer. It is important at this stage to have the conversation more personalized so that the prospect feels special and in turn could become a customer.
Profit Maximiser
Once you have the prospect converted into your customer, is the process over? No! You look for ways to sell more and make the customer upgrade. For example, if your company sells multiple SaaS products, you will automatically try to cross-sell. Having integration features within your products is a very good way to make your customers become aware of your other products.
Return Path
The leads you cannot convert during the Tripwire stage will come under the return path. At this stage, you followup, give exit offers, display ads, etc. to try and convert them.
The key takeaway here is probably that B2B sales cycles are different. Optimizing a Saas product is not going to be the same as optimizing an e-commerce website.
Behavioral design training
As quoted by Donald A.Norman, “If you create things that can actually improve people’s lives, then that’s where the business opportunity comes from.”
Behavioral design is one of the techniques for creating the best user experience as it puts the user at the forefront of the design process. Why do people do what they do? And how can we change/reshape them? These questions can be answered by implementing the behavioral design in your product. Before diving into this in detail, one needs to understand how human habits work. Human habits are a set of behaviors that we unconsciously perform. Since habit is a learned behavior, using the behavioral design we can control the consequences of user behavior via the CAR (Cue -> Action -> Rewards) model. Try and understand the crucial factors that influence behavior. And the best way to do that is through experiments.
For example, we use prepositions in our daily life. Which of the below 3 sentences do you think is correct?
- I am at the website
- I am on the website
- I am in the website
There are a lot of discussions on the internet speculating which answer is correct among the 3 sentences. But that is not the reason why I asked this question. How did you picturise these sentences in your mind while reading them? I’m sure you would have thought in terms of space.
Roughly like this?
We think in terms of Space when we interact with the virtual environment. For example, we see buttons like ‘Back’ and ‘Forward’ on many websites. But are we actually moving from our desks? No. These are called Space metaphors. Designers tend to use Space and Time metaphors to create an interactive web design. It helps you to communicate with the user and reduce the barrier. The more you take the language from physical space, the more the user will feel easy to move through. You need to take metaphors from the real world and apply it to interactive design.
I’m in my 9th week of learning from the CXL Institute’s Mini-degree. It has been a great learning experience so far. I highly recommend taking this course for someone who is starting off their career as a Conversion optimizer. This post is just a brief summary of the topics discussed in the lessons. This entire program is structured in such a way that you start right from the basics to the advanced concepts.
Thanks for reading this post. Do share your knowledge about these topics and your feedback with me in the comments below!
