Website usability
-
We have just re-launched one of our websites, but we are looking at ideas to create it more usable. The website is aimed at engineers and aimed at getting more inquiries for the products with high value - and create more sales for products with a relatively low value.
In terms of the design of the site, this is something we are open to, we also know the page speed is not the greatest and we are looking at improving this in the meantime.
Any suggestions for usability and SEO would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers
-
Yeah pricing customised things is difficult. I tell my patients getting a smile makeover is like buying a car. And they say 'what sort of car' and I say - 'well you've just answered the price question - it's up to you not me'
Remember manuals and technical content will be duplicated from the manufacturers sites so will harm not help. Also can you get links from the manufacturers like in their 'find a supplier' pages.
Also find everyone in the office with a degree and get them to join their university alumni and write a piece about your company and how they've done well in their careers. Universities will publish these in their blogs and blast your DA into outer space.
-
Ha - I'm quite new to Derby personally actually but im sure some of the team would of been there!!!
The design notes are very valid, the initial design was a lot cleaner, very similar to the JCB site in actual fact, however, I was asked to revise and got a result others liked but I personally wasn't quite happy with. This is something I will re-visit and discuss with the team.
In terms of content, I am looking at ways of creating more dynamic information, the imagery too will be updated, I was not a fan of the product range on the home page due to duplicate images - but they are our best sellers so I am required to display these prominently - I was thinking of tweaking with the image angle and backgrounds on these (scenic shots in the peak district). The resource section is quite thin, just comprised of manuals and guides, I will be looking at creating some videos for product range intros and pump maintenance.
With buyer profile, it is a mix, more recently we have noticed procurement people, more than engineers, and these tend to be all about the pricing - and with pricing, we are only allowed to discount to a certain level online, so the inquiries are crucial to conversion. To help inquiries I have included the chat feature and it has increased the number of inquiries, and our customer service levels have been greatly appreciated by clients and led to repeat orders, but I still feel we could do more.
Cheers
Rob
-
Another thought - you've got a bunch of engineers. So you have all the knowledge you need here. You need to start getting them to write about the products on your blog. Why they're good. Or great even. I can make dental implantology sound exciting. We're drilling holes 1/14 inches from people's cerebellum and they are literally queuing out the door for it. Become authors. You are not just a catalogue of pumps. that's what this website it. It's a catalogue like the argos catalogue. You need to be more than that. Reviews, technology behind the systems, development, challenges etc. These will get people reading. And then buying. Because they'll know you're interested in your products and interested in doing a good job and not just buying something for £900 and selling it for £1,500 - which is what anyone can do.
-
Hey you're from Derby!
We have probably raved together at the mighty Progress back in the day.
OK so this is some complicated stuff. But do not despair. You need to think about who is going to be buying your complicated stuff. Is it procurement people on instruction from engineers? Or Engineers? People who just need a pump for something? That's your first job. I know it sounds bone-headed and I hate doing it but put together some of those dumb 'buyer profiles' that they use in retail - with your whole team and a whiteboard. Model your best clients. Ask them why they use you.
Don't be afraid to use complex words for complex people and if it's lay people reading then you're gonna have to dumb it down. There are lots of big images of (quite frankly terrifying-looking) pieces of equipment on there and that might be great or not depending on who's reading and possibly buying. Have you thought of vectors to simplify or possibly videos to just show what they do? Close-ups of shiny things are great and can be shot on a phone.
Although it's B2B you still need to focus on the desired end result and get a little emotional. B2B people are obsessed with features but in reality if I'm buying a pump I still want something - could be the best one, most reliable (so I don't have to keep calling out engineers or being embarrassed by my colleagues) or whatever. Do these people want the cheapest or the most reliable? What does your customer want? Service? you need to find out. But the website looks ok if not a little complex. But it's a complex thing you do. I still think you can better order things though. Think about structuring it in an elegant way and google will reward you for that.
But this site seems (with the greatest respect) a little all over the place. Look at the JCB website (believe they're down the road from you) it's more simple and modern looking and the technology and quality of what they're doing is better reflected in their site.
I used to build rockets and loved really techy sites where I could browse all the parts and o-rings and nozzles and telemetry units and recovery systems and engine grains but I look at those sites now and cringe. And they don't rank anymore either. You need to communicate a desired end result to the consumer whether you're B2B or B2C.
Look how the JCB site is similar to a B2C luxury car site - I believe that's the way things are going. Also update the imagery. Some of the pumps are exactly the same pictures. That's just lazy. Take beautiful close up images of their parts and make videos of them doing what they do. I'll bet some of the stuff you have is really, really cool. So show it off.
That would excite me. And pumps can be exciting - anything can. I'm a freakin' dentist - so I feel your pain - no pun intended.
Good luck - this is pretty non-specific observations but ask away and let's all get it fixed.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Advice on estate agent website SEO next steps
Hi everyone, I have been working on the SEO for this website for a while now and have had a good amount of success increasing the traffic and rankings. However our main hurdle is improving conversions on the actual website - we want to encourage more people to book a valuation. Does anybody have any suggestions on how we can improve this? The website is www.richardkendall.co.uk Thank you
Web Design | | sophiecrosby970 -
How to properly setup a website for the first time
Good morning, I am fairly proficient at SEO and understand a lot of the required elements - but am in no way an expert, which is why I am here now. We are in the process of setting up a brand new website (true PHP -Laravel) This will be for a nationwide website and will need to attract from the north, south, east and west. Although I have no worries about putting my domain out here, the site is not live and I don't want to possibly have a broken link pointing to me before I even launch - so I will give you an example URL and work from there. I will tell you it is a DOT Rentals website and we will call the business Widgets. So the URL is Widgets.Rentals There is no .com, .net - nothing. It is an exact match domain. The site operates as peer to peer - meaning customers will upload their widgets, photos, etc. of their widgets for rent. Now, having said that, let me ask this. If you were setting up this website - how would you recommend we do this right - right from the beginning? Since the customers (not the vendors) will search for widget rentals in a specific location - would you recommend that we maintain Geo Location with Google with a URL like this? Widget.Rentals/Orlando-Florida-beautiful-widgets-for-rent-at-a-great-price Or is it better to not Geo Locate? Widget.Rentals/beautiful-widgets-for-rent-at-a-great-price
Web Design | | Blitzburgh
I have a lot more in regards to setting up the site like Title bars, headers 1, 2, 3 - Alt text images, etc. But for now would appreciate the collective best advice from the group. Mike0 -
Free websites that are good with SEO?
Dear members, I am looking for a free/ almost free website which is good for SEO. For example i am looking at WIX right now but i keeping reading that they aren't optimal for SEO. Does anybody has some tips which website is can use, example weebly, strato, etc?? Many thanks!
Web Design | | rijwielcashencarry0400 -
What are the most common reasons for a website being slow to load
I've been advised that too many requests are being sent (presumably to the server?), how can I reduce these and were else should I look to increase speed?
Web Design | | FBS1 -
Best techniques for trying to rank a single page website?
I am new to SEO and am currently trying to market a single page website. Its proving to be hard. I have managed to get the site to page one for a few keywords and it is improving (upto page 2 for some desired keywords) but it seems to have stuck there for a few weeks now - with no movement. I am able to develop it if required. However I thought that I would just ask if there was anything that could give it a nudge without this? I have done on-site optimisation. As far as I'm aware that's about as good as it can be. So any advice?
Web Design | | Chstphrjohn0 -
Does Google penalize duplicate website design?
Hello, We are very close to launching five new websites, all in the same business sector. Because we would like to keep our brand intact, we are looking to use the same design on all five websites. My question is, will Google penalize the sites if they have the same design? Thank you! Best regards,
Web Design | | Tiberiu
Tiberiu0 -
Website redesign testing environment
An external company is redesigning our website. They have a draft version active in a folder on their website to enable us to view it (example: www.externalcompanywebsite.com/ourwebsite/). There is no permission required to view the website, anyone with the url could just go there. I am not sure if they're using the robots.txt to block crawlers, or if they're blocking specific ip addresses. If the engines are allowed to crawl their website and they index pages of our draft website, does that affect our website negatively in the future once we host it on our domain?
Web Design | | jdossetti0 -
How to work with US Website and UK Website?
We currently have two websites. Our headquarters in the US and our other in the UK. We currently rank very well for both websites in both countries. Currently, US is hosted in the states and the UK is hosted in the UK. I would like to keep it this way. However, I am going to be converting them to a CMS and redsign both of them. We need our main website to have a feature that they can choose which location they prefer. We also offer other locations through the US. Which we would like our customers to know that we have a few different locations. Also, we will be expanding to Austraillia and maybe others as well. We need to make the websites to look almost identical, yet, different in a way that they can tell one is US, one is UK and so on. Some will only have some of our products, so they will be smaller websites. What is the best way to go about doing this? I know some CMS offer a copy feature that allows you to make the same website. However, how can you do this if they need to be hosted in the different countries? Do I need to do them all individually on each of there servers, or can this be done differently? Also, if they are hosted in there own countries, can the content be the same, or is that still considered duplicate content?
Web Design | | hfranz0