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
-
What type of website is best for seo.
I need a new website for my health insurance business. What type is best for SEO? Many thanks
Web Design | | laurentjb0 -
Ability to Transition Completed Wordpress Website to New Coder/Developer
We have worked with the same Wordpress developer since 2012. They recently redesigned our Wordpress site. We purchased a real estate theme and they performed major modifications to it. The project took 8 months. There are many customized widgets and multiple plugins. We hired a new SEO. The SEO is very comfortable coding. The SEO performed certain modifications and the code broke. The original developer stepped in and and helped restore the code. The SEO stated that the site should not be so delicate; that too many plugins and widgets are used making it inherently unstable. The original developer is claiming that the SEO did not follow best practices (they did not use a dev server to test). For a non technical business owner this is very disturbing. We finally agreed that the new SEO would make changes on a dev server and the original developer will check these changes to ensure they do not break the code. My question is, shouldn't a Wordpress site be simple enough to hand over to a decent coder with little risk of breaking the code? Are there any standards regarding the hand over of a site? I am comfortable with my developers, but what if they change professions or close their company? How would I transition the site? There must be standards and protocols that allow a third party, such as an SEO to change code without causing havoc. Any one have some insight?
Web Design | | Kingalan11 -
Is The HREF Link "Title" Tag Needed on Mobile Websites?
Hello To Those Who Are Wiser Than I, I am wondering if the href link "title" tag is needed, or serves any purpose, on mobile websites? Also, does it effect SEO in any way? I ask because generally the href link title tag provides more information to the user when they scroll their mouse over the link - but this action does not happen on mobile! Users have no mouse and thus no extra information would be displayed. I'm really wondering if it still matters for SEO purposes on mobile though. -The UnEnlightened
Web Design | | Stew2220 -
Traffic Dropping To Website
Hi In Google Analytics:
Web Design | | SEOguy1
I have noticed up to 50% of traffic coming to the website drops off at the home page point,
and drops further from other pages on the site. I realise some may possibly say that this could be down to various factors such as server issues, poor web design, or the wrong traffic reaching the site I have did corrected the following: There was an issue with there being www.domain.com and www.domain.com/home, Screaming Frog and Moz showed that these both had duplicate meta tagging issues. Initially I had created a separate page called 'home' to include in the main nav bar under the slider, but yesterday I replaced this page with a request in the functions.php to place 'home' in the nav bar as a redirect back to the home www.domain.com page. This works great. So I now have the following 301 permanent redirects: non-www to www resolve in the htaccess file, plus 2 permanent 301 redirects in the nav bar. I wonder if this is acceptable protocol re the nav bar redirects, and I wonder if you could possibly advise if the actions that I have taken will have any negative impact on the web seo, link structure, crawlability or indexing. Thanks.0 -
Spanish website indexed in English, redirect to spanish or english version if i do a new website design?
Hi MOZ users, i have this problem. We have a website in Spanish Language but Google crawls it on English (it is not important the reasons). We re made the entire website and now we are planning the move. The new website will have different language versions, english, spanish and portuguese. Somebody tells me that we have to redirect the old urls (crawled on english) to the new english versions, not to the spanish (the real language of the firsts). Example: URL1 Language: Spanish - Crawled on English --> redirect to Language English version. the other option will be redirect to the spanish new version, which the visitor is waiting to find. URL1 Language: Spanish - Crawled on English --> redirect to Language Spanish version. What do you think? Which is the better option?
Web Design | | NachoRetta0 -
Do you feel my website looks outdated?
My real estate website is www.RiverValleyGroup.com I'm considering undergoing a new design...bounce rate is somewhat high and I can't decide if the current design looks outdated or not. Thoughts?
Web Design | | gohawks77900 -
Map Search Tools to integrate on Accommodation Website
Hello all, Can any recommend a Map Search tool that i can integrate into my accommodation website. Ideally I want to be able to pin my clients on the map search with links back to their listing page on my website and provide an alternative search facility for clients looking for accommodation. Am covering the South Africa region specifically. Am assuming that i could go down the Google Maps route but would really like to know what alternatives there are on offer. Also what SEO considerations do i need to think about when adding this to my website. Thanks in advance for any help.
Web Design | | SamanthaRiggien0 -
Recommended Website Monitoring Tools
Hi, I was wondering what people would recommend for website monitoring (IE is my website working as it should!). I need something that will:
Web Design | | James77
1/. Allow multiple page monitoring not just homepage
2/. Do header status checking
3/. Do page content checking (ie if the page changes massively, or include the word "error") then we have an issue!
4/. Multiple alert possibilities. We currently use www.websitepulse.com and it is a good service that does all the above, however it just seems so overly complex that its hard to understand what is going on, and its complex functionality and features are really a negative in our case. Thanks0