Just because you’re a B2B company and most people aren’t inadvertently stumbling – or surfing, rather – to your website, you should not overlook its importance. From its functionality, features and how it’s found online, your website is critically important and is often the first window into your operation that potential new customers will see.

Digital marketing agency DBS Interactive has released the results of its analysis on the performance of company websites in a range of B2B manufacturing-related markets, revealing some alarming statistics. According to the analysis, 60% of websites scored poorly on SEO and accessibility, and only 50% scored in the top tier for Best Practices.

The good news is that about 50 sites achieved perfect scores for the Best Practices or Accessibility categories. A low accessibility score means the business is at risk of a lawsuit based on the Americans With Disabilities Act. A mere 1% of the 200 websites analyzed scored 90 or above for Performance in Google’s Lighthouse evaluation tool. Half of the sites included in the study tested at or below the median score of 41.

These findings impact manufacturers because search giants like Google want their websites to perform well for users. Improving performance to meet best practices makes business sense because high-performance websites offer a better user experience and improve search rankings, leading to increased traffic and lead generation that drive business growth. 

Businesses have traditionally focused on keywords in content when they optimize content for search engine performance, yet often fail to consider the negative impact of poor website performance on their efforts. While a high-quality user experience has always been a best practice, Technical SEO has only become a focus for search engines in recent years. It improves what’s “under the hood” of the website, including URL architecture, servers, content delivery systems, redirects, accessibility, and more.

“A website needs much more than great design. Without Technical SEO, it’s no better than an attractive sports car with a weak motor and shaky transmission,” says Cyndi Masters, president and founder of DBS Interactive. “It may look good, but it will lose to competitors with high-performing race cars.”

B2B businesses have distinct incentives to improve their visibility in search engines. That’s because the majority of B2B customer acquisition begins when qualified prospects search for products or services on Google or another search engine. These prospects most often click only the top three organic links in search results – they rarely click ads.

“Once your site slips to the second page of search results, the click rate to your site falls below 1%,” Masters explains. “There is virtually no benefit to simply being present in search results unless you’re in top positions and featured in snippets on the first page.”

The analysis of the 200 B2B manufacturing websites included companies with revenues from $500,000 to about $5 million, in locations across the US.

“It’s unfortunate so many sites scored so poorly because many were visually appealing,” Masters adds. “They are missing a big opportunity to elevate their brand and have new customers banging down their digital front door. In an uncertain time when manufacturers are faced with shrinking markets, they need every available tool to drive growth and success.”

Impact of Low-Performing Websites

The vast majority of websites for B2B manufacturing companies don’t meet the latest best practice criteria for technical performance and user experience, based on the DBS Interactive study that audited manufacturer websites using Google’s Lighthouse tool. The results of the study indicate the vast majority of manufacturers will struggle to capture greater shares of increasingly shrinking industrial markets with their underperforming websites.

Poor-performing websites negatively impact KPIs for marketing and sales, including:

• Fewer sales leads and lower revenue due to fewer prospects coming to the website organically from search engines.
• Higher bounce rates when new visitors immediately leave the site due to a poor browsing experience.
• Falling search rankings as Google elevates competitors and pushes you down the page below websites it believes are higher quality.
• Loss of traffic when less people see the company in a search as a result of falling rankings.
• Lost opportunities for international engagement and new business when a site runs slow on low-bandwidth networks.
• Poor user experience reflects poorly on the brand and the quality of business offerings.

Findings: Manufacturing Websites Struggle to Perform

The most glaring study discovery showed only 1% (or two of 200 websites) meet the threshold for high performance. When websites for B2B companies underperform, they jeopardize business success beyond SEO, because maintaining the same share of a shrinking audience stunts business growth.

Almost every online and offline marketing tactic relies on a website. Users arriving at a website from social media, email, advertising, media mentions, or a link from a business cart leave quickly if they have to wait for more than one or two seconds.  The analysis shows that 33% of the companies fell into Google’s Mediocre category, indicating the need for improvement. That number fails to tell the story that half of the websites scored below 41, putting them deep in the Poor category.

Sites in the lowest tier have serious shortcomings. “It’s unfortunate for these businesses because many of them invest considerable time and resources into creating content on their website with relevant keywords and expect that to deliver results,” says Masters.

Why Performance Matters

A high-performance website does more than simply improve search positioning. These sites:

• Elevate the brand for all audiences, no matter where they originate or how they discover the website.
• Differentiate your brand from competitors who will struggle to achieve and maintain best practices.
• Provide valuable support and resources to both new and existing customers, all packaged in an engaging and high-quality user experience.

With a better user experience (UX), websites earn higher conversion rates to generate more leads from prospective customers.

For existing customers, the website elevates your brand and customer experiences by enhancing the quality of their service or support.

“Many people have a horror story to tell about the frustration of long hold times for an airline or cable company’s customer service,” Masters says. “Websites can leave visitors feeling the same frustration, tarnishing your brand reputation and removing incentives for them to come back.”

Industrial companies typically do not have the in-house expertise to design, develop and maintain a healthy website that performs up to the highest standards – or they may simply settle for “good enough” because they’re unaware of the lost opportunity.

Kao Collins, a global industrial inkjet ink manufacturer, bucks that trend. The Cincinnati-based B2B company achieves the highest scores on the test. Recent testing showed that the company’s website registered perfect scores for every Lighthouse category.

“We focus on maintaining our website’s high performance because we know how essential it is to our growth. It represents our brand on the world stage and ensures our potential customers have a positive impression of our company the first moment they visit kaocollins.com,” says Kristin Adams, the company’s marketing manager.

Optimizing the site’s technical performance also supports the company’s effort to attract and engage new audiences in locations worldwide where site visitors may have poor network connections.

Other companies in the survey score high in certain categories, yet low in others. In fact, 38 companies scored 100 for Best Practices yet returned Poor scores for other categories. Best Practices measured by the test include having a secure website with an HTTPS domain, ensuring links to external sites are safe, avoiding requests for the user’s location on each webpage, and more.

Understandably, most companies do not have the combination of digital marketing and IT capabilities to devote to a website and maintain it the way crews maintain production by servicing a company’s business equipment.

Accessibility Isn’t a Luxury

Despite notable lawsuits against companies like Domino’s Pizza, Target, and Harvard University, companies have not gotten the memo about the need for building and maintaining a website that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Today that generally means the WCAG 2.1 AA criteria.

Benefits of an accessible website include improved search engine performance, positive brand reputation, faster user experience, improved user pathways, attracts and serves a wider audience, and reduced legal exposure. The analysis shows that over 60% of the websites tested don’t meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines administered by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3). One website ranks poor.

An accessible website offers a superior user experience for everyone, regardless of ability. An older business person may have vision difficulties, and another may have a temporary impairment that makes using a mouse difficult.

The Mobile Experience Matters

Another surprising study finding revealed only one website incorporated Progressive Web App (PWA) technology. Simply put, PWAs are a way of building websites that are faster, more responsive, and capable of performing like an app, yet are still able to be indexed for search and usable as a traditional website.

PWA benefits include fast loading time, the ability to operate on poor networks, small development footprint, integration of app-like features, no app stores or downloads and instant updates.

A company’s lack of a PWA significantly affects the increasing number of smartphone users in their global audiences. Without a PWA, new and prospective customers can’t reliably use a business site that struggles to load on low-performance networks. “Companies expecting to attract new customers in multiple countries should support those goals by insisting on PWA development when planning a website,” Masters says.

Keep your Website Healthy

The poor scores highlighted in the survey represent a great opportunity for businesses to implement performance improvements to their websites. Companies can document the results of the effort with improved search rankings and higher click-through rates.

However, industrial companies are already stretched thin as they face challenges with the supply chain, employee hiring and retention, and inflationary impacts on goods and services. Maintaining a focus on those priorities can justify hiring a multi-disciplined team with the expertise to maintain a high-performance website.

While a company often tracks website performance with Google Lighthouse, Page Speed Insights, Google Trends, etc., most B2Bs need vendors with expertise in the latest SEO trends and all of Google’s tools to improve search rankings, visibility and user experiences.

“The website is the hardest working employee in a manufacturer’s marketing department” Masters adds. “It never sleeps, it answers every question, it connects employees and customers to important resources, and it’s the face of your brand around the world. That’s why you have to keep it healthy.”