The Most Important Part of a Website Isn't What You Think

So picture in your mind, a person using their smartphone. Okay. Do you have that image locked in now? Tell me, are they holding their phone like this? Or are they holding it like this?

Of course it's like this. It's not like this it's like this because who actually talks on the phone anymore. The average American in the United States spends 26 minutes per day texting, and just six minutes talking on the phone and it's not just young people. My mother-in-law sends us group texts all the time and she's more fluent in emoji than I am.

So what does this mean for B2B business owners, entrepreneurs and managers? Well, it means a lot of things, but we're gonna talk about one important one and I'm also gonna show you an easy and free test to make sure that you're not missing out on new customers that are ready to buy what you're selling.

1985 Calls 2022. It isn't pretty.

Hey, I'm Jake, by the way, my team and I do revenue operations and B2B marketing strategy. You can find me at bridgerev.com/jake.

Anyway, when you need to buy a new product or service for your company, something big and relatively expensive, and you have questions. What do you do first? I mean, do you call up a company? Well, of course not because we already established that hardly anyone makes phone calls like that.

You get on your smartphone or your computer and you Google it. I mean, most people would rather spend 30 minutes looking online for an answer to their question rather than making a two-minute phone call.

I mean, I do, but before the world wide web, that's what we had to do. We picked up the phone, and we actually talked to someone with the phone up to our ear, like this, assuming that there was good cell coverage, of course.

So one day recently I found myself in a creative and expansive mindset. I was thinking about things differently. And I thought about how say back in 1985, we had to call a salesperson to learn about a company's products and services before buying. But now we can just Google it and usually find all the information that we need. So this idea that I had this interesting expansive idea is what would it sound like if somebody from 1985 called a website in 2022, like what if 1985 phone call was made to 2022 website.

1985 Jake: Hello, this is like 1985 calling. I need to talk to a salesperson. I've got some questions. 

2022 Website: Oh, great. Thanks for reaching out to us. Here's some information about our company history, 

1985 Jake: Whatever. Maybe later I just need to talk to a salesperson. 

2022 Website: Oh, okay. Of course. Well, here's our blog. 

1985 Jake: Your blog? Are you a space cadet or something? 

2022 Website: I don't understand what you're asking for. I'm sorry. Are you asking for our privacy policy? 

1985 Jake: No. I just need to talk to a salesperson. This is so bogus. 

2022 Website: Sorry for the misunderstanding. I can only imagine the level of frustration that you're feeling right now. Let me see if this helps. Would you like to read the biographies of our management team? Oh, sorry. First you need to accept our cookie policy 

1985 Jake: Cookie policy?

Kind of frustrating. Right? Well, that's what it feels like as a user on some poorly designed websites. And if you have a site like that, you might be missing out a lot of potential customers because your website isn't giving the most important users on your, your website, what they want.

Who is your most important website user? Those that have forward momentum in the buying process. And they're ready to take action at that moment. They need your help to move forward through their own buyer's journey. You call that a sales funnel. Look, I'm not saying that you shouldn't have company history or a blog. I mean, you should have a blog. A well executed blog is money in the bank, even in 2022. And you have to have a privacy policy and a cookie policy and all that. It's more of a question of emphasis. 

Like what is the most important element of your website? Hey, wait, are you from the future? Is this a back to the future situation? Are you Dr. Brown? And I'm Marty McFly more like bill and Ted.

The most important element on business websites is a way for your most important website. Visitors who are the ones that are ready to take action at that moment, we want to give them a way to do what they want to do, which also meets our business goals. In most B2B situations, we want our users to start the process of doing business with us. It can be request to consultation or ask to talk to someone. We want them to metaphorically, raise their hand and say, yeah, let's get this process started. That is the most important part of your website. And it's called a call to action or CTA. 

And so this is how you do that. You design the website with the assumption that everyone that visits your site is the most important website visitor. They are there because they are ready to do business with you.

Now it's true that only a small fraction of website visitors will actually be ready. But when we design as if they are the number of leads from our website increases because we make the most important element, our call to action. We make that the first thing that the user notices when the page loads, even before they can read the text on the page, simply the design and layout of the page immediately attracts the user's eye. Let me show you what I mean. Show and tell time.

One way that you can verify if the call to action is effectively designed is to remove intelligible text from the page, leaving only the design and layout from which to extract information. 

I like to use Google translate to change the website to a language that I don't understand, essentially removing text that is intelligible to me. I usually use Polish. Now, I don't speak Polish. So just go to translate.google.com.

Change the source language to whatever language you're translating from. Change the target language to something like Polish or other language that uses the Latin alphabet. Assuming that your source language like English also uses the Latin alphabet copy and paste the URL to the page that you want to check, click on it in the target language box and voila. You have a translated page.

How does it do that? The future is so rad.

So is it obvious what the next step is? Is it clear what we're supposed to do to me? It is, it seems like it's probably one of those two little orange buttons, but let's find out. 

Let's see. Yep. Those are our two main calls to action. Send me a message and book a consultation with, with me or my team.

Okay. Let's try another. Okay. On this one, it looks like there's a pretty good CTA. Would you agree with me this one, one again, let me know in the comments. Well, let's see what that button does. We're gonna UN translate. Ah, look that says get more information. Is that what our most important users want to do? Probably not. I change that out for a button that says something like get started and provide a simple contact form.

Okay, last one. Here we go. Do you see something that is obviously the next step? I don't. Okay. It looks like this contact button all the way here in the corner, hidden and blending in with everything else would be what our most important users are looking for. They're going to be a lot less likely to click and become a lead if the call to action is buried like that.

Try it for yourself on your own website. If it's not obvious to you immediately, what the user is supposed to do, then fix that if it is obvious, but the call to action leads to something other than what your most valuable visitors are looking for, then change it to that. Hey, do you have any advice for me? Futureman find a broker and buy as much stock as you can in a company called apple computers. Hey, if you've made it this far, please hit the like button subscribe share. Hit me up at bridgerev.com/jake. That's my primary call to action. And thanks for visiting. 

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