In the past, website design was the top priority. Yes, your website should look good, it’s the first impression. Yes, the CMS should work well and conversions should be happening. But most of all, the site should be built for visitors—including humans, bots, and crawlers, if you want to continue to keep up with the competition and have your website show up in search results and AI-generated answers.
If you’re not sure what to prioritize or how your B2B web design agency can assist you, here’s what Marketing Directors we spoke to have been asking for help with:
1. Website Architecture
Site architecture is a huge player in user navigation and bot crawling. Examine how the site is set up, from the top to the bottom (or from the top nav to a single resource page). Every detail should help users find what they’re looking for.
Creating a clear URL structure provides clarity to crawlers so they can understand each page’s purpose. (Think: “/blog/10-ways-to-boost-GEO” or “/location/chicago” will make things simpler for everyone.) Marketing directors want to ensure their current architecture is working or figure out a way to restructure it for better outcomes for both visibility and onsite engagement.
2. SEO and GEO
Everything used to be SEO (sigh…). But we’re in a new era. And Marketing Directors are asking for all the GEO help they can get. What’s the big difference?
SEO is Search Engine Optimization. It’s about building your site with keywords and helpful content that will trigger a better placement in the search engine results, like Google and Bing
GEO is Generative Engine Optimization. Similar to SEO, you’re creating a site design with helpful content, and making your site more visible to and easier to crawl for AI bots to grab pieces of information for platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI-generative engine platforms.
If your marketing team is already on track with producing content, a pivot towards GEO could be a huge opportunity, especially with an agency supporting you. Many agencies are already testing and implementing different AI-optimized strategies and have seen what will actually work—ask your agency for help here! Take your current content strategy one step forward towards GEO.
3. UX Design
User journeys should be built for website visitors who are information seekers (think ChatGPT queries) as well as visitors who will convert. But again, you need to set your site up for users and bots to crawl your site.
Good UX doesn’t happen by accident. It’s designed that way. Guide users on an intentional journey so they can find what they’re looking for, and if they’re human, they may “short list” you for business solutions later down the road.
In working with an agency, your designer or your design team can grow and learn new ways to improve the site—to look good and work well. Ideal CTA placement, appealing imagery, carefully chosen fonts and clear content hierarchy all function to make your website design a huge marketing asset.
4. A Marketing-Friendly CMS
One of the biggest pain points we hear from Marketing Directors who come to us for our B2B website design services is: “My website is hard to update.”
Let’s move on from non-intuitive, custom-made sites that require IT knowledge, and sites built on completely outdated and clunky CMS. We sincerely believe that marketing teams should own the brand’s website fully (without IT’s help/hindrance), and be able to update it easily.
We prefer to use Wordpress with Elementor because it’s easy for marketing teams to update content, whether images or copy. Whatever CMS you use, make sure it’s user-friendly for your internal team.
5. Tracking, Measuring and Reporting
Marketing teams are often strapped for time and constrained by size or budget. Plus, not all marketing teams are strong at data tracking. No matter what your KPIs or goals are, it’s always good to step back and see what other marketing teams are measuring and how they’re making data-driven decisions.
Marketing Directors often want help with tracking so they can make the next right choice and prioritize high-impact to-dos. Enter: a digital marketing agency or a design agency. The data being used and the reports being pulled will help the marketing team with decisions. Agencies can also give recommendations around which datasets can help with better outcomes for your specific goals.
6. Updated Branding and Messaging
This is a great place for an agency to help. Whether you’re adding a new subbrand to your family of brands, or need to reposition or refresh your brand to reach a new audience, getting your branding back on track and your messaging on-brand is a big lift.
Web design and branding often go hand-in-hand. Branding work can be done in-house, but finding an agency to help with branding and web design may be more realistic and will certainly be more time-efficient. (We know: Working on your own brand often ends up at the bottom of an already very long to-do list.)
Agencies can help with the best recommendations so you don’t have to undo steps you’ve already taken, and your team can focus on other major marketing tasks.
7. Digital Marketing Support
We’re not necessarily talking about moral support, but that could be part of the equation. Your agency should be able to help out, and answer any questions you have. Another plus: using an agency to act as “coach” helps the marketing manager avoid micro-managing.
For our one-on-one Digital Growth sessions at Solid Digital, for example, we provide data-rich information, guide the strategy, and encourage consistent content with regular check-ins.
An agency can both answer quick “how-to” questions, but also provide strategic support, solving challenges that are blocking your marketing success. For example, if you’re finding the website isn’t getting the qualified leads you were hoping for, your agency can look into the data to find the missing piece and make recommendations to help improve your conversion rate.
In an ideal world, the same agency that completed your branding should assist with your updates, tracking, and marketing—since they know as much about your brand as you do (or maybe more.)
8. Security and Performance Updates
The best security is the kind you don’t have to think about. Using your agency’s developers to manage your site’s security and protection against cybercrime can help your whole marketing team have peace of mind.
In addition to security, it’s vital to ensure the site is consistently updated—both plugins and CMS. If no one is responsible, the site is more vulnerable to ever-increasing cybercrime, and/or the site may be broken after only a few months of deferred updates. Bring your agency in on these updates so, again, your marketing team can tackle other things on the list.
The best B2B web design agency services boil down to being an excellent partner and a good culture fit for your company. Marketing directors are tasked with maintaining the martech stack, managing resources, and putting focus on what’s in front of them. When you determine what the things you most need help with are, ensure your partnering agency can assist with those priorities.
