Looking for examples of well-designed B2B websites? Here are 10 examples of beautifully designed B2B websites that use the latest best practices in UI web design – from stunning parallax scrolling techniques to responsive design. These B2B website examples are not your typical stodgy business websites. They’re beautiful, engaging, and are fully optimized for the devices they are displayed on, from a 25-inch high-resolution display to an iPhone.
Here’s the key criteria we used this year to determine who made the cut for the 2014 Top 10 B2B Website list:
Since the major shift towards parallax and responsive design in 2013 for B2B websites, this year’s picks are clustered in the innovative software and startup space as opposed to the Fortune1000 companies who made last year’s list.
Our B2B website evaluation starts with visual design. The design of the B2B website should focus on simplicity and have a clear layout with flat design – no drop shadows, bevels, textures, or gradients that create a 3D look. Next is leveraging the latest parallax design techniques. Out with boring 960-grid interfaces and in with scrolling parallax layouts that are responsive. The old cardinal rule, “It has to be above the fold!” is dead. Parallax killed it. Today, people are viewing your B2B website on iPads and tablets, where scrolling is the norm and not the exception. Smart designers take advantage of these new user behaviors and design the B2B website to leverage strong visuals to quickly communicate ideas and messages.
Next is user experience. The site should be designed to engage the visitor and tell the story behind your brand. Visitors should want to explore and click on user interface elements. Most importantly, it should be easy for visitors to interact with your website and find the content they are looking for.
Usability is our third criteria. A B2B website should be easy to use. Sounds obvious, right? With a well-conceived information architecture, visitors should be able to easily find the information they are looking for – fast. For ecommerce sites, buying a product should be a simple and painless process, not a gauntlet of pages and forms that interfere with the sale.
The best B2B websites in 2014 have an effective content strategy. The content is well written, is organized and structured to engage the visitor, and is optimized for search engines. The content is readable, understandable, findable (SEO), actionable, and shareable in all of its various formats. The writing style is concise and uses the journalistic inverted pyramid structure to place the most important information at the top of the content. B2B websites with a truly effective content strategy draw the visitor deep into the website and engage the visitor.
Responsive web design is not optional – it's a requirement. If you build a B2B website in 2014, your website’s content must be easily viewable on a smartphone or tablet. The current best practice in B2B website design today is responsive web design. Responsive web design is a method of designing and building websites that automatically formats the content to look good on tablets, smart phones, and desktops: in essence, doing away with the need to build expensive custom applications to target each mobile device platform.
Thinking about a website redesign for your company? Now's the time to closely examine what these leading-edge B2B websites are doing right. Whether you are a small business or a large multinational, in this list are important nuggets of information that will help you create a world-class, responsive B2B website that truly sets you apart from the competition.
All the sites on the Top 10 B2B Website list exceed the most important criteria for cutting-edge B2B websites: parallax design that is fully responsive and mobile friendly, and strong IA. Take a look, and see where they set the new bar for B2B website design.
Quid is a software company that produces data visualization tools. We especially like the vertical navigation/pager, hover effects, animation, and bold high-contrast visuals.
Lithium is a software company that makes a social software platform that helps companies respond on social networks. Outstanding art direction and information arhitecture. There's a lot of content on the site and Lithium does a great job of organizing it in an easy-to-navigate manner.
Metamarkets is a real-time analytics platform for the digital advertising space. We like the use of white space and their responsive design treatment for screen resolutions under 760 pixels in width. Blog layout: A+.
Good Data is a software company that provides an open analytics platform. We enjoyed the bold art direction, visuals, and use of employee photographs on the site (which is often very hard to pull off sucessfully).
RelateIQ is a business intelligence software platform. We were intrigued by the really clear layout of the RelateIQ site and the exquisite typography. They hit it out of the park with their color choices.
Living Word is a language translation service based in the UK. We enjoyed the bold use of color and the vertical pager on the home page – quite brilliant.
Frontleaf is a software company that helps businesses drive higher customer lifetime value by generating actionable insights from product usage and other indicators of customer health. We found the art direction, layout, and extra effort they put into the responsive layout compelling. We also like the blog layout. Nice job.
Tap Influence is a social content delivery platform used by marketers. Sophisticated color palette and overall design. We especially like the strong bold visuals.
Asana is a web and mobile application designed to help teams improve communication, organization and collaboration. First-class art direction, choice of photos, and information architecture. The focus on driving free trials of the software is very engaging.
Zenpayroll is a cloud-based payroll processing platform. Kudos for the excellent layout and design and especially the use of icons and video to tell their story and make it more visually interesting.
We hope you will find these beautiful B2B website examples as inspiring and thought provoking as we have.