A crucial part of any successful website design is not only catching the attention of a target market but keeping that attention. Oftentimes, UX experts will achieve attention retention through eye-catching animations, clean layouts, and intentional content strategy. But in some industries where flashy design and lifestyle imagery isn’t relevant, this can be an intimidating challenge. As a B2B technology marketing agency, Bluetext has done a deep dive into some key elements to help give your B2B website the winning edge. 

The Difference Between B2B and B2C Websites

When it comes to designing a website for a B2B versus a B2C audience, the design landscape and tone change in response to respective target audiences. Consumers are often online to fulfill an emotional need, such as instant satisfaction from a purchase. The B2B audience, however, tends to take more time examining all the information about the product before making a decision. Why is this important? Understanding the audience’s motivations is the first step to giving your B2B tech website a leg up in UX design. 

Now that we have covered audience motivation, let’s discuss how this translates into web design. In a broad sense, UX experts recommend the key aspects of technology website should be: simple navigation, concise language, and responsive web design. In the market of technology, it is also important to emphasize successful security checks throughout the design of the site. Those are the core ingredients one would expect every website to contain, but below we explore three best practices to help B2B websites stand out against the pack.

Rely on Content 

UX experts first and foremost rely on content. As we mentioned earlier, B2B audiences often have much higher stakes in their purchasing decision. Yes, it may be a sole individual making the decision but they are often selecting a product or solution that will impact many people and departments across their company. Therefore, the B2B target audience likes to know everything about the product before making their long-term purchase decision. A tech website design must accommodate large amounts of text to describe each product. Keeping this in mind, UX designers can implement specific modules for a site that best present large amounts of content in digestible chunks. 

B2B tech websites’ extensive amount of content must also convey a professional tone. Most B2B site visitors are informed to some extent about the product or solution they are seeking. If a company cannot clearly explain its product in a professional and concise way, it will drive away sales. There is nothing more professionally relatable than a crunch for time, so a site should respect the user’s busy schedule and likely short-lived attention span for acquiring key details. Another common mistake for tech companies is not clearly explaining company messaging and why they stand out against their competitors at the forefront of their website. Upon first landing, a user should be able to tell what your company does, and why they should pay attention to it. The Bluetext messaging team uses a highly thought out process to make sure the tone of a brand addresses all competitors in the marketplace and stakeholders within a company.

Clear Call-to-Action 

In the same vein of time awareness, B2B web designs must have a clear call to action. If you happen to capture a user’s attention enough to generate genuine interest, there needs to be a frictionless and obvious way for them to find and take the next step. Research has shown that a B2B audience is more likely to call to purchase a product than purchase online. Therefore, a website should address this pain point with live chat solutions, well-integrated contact forms, customer care information, telephone numbers, and more. 

 

High-quality video and images

Along with the expectation of a professional tone comes a professional look. The first step is implementing high-quality videos and images onto the new site. Strong visual content can help break up the large blocks of content and avoid the risk of eye fatigue when scanning and reading lengthy text blocks. Videos are a useful and engaging way to provide a clear explanation of what the product can achieve. Coupling visual and audio elements increase the memorability of your brand and capture attention for much longer. Videos can also give a closer look at the company’s values as a whole. The Bluetext video team uses a strong brand voice, innovative animations, and professional editing to create persuasive and informative content for their clients.

Mobile Friendly 

If you’re selling tech, you have to show you are tech-savvy and keeping up with the times. This should be a no-brainer, but too many technology websites across the web don’t take advantage of responsive design practices to ensure equitable desktop and mobile experiences. Bluetext implements this with well-thought-out wireframes addressing all content needs. One of the ways to best implement a strong user experience is keeping in mind the significance of a mobile-friendly design. With mobile traffic driving up to 40% of revenue, this design compatibility should never be ignored. 

B2B differs from B2C in terms of their audience needs, wants, and decision-making processes. While some core differences set these types of websites apart, an informed UX and content strategy that matches audience needs is crucial to both. Consult a website design and UX agency like Bluetext so you can be sure that your website addresses the needs of your target audience, and formats content and visual components to convey a professional and interesting tone. Contact Bluetext to learn more about our services and how we can address all of your content and website design needs. 

Video marketing can be a vital tool when it comes to leveling up your marketing program. Video, as a medium, is an exceptional opportunity to tell your brand’s story and mission using dramatic visuals, voiceover, and music. Video allows you to inject emotion and feeling into your content, something that written mediums like blog posts and product pages just can’t compete with. As some may say, the medium is the message. To humanize your brand and create a memorable connection, audiovisual content can build that bridge. Additionally, the ease with which you can upload your video content to a variety of social media platforms allows you to share your story with as many potential customers and reach as wide an audience as possible. 

Below, we dive deep into the five reasons you need to use video in your marketing strategy and why partnering with a video design and production firm like Bluetext is the right choice for you. 

1. Authentic Video Builds Trust

Perhaps most importantly, video content helps build trust between you and the prospective buyer. Trust is the foundation that drives conversions and overall sales. 57% of consumers say that videos give them more confidence to purchase online. With a great voiceover and a moving music track, videos can provoke a very emotive, and therefore, human response, more impactful than any generic landing page. Having your team on camera explaining your product or service is also a great way to provide prospective customers with a sense of your company culture and why they should work with you. Additionally, video content filmed and edited the right way evokes authenticity and transparency, both key points when aiming to build trust. 

Through our work with Invictus, we produced a video around the story of their unique, military family-oriented mission that resonated with their prospective customers.

2. Explain Difficult Concepts With Ease

We live in a fast-paced visual-based world, where users are less likely to read through a product description and more likely to prefer an infographic or video that explains the solution succinctly. Technology has made us all accustomed to immediate satisfaction in finding the answers we seek. And if users don’t find the information they’re looking for, they lose interest or look elsewhere. Video content reduces the overall effort it takes to learn something new, especially when it may be a difficult concept to understand. If you’re launching a new product or service, explaining its features and advantages will be easier through video than a product landing page. The way the human brain processes information varies by individual, some are more visual learners, some auditory, and even some kinetic. If you don’t have the words to explain your product, the use of animation can help bring any concept to life. An audiovisual medium allows you to effectively reach a wider audience. The quicker someone can understand your product, the quicker the conversion from prospect to a customer will be. 

Through our work with IoT cybersecurity company, Phosphorus, we told the story of their mission and the power of their groundbreaking platform.

3. Google Loves Video Content

There are a variety of reasons Google loves video. Perhaps most importantly, Google places great value in the length of time a user spends on your webpage. If your video content is enticing enough for the user to watch it all the way through, they’re more likely to spend more time watching a video on your site than reading through a lengthy landing page. Additionally, as we know, including keywords in your written content is important in any SEO strategy and helps improve your search rankings. Using the latest Video Intelligence API, Google can catalog the relevant keywords in your videos and increase your ranking in search engine results. Relevant keywords in your video and written content packs the maximum SEO punch into your webpage. Another great reason video content is a great SEO value is as video content can be adjusted to multiple screen sizes, Google ranks this content very high in search results.

4. Mobile Users Benefit

In the world we live in, everyone is glued to their smartphones throughout the day, watching, liking, and sharing content. According to a recent study, 90% of users actually watch videos on their smartphones rather than on computers or televisions. The ready availability of so much video content on smartphones is driving this statistic and will only grow as more and more content is produced. So what does this mean for you? Increasing the amount of video you put into the market will only increase the engagement with your content from prospective customers. Well-produced, informative content will be more likely shared and will lead to increased sales.

5. The Competitive Advantage

Stay one step ahead of the competition by producing video content. A lot of companies are still of the mindset that video content is way too expensive; and sure, some very well-produced content can get expensive when you’re factoring in custom shoots, actors, and multiple 8K cameras. That being said, video content doesn’t have to be expensive. With the right story and a camera as readily available as the one on your smartphone, you can create perfect video content that will resonate with your target audience and lead to many conversions. Being smart with your resources (financial & human) can result in an impressive video that no one would know was built on a budget.

Videos can play a massive role at every stage of the marketing funnel. That being said, creating high-performing video content takes time and effort. Ensure you have the right video content strategy from the get-go and that you maximize authenticity, creativity, and uniqueness. Need support putting together your video content strategy? Contact Bluetext today.

When you think of your business’ data, what is the first thing that pops into your head? Graphs, charts, and databases? Spreadsheets filled with row upon row of figures waiting to be put to use? While all of these things are important to your business’ data structure, they’re only individual parts of an extensive data ecosystem, an understanding of which is critical. Data ecosystems provide companies with reliable data to understand their customers and to make better pricing, operations, and marketing decisions.

What is a Data Ecosystem?

A data ecosystem is defined as a collection of infrastructure, analytics, and applications used to capture and analyze data. These applications collect and filter information for businesses to better understand their users, website visitors, and audience members. The term “ecosystem” is used because data ecosystems are dynamic and expected to constantly evolve to accommodate the changing needs of your organization.

At their core, data ecosystems are used to capture data and produce meaningful insights. As customers use products, especially digital ones, they leave behind data trails. By creating a data ecosystem, companies can catalog and analyze data trails so product teams can better understand user preferences. The best data ecosystems are constructed around a product analytics platform that enables teams to integrate multiple data sources, provide machine learning tools for automation improvements, and track user cohorts to simplify calculating performance metrics. Additional applications that analytics platforms empower include increasing user engagement, increasing user retention, and conversion tracking and marketing funnels.

Creating a Data Ecosystem

The three essential elements of a data ecosystem are infrastructure, analytics, and applications. Infrastructure can be thought of as the foundation on which everything else is built. It’s the hardware and software that capture, collect, and organize data, including servers for data storage, search languages like SQL, and hosting platforms. Analytics serves as the entryway that teams use to access their data ecosystem. Analytics platforms sift through and summarize the data within the infrastructure, so all data is visualized in a centralized place. At this level, an organization can segment users and measure them with marketing funnels, identify the traits of ideal buyers, or automatically send in-app messages to users who are at-risk for churn. Finally, applications are the individual components of the ecosystem, the services, and systems that act upon data and make it usable. At this level, users can work with their analytics data to drive critical outcomes across the organization, like a marketing team drumming up leads based on activity or a sales team tracking key user engagement. Finally, applications are the individual components of the ecosystem, the services and systems that act upon data and make it usable.

Optimizing Your Data Ecosystem

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to optimizing your business’ data ecosystem. There are, however, two concepts you can keep in mind as you work towards the right fit; democratizing your data science and establishing strong data governance. A key benefit of good data management is that everyone has the ability to access reports and insights. By democratizing your data and purchasing a large number of licenses for your analytics software, rather than restricting access to only a few employees, you can prevent bottlenecks in the flow of information and promote a frictionless exchange of information. That’s not to say that you should leave everything unbound, however. Setting rules and boundaries for employees about collecting, protecting, and accessing data is essential for shielding your company from liability and complying with federal laws about privacy protection. A marketing analytics agency, such as Bluetext can assist with prescribing the right data ecosystem tailored to your organization’s needs. 

 

Impactful Outcomes of a Data Ecosystem

For an organization to remain competitive in any industry, they have to have a comprehensive understanding of their data. Understanding your company’s data ecosystem is the first step towards segmenting your user base, learning who they are, and revealing how they interact with your business. Informed decision-making at every level of an organization stems from understanding and engaging with its data ecosystem.

It’s no secret the digital marketing industry depends upon and craves data. Any piece of information gathered about a user can be used to strengthen your lead generation, campaign or website strategy. While every digital marketer is hungry for data, there is no value without context and robust understanding. Marketing analytics can and should be used to inform, as well as validate any digital strategy.

Contact Bluetext if you’re interested in turning analytics into action.

20 times a day — that’s how often people on average check their email. Sounds like a lot, but in reality emailing has become so ingrained in our everyday routines. Whether email is the first thing you check when you wake up, in line at the coffee shop, or multiple times during the workday it is a key aspect of our personal and professional lives. Hence, the importance of email marketing. Seems like a no-brainer–sales and marketing outreach is a natural fit for email inboxes. So why are your email performance metrics dwindling?

The prevalence of emails is a double-edged sword. Yes, email is an undeniably popular form of communication. However, this means inboxes are being constantly flooded. On average people receive 121 emails a day. This heightens the challenge of effective email marketing but does not dilute the significance of email marketing. It’s the most popular channel for business communications and the reliable channel for nurturing and converting leads to sales throughout the funnel. Many It is a tricky, but highly rewarding digital marketing platform. The nuances of email marketing and widespread frustration with stagnant performance metrics have led Bluetext to identify the 5 most common email marketing mistakes and how to improve your email performance metrics. 

1. Subject Line Skepticism

One of the most challenging aspects of email marketing is the subject line — this is the hook that entices a user to either open your message, or ignore it entirely. When your inbox is being constantly flooded with marketing emails it can become second nature to simply ignore or mark a promotional email as spam. However, a strong and attention-grabbing subject line can dissuade a user from these practices and pay attention to your messages. Below are some of the most common subject line faux pas:

1. Too wordy – your subject lines need to be short, sweet, and pack a punch. Think about all the words on your average inbox interface, there’s a lot! In a 5 second scan, your subject line should jump out with concentrated keywords. The highest open rates occur with subject lines 6-10 words in length. This keeps the full message readable in the line item without truncating with those dreaded …  A subject line doesn’t need to contain entire sentences, or detail every piece of content inside. Instead, try a catchy phrase or question to spark curiosity, which instantly drives engagement.
2. SPAM Red Flags – subject lines written in all caps immediately sound the alert for SPAM filters – both by the reader and email system! 
3. Pre-Header Connection – subject line and pre-header text are two key elements of any email that when used effectively form a dynamic duo. Both are prime opportunities to capture attention and prompt an open, thus need to complement one another. Strive for subject lines that briefly describe what the message is about, and a pre-header provides important context.  Together they form a cohesive narrative that gives a sneak peek, driving the reader’s engagement.

2. Forgetting the Filters:

Keep in mind the success of your email marketing campaign hinges on two parties: the recipient and their email provider’s SPAM filters. More often than not marketers concentrate on the human reader and forego considerations of the automated filter system. To avoid getting trafficked to SPAM folders, watch out for the use of these warning signals: clickbait phrases, all caps, overuse of “you” and “I” pronouns, and listicles.  Email providers most commonly scan content on the following levels:

1. Header filters – look for spam indicators in email subject lines and pre-headers (for example clickbait phrases, all caps)
2. Content filters – crawl the content of the email to find spam indicators
3. General backlist filters – use the database of spammers to determine if the email is clickbait
4. Permission filters – ask the reader for confirmation before opening the email

3. Over Genercism:

Personalization is key and leads to 25% higher open rates. In any aspect of digital marketing, it’s important to recognize basic human psychology: people want to feel special. Whether that’s by seeing their pain points addressed, persona-based navigation, or even as basic as being addressed by name.  Personalizing emails with first and last names is a simple, but effective way to grab the reader’s attention and qualm the suspicion of copy-and-paste clickbait. Additionally, the overuse of first-person pronouns is a trigger for SPAM filters. Consider adding their name to a subject line (ex. John, your system needs updates” or at the least beginning the body copy with a personalized greeting “Hi John Doe,”. With this approach, your email immediately feels like a one-to-one conversation and less of a robotic one-to-many outreach. 

4. Unclear Call-to-Action: 

Let’s backtrack: the goal of your email is to guide your subscribers from opening an email to going to a landing page where they can learn more information about a promotion, request a demo, or contact you. Your email marketing strategy is aimed at turning leads into prospects, and eventually customers. Getting users to open your email is half the battle, the other half is guiding them to conversion. Don’t make a reader dig through email content to find the end goal. Add a CTA or landing page link to the beginning and end of an email body, in the event that the user does not read the entire message. A CTA stands for “calls to action” for a reason — they should be action-orientated and exciting! Experiment with different language that goes beyond the boring “Learn More” to inspire clicks. Perhaps try a stylized button to really catch the eye.  The most important aspect is to be cautious of burying your CTA, if it can’t be found in a 5-10 second scan chances are your reader will give up and forgo the opportunity. 

5. Ignoring the Technicalities:

Before getting into all the bells and whistles of your content strategy, set yourself up for success with a strong foundation. Deliverability of your emails is crucial to getting your foot in the door with your messages. About 10% of emails never even reach inboxes due to bounces, SPAM filters, or other technical issues. Most email service providers (ex. Marketo, Pardot, HubSpot) systems have built-in functions to assist with technical evaluation of domain authority, IP reputation, and email testing before you hit send. On a regular basis, you should be checking the health of your email systems, removing inactive subscribers, and analyzing important deliverability & bounce metrics.  

As you can see there’s a lot to consider within your email marketing strategy. It’s a tricky path to navigate, but when done right, is a powerful digital marketing tool. 

Need to uplevel your email marketing strategy? Contact Bluetext to learn more about our services.

When it comes to marketing, knowing your customer and their needs is crucial. To truly make an impact, ads need to be not only well-targeted but more importantly, meaningfully tailored to address specific customer needs at the right place and at the right time in their decision-making process. Effective advertising involves a keen awareness of the conversion funnel and customer considerations at every stage. 

Ads have to first grab the attention of the target audience, but also communicate the customer value that the product or service delivers. The most impactful ads go beyond just stating customer benefits – they forge a connection between the customer and the brand that continues throughout the customer journey. Ideally, the ad captures enough attention to generate interest and sustains that interest to create longer-term loyalty. Meeting customers at the correct place and time while simultaneously delivering a meaningful and resonant message is a delicate balance. These nuances have propelled dynamic advertising automation to the forefront of advertising strategies across industries.

Anyone who regularly browses the internet is presumably familiar with personalized advertising. For example, if you decide to browse online for a new pair of sneakers, you likely are going to see ads for sneaker brands populating your browser soon after — it’s not a coincidence! Using automation to create “meaningful” ads goes a step beyond this kind of personalization. It culminates in advertising that acknowledges underlying customer values. For example, the sneaker ad and messaging might change based on whether the customer values a long-lasting and practical shoe or a sleek and fashionable one. How do we know these preferences? Well, maybe this customer has previously searched “highest rated sneakers” or “durable running sneakers”. This action signifies a preference for practicality, as opposed to a “sneaker trends 2021” search. 

The automation of meaningful ads synthesizes customer behavior, customer preferences, and personal values to deliver a more effective and less bothersome version of the digital ads we’ve grown accustomed to seeing and often ignore. Advertising automation creates an experience that is helpful as well as enjoyable for the customer.

Conceptually, meaningful ads should be the answer many brands are looking for when trying to connect to their target customer, however, does it work in practice? According to this study, the implementation of meaningful ads caused purchase intent to increase by 15% and click-through rates to increase by 30%. So, not only does meaningful advertising forge stronger brand connections, it also yields tangible and quantifiable results. The same study also found that less than 6% of users had a negative reaction to the level of personalization used in these meaningful ads. This tells us that so long as the ad facilitates a helpful and positive brand experience, the customer will be happy to see their preferences reflected in your ads.

While this data is based on B2C customer behavior, the same mentality can and should be applied when considering B2B ad campaigns. In all cases, ads are speaking to human beings with the capacity to form emotional connections to brands, and the automation of meaningful ads allows that crucial process to occur at scale. All of these insights reinforce one consequential truth – knowing your customer, their needs, their values, and why that matters at each stage of the customer journey is the most important piece of the advertising puzzle. Automating meaningful ads puts that concept into practice and the results will speak for themselves. 

Ready for quantifiable advertising success? The first step is analyzing your user personas and unique needs. A marketing analytics agency can help you identify these groups, and find critical insights into their online behaviors. A digital agency can then help turn those insights into actions, and place targeted advertisements that yield conversions. 

Contact Bluetext if you’re interested in maximizing your advertising dollars towards real success.

We’re now more than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic and admit it: you miss in-person conferences and events. At least a little. While segments of the country are inching back toward some sense of normalcy, it will be a while before thousands of people are gathered in convention centers and hotel conference centers again. 

This continues to pose a challenge for traditionally face-to-face organizations that need to reach business, government, and consumer technology decision-makers. Additionally, it’s why many have been evaluating and participating in virtual technology conferences and events, or even shifting their own user conferences and events from in-person to virtual. 

As your organization maps out its 2021 in-person, hybrid, and virtual event strategy, there are several considerations when it comes to investing time, money, and resources. 

Is This Their First Rodeo?

Technology providers must determine if the event organizer has hosted virtual events in the past. If they are familiar with the virtual event landscape, it is important to determine what attendance and sponsorship looked like at the previous event and if the speaker lineup has been credible and on target. Determining past event involvement can also help speakers form expectations about participation levels. An experienced virtual event host suggests a deeper attendee pool and gives companies a glimpse at the event at hand by looking at past hosted events.

Pay to Play?

It is important for organizations to evaluate investment in sponsored speaking opportunities or sponsorships overall. Speaking engagements provide companies with a hard-to-come-by platform depending on attendance. Speaking slots with no fee associated can be competitive when you’re submitting with a pool of people to a program with strict standards. Sponsored sessions, on the other hand, are easier to get if you’re willing to pay for it, and give speakers more leeway on what they cover. Because of this, organizations should consider how the event host will drive attendance, especially now that travel doesn’t pose an issue, and how the conference content will be made available to optimize virtual viewership.

Try Not ‘Playing to Play’

When looking for opportunities, there are a few key things to consider before nominating a subject matter expert for speaking roles. Various event organizers offer calls for speakers when looking for guests to participate in panels at conferences. The submission form may offer a broad nomination for a general conference or may offer categories in which specific topics will be discussed. Categories narrow down the specificities of the topic the thought leader will be speaking about. It allows experts to delve deeper into the topic at hand and, in turn, highlights the speaker’s expertise. Finding the right speaking role is important, as is including the right members of the press to listen to a speaking engagement for potential coverage opportunities. Inviting reporters from trade publications specific to an industry, as well as national reporters who cover specific topics are valuable assets to optimize additional press opportunities and increase the overall value of the session.

Host Your Own Virtual Event

While industry events are all reeling from the switch from in-person to virtual, this may be the time to consider hosting your own virtual event – if you are not doing so already. There are more avenues now than ever before to bring customers, partners, prospects, and thought leaders together virtually. Even before the global pandemic, some potential event prospects were limited by the event’s location. With digital events, that is no longer an issue. All an attendee needs these days is a viable internet connection. The importance of convening has not gone away, we just had to change the way we approach it.

Bluetext Virtual Events are built on the idea that bringing the right people, information, and ideas together is what events are all about. Our platform was designed to feel as close to a real event as possible, rather than just another webinar, video conference, or live stream.

While some may see virtual events as a Plan B to in-person events, virtual events have brought new opportunities to a wider, global audience. Whether you are looking for the right PR agency partner to navigate the virtual and in-person event landscape or leverage our platform to host your own virtual event, Bluetext can help. If you want to learn more contact us today.

Read Part 1 of our Behind the Scenes of Citrix Boot Camp here.

After a tight two-and-a-half-month turnaround, the teams had done it – Citrix Boot Camp: Build a Ready-for-Anything Network was a success! The original goal was met as Citrix hosted a completely seamless and completely virtual networking experience. Citrix was able to offer its attendees the same quality of content and connectivity as an in-person event. This blog will discuss what new-found virtual empowerment means for long-term business goals, but first, Bluetext is proud to share some immediate virtual event tracking metrics… 

How Successful Was the Virtual Event?

The Virtual Event platform and marketing campaign delivered an engaging, data-rich and interactive digital experience that the Citrix audience (and revenue stream) loved. On Thursday, August 13th, 2020, Citrix Boot Camp: Build a Ready-For-Anything Network, succeeded in the following ways:

• Unique web visitations: 2,317
• Average page duration: 33:24
• Bounce Rate: 37.9%
• Total page views: 22,608
• Average page views per session: 7.6

Bluetext was able to leverage additional reporting tools including:

• Social Media engagement with an official event hashtag
• Survey data related to the relevance and effectiveness of the speakers, sessions, and resources
• Transcripts from live Networking Lounges Q&A 

Why This All Matters for Citrix?

True, the virtual event surpassed the metrics defined by the Citrix team. However, the real success came from the fact that Citrix was able to accomplish this at all! In-person marketing teams had the rug pulled out from under them when lockdown went into effect in Q2 of 2020, but lead gen was expected to continue despite familiar tactics being crippled for the foreseeable future. 

Nevertheless, businesses reinvented themselves at every opportunity. A virtual event signifies that brands can keep moving forward, offering delightful digital-first experiences for their audience wherever they are in the world or sales funnel. Connecting people is now harder than ever, but Bluetext’s Virtual Event team helps enterprises build human relationships and drive growth. 

Where are they Now?

Bluetext and Citrix are both working hard to continually improve the reach, capabilities, and user experience of the next virtual event. However, the Citrix Boot Camp: Build a Ready-for-Anything Network is still alive and kicking as an on-demand platform through November 14th, 2020. 

Interested in learning more about Bluetext’s Virtual Events? Contact Us!

There’s no doubt that the past five months have looked quite different from what we’re used to. Each day, we log onto our computers, join video conferencing lines, and do our best to make this new virtual work-from-home experience feel as in-person as possible. Day to day social situations may have been put on pause, but business certainly has not. Happy hours with coworkers? Via Zoom. Pivotal presentations with clients? Via WebEx. In-person large events and seminars? We have a solution for you.

Just two short months ago, Citrix turned to Bluetext to help bring one of their networking events into a completely virtual space. The Citrix team had one goal: create a seamless virtual experience that provided the same quality of content and connectivity as an in-person event.

With only six short weeks to build a fully custom microsite complete with new, event-specific branding, Bluetext hit the ground running.

First, came the wireframes. In order to fully understand the user journey, the Bluetext UX and design team worked closely with Citrix to understand their virtual event goals, which included providing a seamless user journey and navigation. Just as each in-person event has a lobby, there needed to be a ‘home dashboard’ where users could easily access all relevant sessions on the day of the event. With a maximum of eight general sessions, we explored a few different possibilities for displaying the session information.

Ultimately, we landed on our two-column grid with a featured keynote session. This enabled us to include as many relevant details as possible, including a countdown clock that would show a user how much time was remaining until a certain virtual event session begins. Think of an in-person event: any attendee would have been provided an agenda of events, along with locations and maps. The same guidance and resources need to be readily accessible in a virtual event. Through the selected UX, the homepage of Citrix Boot Camp could provide a high-level overview of the event’s itinerary. We explored a grayed-out ‘completed’ state for each session, which gave users the signal that the session has completed.

Not only was it important to create simple and seamless UI and UX that would provide all registrants an intuitive experience, but it was just as important to make the event feel as lively as possible. With no physical event staff to welcome, direct, or answer questions, the website had to serve any and all personal touches one would expect.  Bluetext designed a pair of pre- and post-event thumbnails to display before and after the live video play to transform the event microsite into an exciting and lively virtual space for all registrants.

Once we had a beautiful site ready for build, our team began to work through a major development goal of the site: the live-video playback. Our team leveraged the Zoom integration to provide live Q&A sessions for registrants to engage directly with Citrix representatives. This gave users the traditionally intimate networking experience that is generally lost when transitioning events into the digital world.

Read Part 2 of our Behind the Scenes of Citrix Boot Camp here.

Looking to reinvent your company’s event experience? Bluetext can help. Contact us today.

In recent years, leading branding firms and marketers have used brand storytelling to create interactive and empathetic experiences for users throughout their purchase journey. By creating a relatable experience, users see brands and companies as groups of real people working to solve real issues rather than faceless entities. Although popular with many B2C companies, brand storytelling in the B2B world is not only possible but encouraged! In fact, 50% of B2B buyers are more likely to buy if they can connect emotionally with the brand they’re buying from. 

As a leading branding firm, we’ve worked with countless companies to use brand storytelling as a way to humanize and socialize their messaging. Keep reading to learn more about how B2B companies have used storytelling to humanize their messages and how a leading branding firm, like Bluetext, can help you craft yours.  

Hewlett Packard

Many B2B companies run into the same issue when crafting their brand’s story: density. For many enterprises, educating users on their products and services can seem daunting – but it doesn’t have to be. In their “The Wolf” video, HP addresses a topic that, to many, is seemingly dry and unexciting. With thoughtful execution, however, HP was able to create an attention-grabbing and informative video with Hollywood’s favorite good vs. evil plotline. By creating this short film, HP was able to engage with their audience and create a malicious character that represents the issues companies without printer security face.

With a leading branding firm, companies can work to not only get their brand’s story and message in front of the right people at the right time, but they can do it in a way that grabs the prospect’s attention.

Paya

When Paya – a revolutionary payment solution software company –  needed a leading branding firm to help refresh their visual strategy, brand ecosystem, and CVI, they turned to Bluetext. As a part of this brand evolution, Bluetext and Paya worked together to highlight Paya’s mission and goals, through the eyes of their star team. 

By introducing their various offices, employees, and everything in between, this story gives users a look past Paya as a corporation and demonstrates the motivated and gifted individuals working together to solve various customer problems. By exemplifying their strong corporate culture, businesses further found Paya as a reliable and trusted partner.

Varonis

Varonis turned to Bluetext to help position the company with C-level executives who are unaware of their enterprise risk by not leveraging solutions to understand who has access to the data their enterprise relies on. Together, Bluetext and Varonis created a two-part campaign to highlight enterprise exposure of sensitive information and to educate executives on insider threats.

By infusing these campaigns with humor, our teams were able to elicit a positive response from viewers, while staying true to the principles of Varonis’ overarching message.

Zendesk

For new brands especially, finding the right story to tell can be very difficult. B2B storytelling doesn’t always need to be real. Zendesk, for example, created a fake, semi-grungy band named “Zendesk Alternative” and even created a website for the band. By using this direction, Zendesk was able to bring more users to their website and further educate them on the problems Zendesk is solving. This approach, although certainly nontraditional, was widely appreciated by users for being so out of the box and unexpected.

With thoughtfully planned out and carefully executed campaigns, we’ve been a part of some of the biggest successes in brand storytelling. A good story is multi-layered and lets your audience know more about your brand and what it stands for. By sharing your brand’s story, you let your current and future customers see your company as a group of hard-working, motivated people who are committed to solving inefficiencies and business problems. 

Interested in working with a leading branding agency to help tell your story? Contact Us!

 

Your website acts as an essential business tool — used across every industry for a diverse number of functions.  B2B companies rely on their websites to generate leads, phone calls, or physical location visits. No matter what function your website serves, there is one universal goal every business wants to accomplish with its website: leveraging it to create more growth.

There are several ways to increase your leads, sales, and revenue without investing in a complete redesign and rebuild. A great website will enable your team to work smarter, not harder. Here are tips that you should consider trying — while simple, they can help your business grow significantly.

1. Responsive Design

Mobile accounts for over half of global website traffic; if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you may be losing valuable leads. In the coming years this number will only increase, and ensuring a mobile-friendly design may be crucial to your future success. A responsive website design (RWD) adapts to fit any screen in a way that makes all pages, features, and actions accessible to users. Making sure that your website can support traffic on any browsing device ensures that users are not dropping off your site because they cannot access what they’re looking for.

2. Simplify Your Navigation

In order to increase conversions, you need to keep users on your website. When a user lands on your website, they should be able to quickly and intuitively navigate to relevant content, allowing them to find the information they need without losing interest. The first step to keeping a user on your site is maintaining a simple and intuitive navigation. Too many options will likely overwhelm your user; it is important to have a clear path for users to the action you would like them to take as well as the information they are looking for. Otherwise, they may look elsewhere.

3. Avoid Clutter and Complex Noise

While incorporating animation and motion on your website adds visual interest for users and helps your site stand out, it’s important to be aware of the balance between unique design and overly-complex noise. Too much movement can be overwhelming for your user and may detract from what they originally came to your website to achieve. A complex design can also negatively impact your site speed, potentially increasing bounce rate and affecting your SEO score. While finding a middle-ground between these two extremes can be difficult, it’s important to ask if new design elements will add value to the end-user.

4. Don’t Go Crazy With Your Fonts

While fonts are an easy way to enhance your CVI and bring visual interest to your website, they may also be difficult to read for some users or on some devices. Using a Sans Serif font for your website’s body copy and making sure the font size and color meet accessibility standards is crucial in getting your message across to users. If they are not able to read the content on your site, they definitely won’t be converting.

User experience is crucial to effective website design, but so is your internal team! Here are some tips to streamline the digital sales process for end-users and internal teams. A positive user experience will directly translate into increased conversions.

Use Call Tracking

If driving users to make a phone call is one of the main goals of your website, it is important to know which page has prompted the user to make the call. You can easily track this information by using unique phone numbers on different pages, allowing you to determine which page is driving the most traffic to your call center. These numbers can easily be configured to route to your main phone line, meaning there won’t be any disruption to the way you’re currently handling phone leads.

Install Live Chat

While live chat may not seem immediately relevant to your business, every website can benefit from this simple tool. Live chat functions to facilitate interactions with your users and enables them to quickly get the answers they’re looking for without spending too much time hunting around the site. Many chat services will also integrate with mobile phones, allowing your business to easily monitor traffic. 

 

To learn more about driving leads via a responsive UX design and how Bluetext can help you increase conversion rates,  contact us today.