How Many B2B Websites Survived a Year?

Business-to-business (B2B) is a huge business over the Internet. Billions upon billions of dollars are being exchanged in B2B transactions. B2B was one of the first business sectors to take advantages of the Internet and the World Wide Web. With all these business transactions taking place over the Internet one can assume B2B Websites are on the cutting edge of Web design and Website development, but is it so?

When looking at B2B Websites over a year ago we noticed that many B2B Websites lacked elements commonly found on so-called Web 2.0 Websites. We decided to take a closer look at B2B Websites. We conducted three observations; one in June of 2009, one in May of 2010 and the last one in late August 2010.

The group of Websites visited for this project is from many sectors within the business-to-business industry included:

• Manufacturing
• News sites
• Marketplaces
• Import export
• Consulting
• Software development
• Chemicals
• Oil production
• Automotive
• Computer manufacturing
• Financial Services

We started with 587 B2B Websites in 2009 and ended with 473 Websites in August 2010. Approximately 19% of the Websites did not survive the year. They either do not exist anymore (returned 404) or became totally inaccessible due to technical problems. This came as a bit of a shocker to us, we expected a percentage of c.a. 10%.

Related links:

• B2B Website Design Tips to Increase Conversions, Leads
• Elements of a Successful Business Website Design
• Features a website most have, interactivity and improvements for your business

Related video:

Increasing Customer Engagement Using Web Content Management

Filed under: B2B Websites , Html Tag Analysis

Posted by: Webmaster on : August 2010