B2B Goes Web-Centric

A for-instance: Along with a cornucopia of product and market information and data, the Web site for Eden Prairie–based data–storage system maker Compellent includes a diagnostic tool that Schermer Kuehl designed to help IT managers calculate their total cost of ownership for storage networks. Visitors answer six questions about their company’s data storage capacity, usage, and various costs; the tool then produces a chart that compares the cost of the company’s current system with Compellent’s products.

Scott Horst, Compellent’s director of marketing, describes the company’s Web site as a “launching pad” for new information and campaigns. The site also includes customer testimonials and white papers.

“The Web site is pretty central to our [marketing] strategy,” Horst says. “You can do content, you can measure, you can get great visuals, and you can get really connected to people very quickly. The Web is the hub of a lot of things.”

Bringing It Together

A B2B company’s Web site “has to be an extension of everything the business stands for. It can’t just be—the Web site,” says Ted Risdall, president and chairman of Risdall Marketing Group, a New Brighton–based agency with a large B2B interactive practice. In other words, the Web site is becoming the chief window into a company.

One Risdall client, Mankato-based telco HickoryTech, realized a year or two ago that it had outgrown its Web site. Over time, as the company and its capabilities grew, the site became a huge, unwieldy beast that was difficult for customers to navigate. HickoryTech had also made some major acquisitions, buying Plymouth business communications supplier Enventis and Duluth-based CP Telecom, which made organizing its online presence even more crucial. “We wanted to communicate the new Hickory-Tech,” says Jennifer Spaude, the company’s director of investor and public relations.

In July, working with Risdall Interactive, HickoryTech unveiled three new Web sites: one for HickoryTech itself (whose customers are a mix of business and residential), Enventis (all of whose customers are businesses), and HickoryTech Information Solutions (which sells software to other telecommunications providers that manages billing and customer service). All are tied together by a single design, with links to the other sites at the top of each home page. Each also features a simple navigation style. “We really needed to demonstrate [our] brands, how they work together,” Spaude says.