Transcript:

Dave Gerhardt [00:00:01]:
Natalie, everybody's here. Fantastic. Great response, this one. We had over 900 people register and I'm excited to chat with you. You've always done a great job on these in the past. So good to have you in here. I'm going to turn it over to you.


Dave Gerhardt [00:00:26]:
Why don't you do a quick intro, set the stage for what we're going to talk about. Just so you know, Natalie's got about, like, ten ish minutes of slides that she's going to flip through. Then we have some actual websites that have been submitted from Exit Five members. We're going to talk through those and then we'll have a nice big chunk of time for Q&A at the end. All right, Natalie, you got the mic.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:00:43]:
Hey, everyone, I'm Natalie Marcotullio, head of growth at a company called Navattic. We're an interactive demo platform, but I promise we won't talk about that too much on this live session. I'm calling in, I think, from space or from somewhere with just a beautiful view. I did just move apartments, so my background was, like, very bare. So I decided to go with a virtual background, which I'm not usually a virtual background person, but better than the white wall behind me.


Dave Gerhardt [00:01:05]:
Well, that's. That makes one of us, because I'm actually on this boat right now, so.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:01:09]:
It'S actually nighttime here. I'm calling from, I don't know, Arctic.


Dave Gerhardt [00:01:12]:
You have great service, so shout out to wherever you are.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:01:15]:
But I'm really excited to talk about this topic. Like Dave said, we got so many good website submissions, it was really hard to choose five. And I did look at every single one. We looked at ones, decide which one to go through, try to base it off of our B. Two, b buyer best practices, which we'll talk in a bit. So, websites that filled that criteria. But first, just wanted to give the community a shout out because, like, you all have awesome websites. I had a lot of fun just, like, looking through a bunch of websites this week.


Dave Gerhardt [00:01:39]:
Oh, one thing, one, housekeeping. I forgot producers in my ear telling me, we're going to take questions during this session. So I love doing these because all of the people that are in marketing are also in the chat. And so two things. Number one, give your feedback. We're going to ask you to rate these websites also that we talk through, but also chime in, throw your comments in there, add your color to this. This is marketers learning from marketers. And so share your stories and lessons in the chat as well.


Dave Gerhardt [00:02:04]:
But if you have questions and you want us to get to them. Go to the Q&A, put your question in the Q&A, and then I will go through those when we get to the Q&A session at the end and I can sort them all by. I think you'll have the ability to upvote them and I'll be able to pick the highest upvoted questions. We'll get through a bunch of those, but use the chat. It's one of the reasons that makes these live sessions great.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:02:24]:
Cool. Ready to dive into some of the content here. So as we talked about, most of today will be a tear down or a buildup? A little bit of both. But wanted to explain why we decided to do these website teardowns and explain the context that it's not just going to be regular. Do we like this website? Yes. No. But we are partially basing it off of criteria of buyer first best practices. So essentially we did a report two years in a row.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:02:47]:
We just launched the second year of it called the B2B buyer best practices. Looking at the top 100 SaaS companies and seeing how buyer first they are. And by that we have three criteria. One, how accessible is the website? So how easy is it to like book time with a sales team or to get started with a free trial? I think we've all as B2B buyers booked time and then just been ghosted, which is a really weird experience when you're like, I want to buy your software and you are ghosting me and not letting me. So that was our first criteria. How accessible is it? Second was usable. So how easy was it to play around with the product or experience it in some way before I jump onto that live demo or into a free trial? And that's not like, is there little gifs or images? Like, can I play with some version of the actual product? And then the third was visible, probably the most divisive and fun one of do you show public pricing or not? I feel like this is such a hot button topic of b two B Saasden, but ultimately for buyer first, if you're putting the buyer before your own sales experience, generally, buyers like to know what the price is. So this is last year again, we did this report two years in a row.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:03:51]:
And last year we booked demos with the top 100 SaaS companies, 100 by size. So just the largest. And it wasn't great. It didn't make me feel great about the state of b two B buying last year, 35% of companies never got back in touch with us and I will caveat. We did this report with Chili Piper and used a chili Piper email, so it wasn't like we were some weird, sketchy Gmail. And that's why people didn't respond to us. Maybe we were being disqualified, but they still never even told us we were. So 35% didn't respond.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:04:18]:
Average two day response time, which again, is kind of wild. I'm saying, hey, I want to buy your software and you're taking two days to respond. Only 7% had an interactive demo, so a way to play around with their product before you jump onto a live demo. 57% have public pricing. That was probably the most positive stat. But of that 57%, 21 didn't actually show the price. So I cannot do live math. But less than 57% actually showed their pricing.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:04:43]:
So again, this is last year, and let's dive into this year. So it got better. Yay. I thought this was pretty cool. I think so often when you see these reports come out about state of, it just is highlighting a lot of things that are bad with the state of whatever it is. It's usually like, this is what's broken. So it's really cool to see this year things did improve. My theory, and Dave, I don't know if you have any theories on this too, is with the market getting more competitive, people are seeing the buying experience now as like a differentiator.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:05:10]:
You have to create a good buying experience to stay ahead.


Dave Gerhardt [00:05:12]:
I think this is misunderstood. As a marketer, I think oftentimes we feel like the whole pressure to deliver is on the actual act of marketing. But I think to me, a bunch of the things that you put in, there are not just things that marketing owns. Marketing might own the delivery of the website, but the fact about how the sales.org is structured and whether they're going to respond to certain types of inbound requests in some time period. Marketing doesn't necessarily own that there's a pricing strategy and like, are we going to put pricing on the website? That's a company level decision. And so I think overall, I see the B2B buying process as not just marketing's responsibility, but it has to do with the whole company. And so when I see someone that does this well, it's not because the marketing team is great. The marketing team might be great, but it's mainly because the company is aligned strategically on how they want to go to market and what type of website experience they want to have.


Dave Gerhardt [00:06:05]:
And for most companies today, the website is the digital storefront. Even if you sell enterprise even if you sell really big deals, this is the storefront for your business, for your product. And I think it's a huge factor in whether people are going to buy from you regardless of whether marketing is involved there or nothing.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:06:24]:
Yeah, it's so funny you say that, because every marketer who I talk to about this topic generally is like, yes, I want pricing on my website. I want a demo. I want easy calendar booking. Usually it's the internal politicking that makes this harder. So hopefully by seeing some best practices today, and that's part of the reason we put out this report, to show like, hey, these are the standards. Now you have something to go share with your boss to be like, oh, you know, if 70% of the top B two B SaaS companies are putting pricing on their website, maybe we should be as well. And I think that's also part of the reason why we saw these stats get better this year. As it becomes more popular, suddenly it just becomes you're almost like, forced into it.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:07:01]:
If all of your competitors have public pricing, suddenly you might feel like, okay, to keep up, we need to have pricing. Or if all your competitors have an interactive demo and people can easily get, like, see what their product does beforehand, it kind of just like, pulls a direction altogether. So I think it's just hopefully in a good way, but almost like forced peer pressure that we are seeing more and more companies adopting these buyer first best practices.


Dave Gerhardt [00:07:20]:
Well, I think it also comes back to, like, I think you have to realize that in b two B, most people are, they're more shopping than they are buying. And so even if I'm going to buy, let's say, like, we're using Zuttle for this webinar, right? Oh, damn it. I said webinar live session. We're using Zuttle for this live session. Even if I really like this product, I'm going to do my due diligence and I'm just going to go check out two or three other competitors. Like, when we moved our community over to circle, I went with Circle, but I also kind of simultaneously did some just quick cross referencing and research with two or three other platforms. Because you're spending a lot more money. You're not buying a $14 t shirt.


Dave Gerhardt [00:08:04]:
You want to see what other features people have. You want to see how it's priced. I actually have a perfect example of this. I needed to get cap table software for Exit Five because we're building a real company. I want to have equity and have our team have some skin in the game. In case there's like a. An exit or something down the road and have everybody share in that success. And I was torn between Carta was the software that I've used at all my other previous companies, but I just wanted to try something else and see something different.


Dave Gerhardt [00:08:32]:
And so I evaluated Carta, and I was ready to buy Carta. And then a founder friend of mine told me about this company, Pulley. So I go to Pulley, I check out their website. I had some questions specific to Carta. They answered me in like two minutes. I got my answers, I booked a demo, and I end up going with them. That has nothing to do with their marketing and their creative and their campaigns. It has everything to do with the buying process, and that is what led me to buy from that company.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:08:57]:
Yeah, I was saying before, it's a real differentiator now, if you can be first. Also, just because people are so busy now, like, unfortunately there are still layoffs, there are less team members than before. Like, we just don't have as much time as we used to to sit around and evaluate a lot of software. And if you're taking two plus days to respond to a demo request, someone might have bought software by then.


Dave Gerhardt [00:09:16]:
I.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:09:16]:
But luckily it is getting better. As we see on these stats this year, it was an average of same day response time, a lot more automating used in the email sequences and on the websites to make it faster. Almost 70% had pricing pages. This was really cool to me. It was still about 20% that didn't show the full pricing, but just the fact that this many more had pricing pages and then almost doubled the number of interactive demos, obviously, that was the stat that got me most excited.


Dave Gerhardt [00:09:39]:
Do you know, I feel like the pricing page thing, I think that oftentimes, at least the companies that I've been at before, activity on the pricing page was considered some, like, high intent activity, and so we like to gate that. Right? I see you kind of, like, nodding along until, like, I've had the sales, sales wants to, like, if someone wants pricing, they must certainly be ready to buy. When I get that, there's a lot of nuance in pricing, but me as a consumer, I roughly want to know. I get that there might be like a custom this and that, but as a consumer, I roughly want to know, is this ten grand a month? Is it 20 grand? Is it 100? Is it 29? 99? I need some ballpark. And then I'm going to give you the time, because I think the thing that's changed in the last ten years because of the Internet and social media and g two and communities like Exit Five, where people are sharing, like, if you're not posting your pricing transparently, website, I'm going to tell you right now, people are in Exit Five and they're asking it. And someone like Tim Davidson, we had somebody ask about pricing from two ABM vendors who did not have their pricing on the website. And Tim had screenshotted it from, like, a previous conversation. And so that person got the pricing inside of the community.


Dave Gerhardt [00:10:52]:
Like, people are going to find that out. I just. I feel like you'd want to at least give some people a rough range. And there's this kind of shift of, like, sales and marketing. Like, we used to have to squeeze everything and control everything because buyers didn't have any of the power, because information was not free, free. But now that all this information is out there anywhere, you kind of have to adjust your marketing and adjust your website strategy to match.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:11:14]:
And the way I think of it now, too, is buyers didn't used to know how to buy. I was never trained on how to buy software. So it used to be nice that it was a very, like, gated, controlled process because I was like, yeah, walk me through it. I don't want to know what to do next. Now everyone's probably bought and across the. It's not just decision makers anymore. Everyone's probably bought, like, ten pieces of software a year. So I think we only just kind of get the game and we get how to play the game and get around it if you're not going to give us the information we want.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:11:39]:
But I was smiling before because you mentioned intent on pricing pages. Predicted the next slide. Why did it get so much better? That's one of my theories. So these are all my theories. I will say I read every single follow up email we got from booking those demos and looked at all 100 websites. So these are the theories I have from doing that research. But for pricing, I think we're seeing so much more pricing pages. Not just because we're being more buyer first, but because there are now so many more ways to get intent signals from it.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:12:06]:
And even if you don't get it, you can use Clearbit, you can use so many of these companies to see the accounts, and now the contact level, who is viewing that pricing page? And the reason I thought this was, like, the higher intent, I saw a lot more pricing pages on the main Navbar. 66% of websites that had pricing had on the main Navbar. So clearly they're trying to like drive their prospects towards that page. And then two other takeaways of why I think it got better from last year for demo follow up. A lot more automation this year, which seems pretty straightforward, but this year it was the same day response time because a lot of companies just had that first touch. Automated email. I think we've learned letting a prospect slip through the cracks by not having any sort of automation just isn't feasible these days. And you can just easily have an email that's like, hey, this is an automated email, someone will reach out and then a lot more calendar schedule used in the automated emails versus still some on the website, but a lot more in the email follow up cadence of and then interactive demos.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:13:00]:
My main hypothesis is just a more mature market and as markets become more mature, enterprises will start using it more. Also shown by the demos, it was really cool. It wasn't just on the product page anymore, kind of like hidden. A lot of times it was front and center as a secondary CTA or I saw a lot more demo centers, which is why we saw like four demos on average versus one. So basically like ten different demos on a page covering different features. That was becoming a lot more popular this year versus last. So these are my theories. Would be curious if anyone else has theories of why B2B buying has gotten better this year versus last year.


Dave Gerhardt [00:13:33]:
I think there's just more competition now. There's more competition in any industry too. And so if you're a brand new product in a brand new industry, then you can maybe be a little bit more controlled. But I think we talked about earlier, everybody's shopping and evaluating multiple platforms and so the more content and information you can have up on the site, the better.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:13:51]:
Yeah, and now we get to the fun part of seeing what websites are doing that, which ones are making it very clear, very easy for their buyers. So lets get to the tear downs.


Dave Gerhardt [00:14:00]:
Well actually before we do that, I have a question for you. Do you agree with what I was saying earlier? Were like, this is a company strategy thing and I think for the marketers here, this isnt just a design thing, its a go to market thing, its a how does we talk a lot about how marketing needs to, to influence change across the organization? Who owns this? If somebody's watching this session right now, it's not just like, oh, let's go back and change the layout of our website. There's some like fundamental strategy questions that need to come up. Right.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:14:31]:
I have never heard an.org that knows who owns pricing. Like pricing is always owned by everyone. I don't know any company who has a definitive owner. If you do, great for you. I'd say I can talk about our experience getting public pricing on our website. I was the one initially leading the charge, but I needed buy in from sales and thats fair. It affects them the most. It affects sales a lot more than affects me as a marketer.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:14:53]:
Of course I need their buy in and their support or else theyre just going to, if we do it without it, theyre just going to let and thats going to hurt that sales marketing relationship. What I did, and this is what I recommend anyone trying to do these buyer first best practices was nudged in that direction until people got more comfortable. So for example, we started sharing pricing. If someone reached out for a demo and they mentioned they want to see pricing, we started sharing with them in that first email and then id every now and then have prospects actually reach out to me over LinkedIn and be like, hey, can you please share your pricing with me? And then I looked at those deals that we showed pricing earlier and found that they had higher close rates and were much faster deals. And then I presented that data to the team and the sales team and showed, okay, when weve been showing pricing earlier, we have seen how it accelerates the sales cycle as validation for why we should put it up publicly. So while I was the one leading it, I did need to get sales buy in and I had to use a little bit of data and like qualitative research. I couldn't have just been like, let's do pricing for the sake of it. It definitely took a little bit of having to get used to.


Dave Gerhardt [00:15:51]:
Robert, I love this comment in the chat from Brian. I'm going to shut up and we can tear these websites down. Brian said, I think people are truly realizing that the more transparent you are, the more, the more they can trust you. And I think as people and as buyers, we can all nod our heads to that and agree. Where that breaks down, though, is then inside of the company. When you're like behind on your growth goals, when you want to gate all the information on your website, when you want to drive more qualified conversations with buyers, how do we measure this? That's where a lot of this starts to break down. I used to work at this company, Drift, for a CEO named David Cancel, and he was really big into like doing business and doing marketing that people actually want and using empathy and being like, wait a second, just because we can't measure this or just because like, this isn't perfectly going to be trackable or. Just because this break our lead scoring model doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.


Dave Gerhardt [00:16:48]:
Like, is this a company problem or a customer problem? The customer problem is I just want to go to your website and I want to see how much this thing costs. And I want to know if you integrate with this. The company problem is.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:16:58]:
Whoa, whoa, whoa.


Dave Gerhardt [00:16:59]:
Wait a second. If we give away our pricing, we're not going to be able to have a qualified conversation with a buyer. And that's where I think a lot of this breaks down inside of a company.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:17:08]:
And that's why I think you kind of have to prove it a little bit. If the sales team thinks that this is going to hurt their qualified leads, it's going to be really hard to convince them otherwise until they see it. I think if you can do small steps to move to it and prove to them. The biggest thing I always hear about pricing is beyond just what if my competitors see it or what about qualified buyers? What if my customers see it and then demand discounts because we overcharge that one customer and every time I've heard that and then release pricing on a website, there's like two customers. Where that happens. Your customers aren't often stocking your pricing page. And I think also b, two b buyers get it right. Like, maybe you got custom packages or add ons.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:17:45]:
It's not always black and white for everyone, but it took us releasing pricing and then waiting a month to see that customers weren't up in arms for everyone to feel comfortable with it. So I feel like you just got to get people comfortable because just arguing theory isn't going to work as well. And then you're just arguing like, am I smarter than you or do I know this better than you?


Dave Gerhardt [00:18:03]:
All right, let's flip over the teardowns quick. PSa Danielle and our team just put the link to Natalie's report in the chat. So if you want to grab this, I think this is a. I think going to a session like this, the opportunity is like, to learn, get the information, take notes, and then, like, use this as a jumping off point to maybe present a strategy or go back to your boss, your team, and suggest some changes based on this, this study. So.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:18:26]:
All right, and last little thing, I'll plug about the report at the bottom. We do have a scorecard. So at the end of this, if you want to score your own website against these buyer first best practices, you can do that and then maybe show like, hey, guys, we scored low, or celebrate if you scored really high. But now let's score these websites. Cool. So this first one probably shouldn't be surprising if you're in B2B software. You've probably heard of commsur before. And I wasn't really surprised when I was judging all these websites against our buyer first best practices that they followed it, because a lot of what their whole company is about is helping you do buying in like a more human way, basically helping you find connections when you're going to buy software.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:19:02]:
So you can say, like, okay, I know this person. Maybe they can give me an intro and it could be a lot more of that human relationship than all digital. So again, they kind of practice what they preach. As far as being buyer first, a few things I wanted to call out. So first thing I've pulled up here is their book a demo page. So go to Commssor Bookademo. And I've never seen this before and thought it was so brilliant and was like, why don't more of us do this instead of just saying book a generic demo. Whether you are really interested in our software or you have barely heard of us and just want to learn a little more, tell me where you're at in the cycle.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:19:35]:
If you're ready to start buying and you don't want to know, do a discovery call and just jump right in. If you're looking for a full demo or you just want to start learning. I think that alleviates that awkward first demo where it's so often it's like, hey, I really want to buy. I'm really qualified. And then they make you do like a discovery call with a BDR, and you're like, no, no, I'm telling you. I know. I did my research and I just want to buy it. Or vice versa.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:19:57]:
When you're just in discovery phase and then the sales rep gets annoyed because they hear those words like, oh, I'm just browsing right now.


Dave Gerhardt [00:20:03]:
Damn, I'm so mad about this idea because I wish I, yeah, I wish I knew it. One of the biggest things that I struggle with was, and you see this on a lot of b, two b websites. It's like the call to action is either like, there's usually two. It's like super top of the funnel. Like, join our email list. Or it's like, talk to sales. And it's like, ah, marketing. Like, how do we get credit for all the stuff that happens in the middle? And this is a fantastic way to do that.


Dave Gerhardt [00:20:27]:
And we talked about empathy before. This is like meeting the website visitor in the where they're at. So, like, maybe you don't want to talk to sales today, but you had a couple questions. Okay, cool. Here's another path. And I'm sure that Comsor has a way to, like, track that engagement. And you can measure, measure the behavior accordingly. This is great.


Dave Gerhardt [00:20:44]:
Have you seen this? Have you seen anybody else do this before?


Natalie Marcotullio [00:20:46]:
I haven't. And I can say too. So we actually use comsor. And like, when I went through the sales process, this aligned. They were very meeting me where we're at. It was very conversational. Like if they didn't have this and then push me to a immediately like by or opposite it very much like met me and it was conversational. So can vouch also they follow up on this.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:21:04]:
Let's meet the prospect where they're at. Cool. Okay. A few other things. So you mentioned if you're not ready for a live demo yet, what I also love that comp store does, first of all, just go to their main page. It's just very straightforward. And the language they use is very conversational. It's something I've been trying to push myself a lot as a marketer and sometimes still get in the habit of writing jargon.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:21:24]:
But everything they're saying is just very simple language, like turn your advisors network into a revenue channel. I think even down here is where it gets like, very conversational. It's just like get warm intros, connect prospects with customers, build a referral program. It's not accelerate pipeline ten x. It's not overstating it. It literally is saying what you do, which I found really refreshing because a lot of VB websites don't just state what they do. And then one more thing to point out. So then when they go into these pages, to your point before Dave, of like, okay, what if they're not ready for a lot, a demo yet, or like a live demo on each of their three product pages? They also so do have an interactive demo.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:21:58]:
And so if I want to quickly, like in two minutes, learn a little more about comsor, I can do that. I also even went to this interactive demo the other day when I was using the product to see if, oh, is there something I'm missing or more I could be doing. So also just an added benefit, which was cool. And then again, very plainly, they tell you the benefits. I also like how clean the pages. There's not much else distracting. It's mostly just the text. It's very simple.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:22:21]:
And then we also get into some more product injury so I can learn a little more about the product. But, like, very clean landing page. Not too much going on. And if I want to dive into the product more, I can go through the interactive demo.


Dave Gerhardt [00:22:32]:
Very nice. Okay, here's what we're going to do. Oh, you got more? I was going to give us our.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:22:35]:
We got to move on.


Dave Gerhardt [00:22:36]:
Yeah, no, we're good.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:22:38]:
I'll just show the pricing page. This was the other cool thing I wanted to cover, because to give them credit, they show all pricing, which you also don't see that much in B2B SaaS.


Dave Gerhardt [00:22:46]:
Nice. Yeah, this is great. Okay, Natalie, well, save your rating, folks, on this webinar right now. Damn it. Three times. That's 3 miles and 300 burpees. Well, I'm going to have a busy afternoon. Go in the chat right now.


Dave Gerhardt [00:23:00]:
I want to get your rating. Give us this website rating based on B2B. Buying the scales from one to ten. Feel free to add why? But on the count of three, you're going to put your number in chat, Natalie, you're going to think of yours, and then while they're coming in, I'm going to ask you to give your rating. Okay. Ready? Three, two, one. Put your rating. Put your rating in the chat.


Dave Gerhardt [00:23:19]:
One through ten.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:23:20]:
This is so hard, because I've looked at these websites for a while, but I'm going to try to. Okay.


Dave Gerhardt [00:23:25]:
Nine, 9.98.787. Nothing below seven. Very high. Quite high. Seven. Brody hates the design. Dave Winter. No interactive demo.


Dave Gerhardt [00:23:38]:
Seven. Seven is pretty good. The lowest score is seven. This is really good. Look at all. By the way, are there people on this live session or whatever? This is amazing. Majo says three hates it. So sorry about that.


Dave Gerhardt [00:23:49]:
Really good. So, I don't know. We should send this. The commissar team on here, like, getting them some love. Natalie, what's your score? Go ahead. You got the mic. And we're gonna go there. Like an eight.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:23:56]:
Nine. Yeah.


Dave Gerhardt [00:23:58]:
An eight nine.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:23:59]:
Yeah. 8.5, I guess.


Dave Gerhardt [00:24:01]:
All right, 8.5. Seems like the bar has been set. Let's see what else we got. Let's keep going.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:24:06]:
Cool. Okay. So I didn't want to just do all B2B sass, so I did want to choose an agency, because we have a lot of agencies on the calls, too. But what I thought was really cool about this agency website was it reminded me of a really good B2B SaaS website in a way. So, first way I'll talk about that is, like, so often I go to agency websites, and it's again, a lot of jargon. And I'm like, but what does that really mean? I don't understand the outcome I'm going to get. So I thought it was cool. First of all, the three things they do are their navbar, like, onboarding, training, coaching, very straightforward.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:24:36]:
And then they have this view. Watch a demo, which I've never seen on an agency page. The ability to watch a demo of the outcome that you'll get. It's usually all like customer testimonials, but they actually have a demo of what the onboarding HubSpot onboarding process would be like. Have you seen this, Dave?


Dave Gerhardt [00:24:52]:
No. So just a video of somebody on the team explaining it.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:24:55]:
Yeah, yeah. Which seems really simple, right?


Dave Gerhardt [00:24:59]:
But we, we go to the most complex, like, gotta hire a $50,000 retainer website agency to do this first. Like, this person knows this product really well. Like, let's get her on camera and let's film a quick video in house. Like, I think that stuff works. Especially there's this weird line between, like, we want stuff on the website to feel really like, professional and polished first. Like, sometimes a screen recorded video, it's like your head in the bottom and going through the product can work really well. So I like it. I dig it.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:25:27]:
And I just think for an agency, so often I have no idea what the actual alchemist like, I'll get to see case studies of other people and who have had success, but I don't actually see the outcome. So I thought it was cool that they were actually showing me what HubSpot onboarding would be like. A few other things to call out. They also make it for accessible, super easy to get in touch. I feel like so often with agencies there are like really long forms and I have to describe exactly what I want out of the meeting. And sometimes I don't even know yet I'm going to you because I don't understand what I need help with. So I like that they just had a very simple work with us and it shoots you down to accountly. And I love that they explain what will be on that call.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:26:02]:
Very similar to the comps. For example, I think one thing we don't do well enough and just b. Two B in general is explain what are you going to get out of that call? Like, we always just assume, yeah, someone wants to book a demo because our software is great or our agency is great, but here we actually get to learn. Like, okay, this is exactly what we will talk about. This is what I should come prepared with. And if we agree, we'll plan the next steps. I love that, too. Making it more of a two way street rather than just, I don't know.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:26:25]:
So often we forget that B2B buying is both ways. You might not be a bright, fit customer and that's okay. And we can just have a normal conversation about that.


Dave Gerhardt [00:26:31]:
Well, I also think, I also think setting expectations, like, hey, here's what this call is going to be about. This is a sales call, by the way. It's just the other one, the Commsura site. Like, the only thing I didn't like was it just like, talk to our sales team. There were three CTA's which kind of made up for that. But like, I don't really want to do that. I hate being sold to. Usually when I talk to a salesperson, it's I feel like I'm being interrogated and then they're going to spend like 15 minutes without letting me talk and talking about their product and solution.


Dave Gerhardt [00:26:57]:
I love the idea of setting expectations for, like, here's what this call is going to be like before you book it.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:27:02]:
Then you can decide exactly, like, just upfront, let them know. I feel like in the past, the B two b buying was so much, we have to keep so much hidden because the demo is like that secret prize that you'll come and talk to us for. Like, we have to have a way to entice you and if we tell you what the demo is going to be, you're not going to want to show up. So I love that we're realizing, let's just let people know and they can decide, like we can trust the buyer can figure out for themselves whether or not it makes sense. I also really like these FAQ questions. I feel like especially for agencies, it's really helpful to understand or even like, I don't know where to start. I kind of love that question. So often with agencies, I don't, I know I have a problem.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:27:36]:
I don't even know how to begin solving it. So telling me, kind of predicting what I'm going to have trouble with, what I need help with, I think they just, it shows a really clear understander of their buyer. In this example.


Dave Gerhardt [00:27:47]:
Can you go back to the top for a second?


Natalie Marcotullio [00:27:49]:
Yeah.


Dave Gerhardt [00:27:49]:
One thing I really liked, and I think the homepage headline is an area where a lot of people get stuck. There's a good little copywriting trick that they're using here, which is basically, how do you, how do you target an audience with your content? Well, I know instantly, I'm not a HubSpot super admin, so I know right away this is not for me. But Dan Kennedy, who's like a old school sales copywriter called this like planting the flag in the headline. And so it's like new moms blank, right? Runners blank. This one is HubSpot super admins. And so, like, is it a sexy headline? No. Is it super catchy? No. But within 1 second of landing on this website, I now am going to keep scrolling and learn more.


Dave Gerhardt [00:28:30]:
At least I am a HubSpot super admin. Okay, now I'm going to keep going. I think it's a really good way to think about a website headline.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:28:36]:
Agreed. Okay, I think it's time we vote now.


Dave Gerhardt [00:28:39]:
All right, let's put your votes in. What's this one? Now keep in mind high scores from the last one. So it's got to be relative. It's got to be relative. Put your scores in. Three, two, one. Put them in the chat. Natalie's got her pencil and calculator out over there in her new apartment doing my calculations.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:28:53]:
Oh my.


Dave Gerhardt [00:28:55]:
6656-7766-9568-7786-5975-7 yada, yada, yada. Okay, I get the tone. Natalie, what's yours?


Natalie Marcotullio [00:29:08]:
So I feel like I'm copping out with everyone else's answers, but I was going to do a seven, partially because they do have pricing, but it's very hidden. I wish they had it on the navbar. And then while I really like that, watch a demo video, I do wish there was a little more like imagery or something that shows me what I will get out of their services.


Dave Gerhardt [00:29:26]:
I'm going to give it an eight. I think people are being tricked because it's not like a mind blowing design. It's not like animations and crazy stuff. But I think, you know, it's an amazing website with terrible design. Amazon, you know, it's an amazing website with terrible design. Craigslist, I get it. You can have a bar for amazing design. But I also think your website can.


Dave Gerhardt [00:29:46]:
I think this is a good example of a website that has more function than like sizzle. And for me, it's working. It works for me.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:29:53]:
And I think, remember, they're selling to HubSpot admins who maybe want things a little more like straightforward, logical than all the fluff and design. Okay, next one. So similar that it is a little less fluff and design audience. We're going through directus, which is headless cms. So probably maybe developers, website designers. What I really liked about this website is they have so many options to learn more or play around with the product that isn't just booking a demo, which isn't too surprising. I think Dev tooling does this really well because Dell developers do not want to get in a sales call. So I think oftentimes when we think about the best buying experience, dev tools are some of the best ones to look at.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:30:31]:
First of all, they do have a homegrown interactive demo. This they made themselves. And I have it pulled up here just so you don't have to. I'm going to have to sign in. First of all, this is the sign in to their interactive demo, which I just thought this little video is kind of fun. Like someone pointing at me to do something. I maybe could use the space to explain what I'm going to see. That's the only thing is when I was going through this experience, I didn't really understand what I was signing up for, but I did it because the man was pointing at it.


Dave Gerhardt [00:30:56]:
So I guess. So it's kind of like it is a way. It's a waste. It's a waste. It's funny, it's cute, but like it's over here. It's. Unless you're a moron, go.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:31:05]:
Yeah, I'm torn about that one. I want to hear what the chat says. But what's cool is this is like I said, so they homegrown built this. It is a full replica of their product. So I can go in and get an idea of what it does. I will say sometimes I'm a little torn about these experiences when there's no guidance at all because I have to figure out what I'm clicking around for. I'm just kind of clicking around a basically a state of their product that has full data in it, which that part's really cool that I can see everything, but part of me was clicking through this before and being like, okay, this is cool, I can see it, but what does this mean? So maybe a little bit of pop ups or guidance giving a little more explanation since it is pretty top of funnel. Okay, now I'm going back to the main website.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:31:42]:
I thought what was also cool is if that was the interactive demo we just went through their main CTA. If you're like, hey, I'm ready to get going, you can start self hosting right away. And they have a bunch of videos and documentation on how to do that. Again, clearly very tailored for the developer audience. If one of the first CTA's is like docs and how to get started. Also like they had some nice product imagery here. If you don't want to do the full interactive demo, you can get this quick little gif to get a quick overview of what they do. And then again clearly stating who are they built for.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:32:11]:
So developers content hub. And then this part I thought was a little typical, just the product screenshots and the CTA's, but thought the rest more above the fold was what was exciting to me. Also, we'll call out they have pricing and again, mostly full pricing. They don't show enterprise, which is pretty standard. But I also like that they then have a pretty big breakdown, especially again for more more that developer audience of like infrastructure really wanting to know exactly what is included or not included.


Dave Gerhardt [00:32:36]:
I always get overwhelmed with the feature checklists and I feel like you can just write whatever you want.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:32:42]:
Okay, so I am a little torn on those because we've had this conversation.


Dave Gerhardt [00:32:46]:
About our own sales people love them, but I'm like, I guess we could just make, we all just make it up. It's just marketing.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:32:52]:
Well, yeah, they're all just terms. So oftentimes they don't actually know what that means. And then a sales person could be like, oh, no, that term meant this, like, that's actually not included. I know. Sometimes I feel like it's more also just like check the boxy. Because when I've bought software in the past, I've been given like a criteria list, just like a sheet of all the features it needs to have. And sometimes I feel like those pricing breakdowns are just like, okay, it checks the box here, it checks the box there. But I don't even understand what that feature is.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:33:18]:
I just know that it's a criteria and that I can check it off and don't have to do more research.


Dave Gerhardt [00:33:22]:
All right, we got to keep it moving. So let's do our ratings for this 1321 go. I'm not a developer, so this is tough, tough for me to say. My only feedback on this one is I think it looks, I think it's great. I like the funnel. I get it. I'm not a developer, but I think they speak to developers. I just, this falls in the bucket of my friend Eli at no boring design.


Dave Gerhardt [00:33:40]:
He would, he would call this like the stripe ification of b two B website. It looks like your classic b two B software company. Nothing wrong with that. I like an opportunity to stand out, do something different, but I think it seems like a good, functional site. What do you got, pro? What's your rating?


Natalie Marcotullio [00:33:56]:
Yeah, that's why I was thinking kind of closer to a six. I know I'm just going eight, seven, six now. So I'll try to switch it up.


Dave Gerhardt [00:34:03]:
Rob, maybe you put your, maybe subconscious, you organize your examples from favorite to least favorite. We'll see you more.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:34:08]:
I might have done that, but I think the top I was really impressed by. I do think again, I wish the interactive demo had a little more guidance, but I was a little disappointed below the fold. It just. It wasn't bad. And look, our website probably looks kind of similar, but it just felt like that pretty generic image copy. Image copy, right?


Dave Gerhardt [00:34:25]:
Yeah, we have one more.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:34:26]:
We have two more. All right, we can either.


Dave Gerhardt [00:34:30]:
We got to rip through them real quickly.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:34:32]:
Okay. I'm just going to highlight the things that I really like about the websites and each of these that are a little different. So I won't go whole thing.


Dave Gerhardt [00:34:38]:
Wait, did you just accept or decline cookies right there? This is a big question.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:34:42]:
I think. I just honestly don't know. I just hit the button. I honestly don't look most of the times, which is so bad, I just kind of hit the closest button I can. Maybe learning about cookies just make it the most obvious and click if you want them to say yes. Cool. Okay, so first base, I'm going to highlight the best parts of it. One, of course, I'm going to love a take a product or a secondary CTA.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:35:03]:
Super simple upfront. I can see the product and start playing around with it. It is gated. I will give a little knock, a little half point for that. Generally I prefer ungated, but I love the fact that it's secondary CTA. Makes it super easy to find it, play around with it. And then I did want to highlight, so I'm curious to get the audience's reaction to this. And it's a little buried.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:35:23]:
I wish they had this higher up. I really liked this section because so often we're asked just for some, like generic stats, some really quick, easy to understand stats of why should I go with your product, how will I save money? And I feel like this just laid it all out there really quickly, why should I go with them? And then after seeing these high level stats, I can use them to then calculate my own savings. An ROI calculator is nothing new, but I haven't seen it as prevalent as much on the website like that along with right below stats. I just thought it was also a really nice looking ROI calculator. I feel like so often ROI calculators are kind of gross and not the most appealing. I really like the sliding motion, so I could see the range too. Like I kind of get an idea maybe of like, oh, if I'm on the really small range, maybe this isn't for me. Or if I'm on the top range, maybe this makes more sense.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:36:11]:
And then again, not surprising it's gated. But I just thought this was like a really clean way to understand ROI and like what I should be looking at when evaluating this software.


Dave Gerhardt [00:36:20]:
Interesting. I like tools like this. My friend John Short runs this agency, compound growth marketing, and he's a. He has a lot of strong opinions about mid funnel. And I think something that we talked about earlier is a lot of the B2B websites, it's typically either contact sales or go do something else. I like the idea of building tools like optimizely used to have this. I don't know if they do now. I haven't used it forever, but they used to have, like, you could preview their tool on your website.


Dave Gerhardt [00:36:44]:
At drift, we built a way that you could put your URL in and build like a test version of the chatbot on your website. This is an ROI calculator. I think you can bridge the gaps in the funnel by creating tools like this that help people buy. I think this is a great idea.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:36:59]:
Yeah. And I. I've seen a lot of ROI calculators, but usually it's during the sales cycle. I like how upfront this one is on their website and actually that would be my feedback is. I wish this was more apparent. Like, it took a little bit of digging to find it. Cool. Are we good to rate this one?


Dave Gerhardt [00:37:12]:
Yeah, let's rate it. Put your rating in. Mid funnel experts put your rating in. By the way, they have a competitor called second base.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:37:19]:
That would be amazing.


Dave Gerhardt [00:37:20]:
Yeah. You never know. Firstbase.com average rating Dave bought calculating in my head, like a 7.6 average rating. Natalie, what's your rating?


Natalie Marcotullio [00:37:29]:
I was going to do a seven.


Dave Gerhardt [00:37:31]:
All right.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:37:31]:
Again, going with the crowd. I really like the ROI calculator. I feel like it's really easy to justify why I should buy the software, which is very buyer friendly. I love, obviously, the product tour. I wish a few more things were ungated. And then I did have to knock them because I didn't see pricing on it.


Dave Gerhardt [00:37:45]:
They could use Navattic in the future. Okay, go. Last one. We got one more. Then we got lots of Q&A. We got a rip through.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:37:50]:
Okay, last one really quick. So I think this is one of the ones, Dave, that maybe falls under your functional, but maybe not the prettiest of websites.


Dave Gerhardt [00:37:57]:
Well, I'll be the judge of that. You just keep presenting all the side.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:38:01]:
Someone from Taraleap is on here. Not to docket. I think it's still a really cool website, but I think this website does such a sneaky way of showing their product in a lot of different places. So they're like a testimonial platform. I think it's really cool that basically they have just like little testimonials everywhere. So like, obviously again, very much showing the value you're going to get from this. But also they're using their own product. They're out like testimonial, testimonial, testimonial, video version of testimonial.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:38:27]:
A bunch of different ways to showcase what their product does. And then they even have this little chat guy, which is another. I did not realize he was going to speak. And then he even has this little guy that you can then get more testimonial or can it kind of similar to like the comp store of what do you want? You can then show, okay, I have specific questions or like, this is what I'm looking for. I just thought this was a very good example of, again, like, let me show my product as much as possible. I also thought the CTA was very interesting. I'm a little torn on it. I like that they call out there's no pressure call, but then it's like, you better own up to that.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:39:02]:
Like it better not be the CTA. And then you get on and you're actually being hounded by a sales rep.


Dave Gerhardt [00:39:06]:
Yeah, that can happen. Or if you disguise it as it's an assessment, it's a coaching call, and then it's actually just sales. There's a lot happening. There's a lot of videos, a lot of moving parts happening on the site right now.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:39:18]:
That's why I said I'm not going to do this one for the design as much, but the function and actually showing what the product does. I got a very clear understanding just from the homepage of what the product does because they use it so much in the homepage.


Dave Gerhardt [00:39:30]:
I like that. Yeah, I think it's kind of weird. This is the weird part of marketing to me. It's like, are we judging the design? Are we judging the function? It's tough to know. If you really want video testimonials, this might work for you. Find out how. Book a no pressure call. Now that implies that all the other calls are pressure.


Dave Gerhardt [00:39:46]:
Yeah, I like when the call is oriented around helping as opposed to selling.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:39:50]:
It did feel a little infomercially for me at times. That would probably what I docked it as like book a no pressure call now. Remind me, those 03:00 a.m. commercials where it's like, call now to get this CTA felt like it was screaming at me a little bit.


Dave Gerhardt [00:40:02]:
A little bit. Okay, what's your rating, folks? Let's move on. We got to get to the lance. Five out of ten. Craig says five four. Danielle. Oh, my gosh. Danielle for Danielle with the hard for Carl, seven.


Dave Gerhardt [00:40:14]:
Jake with the 4675. This is a lower one on the lower side. I'm going to give it a six. No problem. Works. It's like there's half a turkey sand. Like you really want a good lunch, but you don't have time. There's half a turkey sandwich left in the fridge.


Dave Gerhardt [00:40:27]:
You're just going to slam that real quick before your next meeting. It's going to work. It's going to be fine.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:40:31]:
But sometimes as a buyer, you just want to know it's going to work. Sometimes the design and everything is great, but I've seen websites that are so well designed that I'm almost like, but what do you do? Like, I'm distracted by all the design.


Dave Gerhardt [00:40:42]:
Yeah, there's a lot.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:40:43]:
Yeah.


Dave Gerhardt [00:40:44]:
Did you give your rating?


Natalie Marcotullio [00:40:45]:
Yeah, I said six. Agreed with you.


Dave Gerhardt [00:40:47]:
That's not a real rating. You need to be like 6.3 or.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:40:49]:
Something in my head beforehand. Okay, I'll give it a 6.3.


Dave Gerhardt [00:40:53]:
Okay. All right, let's answer some of these questions first. Most important question. This question is from Craig. Dave, why did you schedule this live event during the open golf tournament? Craig, obviously, the golf has been on tv since 130 in the morning, so I figured I would give Natalie an hour of my day. No big deal. Yeah, you're welcome for that. Let's do this one.


Dave Gerhardt [00:41:13]:
By the way, do these show up? Can you see these when I click on them? All right, there's another note. We're making a list. We have a list. A laundry list of things. This one's from Brody. What's your opinion? Just we're going to rip through these rapid fire. Okay. So what's your opinion, Natalie? Do you feel like pricing should always be on the website or not?


Natalie Marcotullio [00:41:29]:
Yes, but I think when your company's ready for it, when you feel like you have solid pricing and differentiation, then it should be on the website. If you're still experimenting, maybe wait till you have it figured out.


Dave Gerhardt [00:41:39]:
All right, let's see this one. I've struggled to find good examples of service based b. Two b companies. We're an engineering firm. No products to feature. Can you speak to structuring your site around services as opposed to products?


Natalie Marcotullio [00:41:50]:
I think that's the animal I think is how you call it. The second example, that was a really good one. I'll put in the chat. I'll put these all in the chat. If you guys want to play around with the website.


Dave Gerhardt [00:41:58]:
Yeah, do it. I'm hosting. You do that. You put that in the chat. I don't understand. To me, not change, right. The thing that you're selling is just a service and so you are going to lead with the value and the benefit of the service that you provide. In that animal example, it was HubSpot super admins.


Dave Gerhardt [00:42:15]:
Like we got this. We got this thing for you. All right, let's do this one. How do I balance best web journey practices in targeting enterprise ICP, for example? Pricing page is a difficult topic for us because it's all custom.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:42:27]:
I think you show what you can show for the non enterprise packages and then enterprise, you can just say custom. I don't think enterprises really look as pricing as much, but really pricing is just to show to other startup companies that maybe you're not for them, it's more give them a range so you don't waste time on both ends with a startup booking time and then being like, oh my God, this is way too expensive.


Dave Gerhardt [00:42:47]:
Yeah. I think the website journey is all about if you're targeting the enterprise ICP, I think it's all about this is why copy and like what you show really matters a lot. It's, it's how you. It's actually like that animal example where we said right away because they said HubSpot super admins and so like what language can you use to show people? And then I, if the pricing is difficult because it's all custom, I would actually lean into that and try to explain that as opposed to just being like, contact us for pricing. Just being like pricing. I wish we could show you the price here, but there's actually a lot of work we have to do behind the scenes that come up with a custom quote for you. I think you earn some trust if you can lean into that a little bit as it just opposed to being like contact sales to get pricing. What do you think about having public pricing for the first two to three packages and not showing it for the most expensive package? This works fine.


Dave Gerhardt [00:43:34]:
We just saw this. It was in the second to last example you showed, I think that's fine. I would just probably also add some of the language that we just talked about. Here we go. This one's from Anthony. Dave said, the more information, the better. How should websites structure their content to provide comprehensive info while assuring it remains quick and easy to digest? For users that don't have a lot.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:43:54]:
And prefer to skim, I would say give them a little and then give them the option to keep going. So, like, the way I think about this for how we advise customers with interactive demos is the first few steps should only be like five to eight steps. Give them very high level and then give them the option of what they want to explore more and do. So I think start basic, but then have more information if they choose to go down that path.


Dave Gerhardt [00:44:17]:
Yeah. Also, if I could clarify what I've meant there, I actually don't think that. I don't think the goal should be to overwhelm them with information. I don't think, I don't necessarily mean like, the more. More is always better. I think there's a max and I actually think something that you have to realize with the website is, to me, the goal of the website is not to just blast out a ton of information. The website is a vehicle to hopefully get someone to hang out with you and spend time and talk to you about your business. And so at some point you have to kind of say, yeah, this is all we're going to put on the website.


Dave Gerhardt [00:44:46]:
Like, we can't. We don't need a page for everything. We want to make it easy for people to find the content that we need. But the goal is not to explain every little thing that your product can do on the website. Oh, this is like a, this is a layup for you.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:45:00]:
I did see this one.


Dave Gerhardt [00:45:01]:
How effective are interactive demos? How effective would you say are interactive demos? Lady who runs growth at interactive demo company.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:45:10]:
It's hard for me not to say very right now. I will try to sum it up with some stats and then maybe go to our website if you want to learn more. I will say we have about a 40% to 60% engagement rate. So anyone who goes to your website, about 40% to 60% will engage with the demo and about usually ten to 30% conversion rate. So of those people who go through the demo, about eight to 30% will convert to another CTA. I could go on a lot more about interactive demos. We got a lot of questions, but I'm also happy to talk after. If you want to learn more about interactive demos.


Dave Gerhardt [00:45:39]:
Very effective. Short answer. How do you frame a website as your product expands to more solutions? Let me take this one. Dave from Burlington. Let me take this one. This is a question that's come up a bunch in Exit Five. So I've had an opinion on it recently. I think the goal here would be to have a homepage that generally explains who you are and what you do.


Dave Gerhardt [00:46:01]:
But then you have, I don't know if you call it product pages or solution pages, but let me pull this. If you go to Webflow, and I know this only because I did a podcast recently with Shane, their CMO. But if you go to webflow.com is a good example where like they explain your site should do more than look good. And okay, clearly this is a website building tool. But if you go to solutions, they now have webflow for freelancers, webflow for startups, webflow for enterprise, webflow for agencies, and now like each one of those, you can say, okay, I'm an agency, so here's how webflow works for me. I would do something like that. Do you have anything to add to that?


Natalie Marcotullio [00:46:36]:
I was about to say same thing. I actually did a presentation on this last week and I think solution or like use case specific pages are really effective for that.


Dave Gerhardt [00:46:44]:
Okay, we gotta do one more. Do you see one you want?


Natalie Marcotullio [00:46:49]:
I think this is interesting. How do you balance difference between creating value of the people who work in the company versus just giving data? Trying to say like how much would you give versus how much should you gate?


Dave Gerhardt [00:46:59]:
What's your opinion on gating content? No, this one. How do you balance the difference between creating value of the people who work in the company versus just giving data? I don't know if this is about like the knowledge workers. I don't know. We're gonna have to skip this one. I don't think I could give a good answer.


Natalie Marcotullio [00:47:13]:
I originally took it as like, how do you balance more value based messaging versus data? But I think I misinterpreted that one.

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