How Successful B2B Tech Startups Create Scalable Marketing Websites

Scalable Marketing Websites in a Nutshell

The scalability of a website refers to its growth in terms of structure, number of pages and amount of content (without adding much complexity).

Or to put it more generally:

A website's scalability is defined by how efficiently it can get adapted to changing or growing business needs.

A scalable website saves fast-moving startups scarce design and development resources, allowing teams to easily maintain and grow it in proportion to business growth.

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Example:

A new startup was founded and needs to communicate its message, attract investors and get in touch with customers. Consequently, a marketing website is needed. The startup is still at an early stage. Their product changes quickly and it increases in complexity. Information on the website needs to update accordingly:

• A career page is required to better attract the right candidates
• New product features need to get introduced
• Landingpages for campaigns have to get generated
• New blog articles need to get published for better Google rankings
• Testimonials and client logos have to be added to build trust with prospects and to simplify sales processes

Ideally, all these changes need to be made efficiently with a simple page editor and CMS. So how can you ensure scalability and make sure that your website will be a great fundament for the future?

7 Tips for Founders and Marketing Managers to Ensure Scalability for Their Marketing Website

1. Define a Clear Long-Term Strategy

Before working on a new visual design for your website, think thoroughly about 2-3 specific goals for the website. Make sure your goals align with those of other stakeholders.

Take the time to conduct research. Think about technical and structural requirements and discuss them with your designer and developer. Keep in mind not only the requirements for the upcoming few months but think about how you can leverage your website long-term. Experienced web designers and agencies can help you in this step of the process.

2. Do Not Skip Wireframing

Wireframes allow teams to iterate quickly (without getting caught up in visual details) and explore the best solutions on how to structure their website usefully. They will force a thought process in your team, helping to identify structural and technical requirements early.

💡 Wireframes can speed up any web design process tremendously if done right.

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3. Do Not Underestimate The Value of a Strong Visual Brand Identity

Avoid at all costs having to work on your logo, brand colours, fonts or overall look & feel of your brand at the start of a web design project or even after the launch of your website. Those are decisions that have to be made, BEFORE working on your website.

4. When it Comes to Web Design, Think in Components

For each section on every page of your site, think about how you can reuse certain layouts. Convert them into reusable components. Are there elements that can be repurposed on landing pages or product pages? Make sure they can get automatically synchronized.

Take a look at this Newsletter Signup section from my own website:

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Do you see the green highlight? This means that I converted a specific part of the page into a (in Webflow) so-called Symbol. I can now use it on several pages, and if I replace for example the photograph on the shown page, it will automatically update on all other pages where I use this component.

5. Take Into Consideration the Constraints and Opportunities of Your Chosen CMS

If you followed me here on LinkedIn for a while, you know that I am a big advocate of Webflow. Mostly, because it allows me to build websites, without writing code, and in the way, my clients and I envision a website in the design file. However, all tools have constraints. Knowing them, and sometimes for example slightly adjusting a design can save hours of development time later on.

One example could be database limits:

Example: The maximum number of Collections you can have in your Webflow CMS database.

6. Create Clean Code

Make sure to follow a set of guidelines and strategies that make the code of your site organized, reusable and easy to understand by developers, designers, and marketers. If you hire a designer to create your website, make sure that an understanding of HTML and CSS exists, and that a clear design system is used.

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7. Think About All the Different Ways Your Content or Marketing Team Wants to Use Your CMS

Let’s take case studies for example:

Your marketing team needs to be able to create and publish posts fast and autonomously, without having to consult a designer or having to create Jira tickets for your dev team because of small necessary content changes.

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Clearly define the required flexibility for dynamic CMS-generated pages, such as case studies on your website.

Is it really just a headline, a few paragraphs and an image that needs to be added?

What about thumbnail images, title tags, meta descriptions, the option to add forms for lead capturing, or categories for filtering and recommending related posts?

Smart CMS setup -> Happy marketing team.

Conclusion

It's all about planning, knowing the tools you work with, designing reusable components, creating clean code and making the right choices regarding your CMS setup.

If you follow the tips mentioned above, you increase the likelihood that your website will serve your business long-term. In fact, without the need for complex and expansive ongoing maintenance or worst-case scenario: A relaunch every few years.

In order to create a successful website, there other equally important factors, such as copywriting and UI design. But that's for another day. :)

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