Prioritizing Web Accessibility = B2B Brand Success

Today’s top websites still are failing to meet accessibility standards. In fact, only 2% of all websites meet best practice guidelines.

And with 69% of users reporting abandoning websites due to lack of accessibility, it is paramount to your B2B business’s success to establish a digital marketing strategy that includes accessibility.

Gartner projects, “By 2023, digital products in full WCAG Level 2 compliance will outperform their market competitors by 50%.” A fully accessible website will not only benefit people with varying disabilities, but it’s good for business.

Here’s how:

Improves Customer Experience (CX)

By making digital accessibility a foundational principle of all marketing from the start, your organization can build a next-generation user experience that stands out from the crowd with simplicity and ease-of-use that appeals to all consumer demographics.

It’s also important to consider that accessible design removes barriers for every user, not just people with disabilities. Your prospective buyer might browse your website with their sound turned off, or they might use a small touchscreen to fill out a web form. Some prospects may have arthritis, and they might prefer using a keyboard for navigation. Others might have low vision, so they might magnify their screen when browsing.

When Tesco, the multinational grocery and general merchandise retailer entered the online grocery market, they wanted early on to ensure Tesco.com was accessible and able to serve every possible customer. When they built a faster version of their website with a more intuitive navigation structure, clear descriptive link text, simpler language, and fewer images, the brand discovered that fully sighted customers found it easier to use this new interface and watch their sales steady increase.

 

 

Boosts SEO

When you optimize your website to be accessible, you can reap a load of SEO benefits. The goal of an accessible website is to deliver the same information to your audience, regardless of ability. SEO, in some ways, has the goal of delivering that information to search engines. Search engines reward accessibility features like header tags, video transcriptions, image alt text, descriptive link text, structured content, etc.

This American Life radio show which broadcasts to more than 500 US radio stations, with 2.1 million listeners worldwide began to create audio transcripts of its archive of recorded radio programs, going back to 1995. Each transcript was posted as a separate web page that contained additional information about each program. A study into the additional benefits over a two-year period resulted in:

• 6.68% of organic search traffic
• 4.2% increase in unique visitors to the site
• 89% increase in inbound links

 

 

Secures Your Competitive Edge

There are over one billion people living with disabilities around the world who have an estimated spending power of more than $6 trillion. By building an accessible website, you’re widening your audience and increasing your prospective customers especially when people want to buy from brands, they feel care about them.

With 63% of consumers preferring to purchase products and services from companies that stand for a purpose, and reflect their own values and beliefs, the sooner you start implementing accessibility across your B2B digital marketing strategy, the earlier you start reaping the rewards.

For more guidance, you can refer to the White Paper, Digital Accessibility Buyer’s Guide, we helped essential Accessibility, a comprehensive digital accessibility-as-a-service platform, design. It’s a great resource to help businesses understand and evaluate the various types of digital accessibility vendors and their capabilities.

 

 

If you need help prioritizing your website’s accessibility, please contact us today. We are here to help.