Growing your 3PL Business Using your Website

Your website is the face of your third-party logistics (3PL) warehouse and often the first experience a potential customer will have with your brand. In the 2021 3PL Benchmark Report, it was noted that 67% of 3PLs use their company website as a driver of new business. With this in mind, it’s critical that 3PLs put their best digital foot forward and offer an online experience that allows users to find the information they need, while providing you with the information you need to reach out to them as a potential prospect. In short, 3PLs need to turn their website into a lead generation magnet that will provide the information users want and collect the information 3PLs need to sell warehousing services to them.

Optimizing a 3PL Website to Generate Leads

Clear NAP

NAP is an acronym for Name, Address, Phone and it should always be clearly visible and consistent. This means that on your website, the business brand name, the corporate address, and the contact phone number should be easily found on the contact page of the website. It is common for most businesses to include a link to the contact page in the footer. However, it is important to make it as easily accessible as possible. Oftentimes, links to the contact page can be found in the header through buttons like the home page logo design a click to call button on mobile responsive websites, or through a contact us button (often found in the top right corner for B2B websites).

A clear NAP will give potential prospects the necessary information to reach out immediately, and because it can readily be accessible from virtually every page, it can help the user at every point of their buying cycle. If they know they want to call the second they see your home page, your phone number can help. If they need to do a little bit of research about where your 3PL is located, the address in the footer will help. If they finish reading your offering or about pages and are convinced to pull the trigger, there certainly should be a click to call button accessible to reach out to your team immediately.

Furthermore, search engines like google also take the information from these contact pages to index and help your business rank in search engine results.

CTAs & Forms

Call-to-action, or CTA, describes the often-hyperlinked action at the end of any given webpage. They will use an action verb that the user should take, and on websites will look like a button, or clickable image that will direct the next steps of the user. CTAs like call now, contact us, or request a quote, are great CTAs for warehouses looking to speak to potential customers.

A CTA is often used in tandem with some sort of form on the website that allows you to collect information that can then be used by your team to direct the outreach of a sales conversation. Fields like name, phone number, and email address are the top three most common requested fields on a from, with fields like purchase timeline and job title among other commonly requested fields in B2B forms.

Pro tip: Remember, the more fields you require users to fill out, the lower the conversion rate of the form. A study from Hubspot showed that conversion rate improves by almost half when the number of form fields are reduced from four fields to three.

Information Clearly Presented

Important for both user experience and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), presenting business information clearly is imperative for any website, let alone a B2B 3PL warehousing website. Try not to include large blocks of texts on a home page without good reason. Large blocks of text can be difficult to read, and your potential customers can get bored easily. It is better to be clear and concise when presenting information about your business. Who you are, what you do, and how best to contact your business are the main points that should be tackled up front.

Pro tip: It is a best practice to create longer form content on the inner pages of your website while keeping the home page or top-level pages with concise information for drive more leads and create a better customer experience.

Value Propositions

Another important aspect of generating leads from your website comes from your value propositions or competitive differentiators. It seems obvious, but many websites don’t showcase their most important features front and center but hide them deep in the services section. If a potential customer can’t find your value right off the bat, they won’t go searching for it on their own. Your 3PL must make the case for themselves instead of hoping that a prospect will be willing to do additional research to make sure their potential logistics partner (you) can provide all the fulfillment criteria they need.

If there is an important service value that you provide to customers, especially it it’s one that none of your competitors do, then you should feature it readily and visibly on the home page. A bulleted list of value propositions is a tried-and-true method to showcase all service values that your 3PL can offer to a customer.

Social Proof

Social proof for a warehouse is the information that lets a user know that you can be a trusted third-party logistics partner and can come in several forms. Reviews and testimonials from partners you’ve worked with in the past is an amazing form of social proof that shows the prospective customer how others have worked with you before and seen positive outcomes.

Another form of social proof can be a software badge. Letting customers know which credible and robust software your business uses may inspire confidence and convince them to do business with you. This is especially true if their business requires specific integrations that your warehouse can handle or if you use software they are already familiar with and, thus, don’t require extensive training on to use.

3PL Lead Gen Conclusion

If your 3PL website isn’t generating leads for new business, then you’re already behind 67% of your competitors. Some tips to improve your website for lead generation include optimizing the NAP, CTAs and forms, present warehouse offerings clearly with value propositions, and offer social proof of happy current customers. If you’d like to learn more about how to improve your 3PL by learning from your competitors, download the 3PL Benchmark Report.