As a BtoB publisher, you know that your website is the hub of your digital-first publishing strategy. As such, it requires diligent attention—and the kind of foresight that makes a site redesign last. If you’re looking to redesign your BtoB website, you want to do it right, so when it’s time to make changes, you’re not looking at yet another redesign, you’re simply looking at making some updates.

Here’s a checklist to get you started:

1)   Responsive Design: Today’s readers access content from a variety of devices and mobile usage seems to be infinitely on the rise. Don’t risk losing your audience to competitors with stellar mobile adaptation. Design for mobile.

• Make sure your redesign allows for multi-tier taxonomy tagging, so that readers can find what they are seeking and the related products they didn’t know they were looking for, while concise tagging allows for better ranking in search results.
• Double check that your site allows you to generate short and relevant URLs for content, in order to ensure top rankings on search engines.

3)   Speed: Attention spans are only getting shorter. If your website doesn’t load within seconds, your potential visitor will move onto one that does. Robust infrastructure and skilled development should translate to speedy load times. Look at examples of websites from your potential provider. Do they load fast enough for you? If not, look elsewhere.

4)   PCI Compliant eCommerce: First, your site needs to incorporate eCommerce. If customers can complete purchases right from your site, then they are more inclined to stick around, keep shopping and return for more. But, that eCommerce capability needs to be PCI compliant, for the safety of you and your customers.

5)   Easy Integrations: Does your site integrate easily with your email service provider and other third-party publishing tools? It should. If you have to spend a bunch of time disseminating your content and navigating data silos, you’re perpetually one step behind. A strong website will allow for multiple integrations that support your strategy.

6)   Exceptional Workflow: A SaaS Enterprise Publishing Platform should allow you to easily create, edit and publish content across multiple channels.

7)   User Management: Publishing today is more about knowing your audience than ever. Your website should enable you to track registrations, manage subscriptions, gather user data—and employ that data to create greater engagement.

8)   Community: It’s a social world and it gets more so, every day. Not only should your website enable users to access your content and site via social media or interact with you on their preferred platform, but it should also encourage community on site, with blogs, forums, product ratings and recommendations, polls and other user-generated content.

9)   Revenue Diversity: You’ve likely learned that contemporary publishers survive and thrive by cultivating a range of revenue streams. Even if you are not ready to jump into events or buyers guides etc., you will arrive there with a strong digital-first strategy. When you are ready, you’ll want your website to be capable of supporting that revenue stream. So, select a platform that will grow with you.

10)  24-7 Support. You are a publisher, not a designer or developer. Make sure your website comes with ongoing support, because changes and challenges are inevitable. You don’t want a design and drop version. You want a design and drive site with the support to stay with you all through the journey.