How to use website social proof: strategies and examples that work
Nov 27, 2024
Blend and Supply Pilot worked together to create a hugely impactful website built on HubSpot CMS (part of HubSpot Content Hub). In less than 12 months, their new website has enabled them to address an entirely new area of their market. This has resulted in a 34% increase in high-intent MQLs, and a significant increase in pipeline.
Our work with Supply Pilot secured HubSpot's 2023 Semiannual Impact Award for Product Excellence.
Supply Pilot helps businesses become more successful and sustainable through supplier collaboration. The brand was originally born as “Solutions for Retail Brands” in 2006 after its founders became frustrated with the consistent disconnect between brands and manufacturers. Since then, the company has worked with some of the largest, leading retailers in the world such as Walmart, ASDA, and John Lewis, to implement their transformational process and award-winning supplier collaboration software. This enables retailers to work with suppliers more effectively and improve quality, compliance, system or process transformation, and sustainability.
Previously, Supply Pilot was almost exclusively targeting some of the largest retailers in the world. However, using their unique approach to accelerate impact through collaboration, they identified the opportunity to help retailers, consumer brands, and large manufacturers drive positive, sustainable change in their products and supply chain.
Sustainability is a common challenge for all businesses when typically 80%+ of the impact comes from their supply chain. The issue addressed by Supply Pilot is to engage hundreds or thousands of suppliers at pace and scale.
To seize growth opportunities outside of its existing target market, Supply Pilot knew they needed to reimagine the company's identity and go-to-market strategy. At the same time, they had to retain their market-leading position in supplier engagement for retail brands.
To expand its addressable market, Supply Pilot simplifyied their brand to make it accessible to more retailers, CPG brands, and large manufacturers. This would ultimately pave the way for their new go-to-market strategy.
Armed with their new brand, Supply Pilot's next step was identifying how to reach their new, broader audience. To grow at the desired rate, they knew they had to use inbound demand generation to create and capture demand in their buyers' channels. The foundation of this was their website.
Supply Pilot already had a migrated website on HubSpot CMS, but it performed poorly and wasn’t optimised for inbound conversions. Despite that, they understood that HubSpot CMS was extremely powerful and wanted to continue to use the platform and truly maximise its potential.
Supply Pilot knew that Blend were the HubSpot website agency they needed to bring their new brand to life digitally. They quickly engaged with Blend to design and build a website encompassing their new identity and maximise inbound conversions.
Blend created a website that enables Supply Pilot to address their new market of manufacturing and CPG brands, whilst remaining relevant to their traditional retail clients. The website enhances discoverability and maximises conversions.
There were four key components of the project.
The first step of any website project is to devise an effective website strategy to inform design, content, and development. Supply Pilot has an experienced in-house marketing team that we collaborated with on the core elements of the website strategy, including:
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Supply Pilot wrote their own website copy but understood that it needed to be optimised for the web. Blend collaborated with Supply Pilot to modify and adapt their copy so that it:
Effectively communicating Supply Pilot's new brand on the web was a top priority for Blend. As with every website we create, we balance aesthetics and memorability with an intuitive user experience.
Blend’s creative team quickly got to work on adapting the new brand and designing a website that:
We focused on developing Supply Pilot’s website with performance, scalability, and usability in mind. When built correctly, HubSpot CMS provides one of the best editing experiences on the market. As leading HubSpot website developers, we utilised HubSpot CMS’ full stack of tools, and were able to create a website that has the right balance of individuality and ease of use.
Features used include:
The resources hub was particularly important for Supply Pilot. They wanted to serve buyers with a highly tailored experience, which they can filter by industry, role, and stage in the buying journey. HubDB was the perfect solution for this, and Blend was able to leverage it to build a custom resource hub that’s easy to use and maintain.
As well as being centred around customers, we built the website with Google Core Web Vitals in mind. This ensures both on-page and off-page SEO work in tandem to increase discoverability.
After launching the new website into a wider and more competitive market, it has delivered exceptional commercial results:
I’m extremely proud of the results from the new website. Blend had an efficient process and impressive ability to bring our solution to life digitally. This has played a crucial role in expanding our market and driving commercial success.
David Taylor
Sales and Marketing Director
Supply Pilot’s partnership with Blend on the website has had an impact commercially, operationally, and strategically:
