I don’t love airports; I don’t know many people who do. But you have to admire the way most of them function. Consider the challenges they face: thousands of passengers, each with his or her own itinerary; hundreds of flights; dozens of gates; and assorted services, from baggage and security to food service and gifts. Passengers may be passing through for the very first time, everyone has time constraints, and live assistance can be hard to find.

Sound familiar? Change a few words and it could describe a successful B-to-B website: lots of options and lots of visitors, each with his or her own agenda. Like an airport, a B-to-B website is just a means to an end for folks with places to go. But unlike the airport, where the traveler has already paid for a ticket and is obligated to stay until flight time, a website visitor can leave with a click, taking his or her business someplace else.

Most airports are miracles of site design. Some use a hub-and-spoke architecture to shorten the distance between gates. Those that are strung like beads—LAX, DFW, and KCI for example—provide bus or rail shuttles to speed travel between terminals. And within terminals many offer moving walkways to speed up transit. As in an airport, a website visitor wants to get from point to point without unnecessary stops in between. In other words, the fewer clicks the less frustration, which means happier customers and, potentially, more business.

Fewer clicks is fine but only if people know which clicks will get them where they’re going. That’s another area in which airports excel. Almost anywhere in any airport, you can turn 360 degrees and know where you are. Signage is large, clear, and ubiquitous. Terminals, gates, ticketing, baggage claim, restrooms, shops, and ground transportation are all clearly marked.

Effective website builders design for ease of use, but no one knows your customers like you do. Be a customer and tour your website. Is it clear? Simple? Efficient? Do links take you where they say they will? Are navigation tools available everywhere, or do visitors have to backtrack to reach their destinations? And finally—this is the tough part—will it all make sense to someone who doesn’t know your site and offerings as well as you do? It’s a useful exercise, especially if the answers aren’t what you’d like them to be. The good news is that it may not take many incremental sales to make up the cost of renovation.