Turning prospects into customers is made easier because of your website. The number of visitors that come to your website is important, but what matters more is being able to convert visitors into leads. If you’re not successful in making these conversions, it’s difficult to get new customers and grow your business accordingly. This is why it’s so important to design a website that doesn’t just look great but has lead generation in mind.
If you feel that conversions are lacking, take an objective look at your website and assess if it’s part of the problem. What does your current website look like? Do each of the pages guide visitors to take action, or are they unclear in what the user should do next? Are you creating custom landing pages for each campaign? Do you have tools that automatically pull customer info and add it to your database?
Once you start looking at your website from a different perspective, you’ll probably find that there are many opportunities you are not taking advantage of. Fortunately, you can make simple adjustments that will make your site more conversion-focused. Get ready to watch the leads roll in!
Best Tips for Creating a Lead Generation Website
To build a website that converts visitors into leads, you need to optimize it accordingly. Below are the principles of an effective lead-generating website.
Lead Generation Forms
Your lead forms are responsible for collecting contact information. This information is obtained willingly, of course, which is the whole purpose of lead forms. By allowing contacts to opt in, they’re actively showing interest in your product or service. Genuine leads are more valuable because they are more likely to turn into loyal customers down the road.
Including lead forms on your website is important, but you also need to make it easy for visitors to convert. To do this, embed your lead generation forms directly on your website. It’s most common for lead forms to go on landing pages, but you can add them anywhere they will be effective, such as on the footer of your website or a Contact Us page.
Form Scraping Tool
Once you’ve built and embedded your forms, you need a way to collect and track submissions. To do this, you’ll need a scraping tool, which instantly captures form submissions and adds them to your contact database. With an updated database, you can effectively follow up with leads through a drip email campaign.
There are many different scraping tools, so play around with a few to see which one you like best. One of our personal favorites is HubSpot’s Collected Forms tool. This free tool lets you know when you’ve received a new submission, and it will place the submission into your contacts database. From there, you can send out lead nurturing emails to move contacts through the funnel.
Calls to Action
When visiting a website, visitors usually have some type of action in mind. They may be looking to buy a product, sign up for a service or simply learn more about a particular topic. Other times, however, people simply land on a website and have no clue as to what they want to do. Your job is to guide visitors where you want them to go.
Your call to action tells users what they should do next. This is helpful for visitors because it keeps them on track without feeling lost or overwhelmed. Because your visitors do have different reasons for visiting your site, you’ll benefit from having several different CTAs. That said, you do want one primary CTA that exists above the fold.
Your primary call to action is the No. 1 thing you want users to do. Do you want them to sign up for a free trial? Create an account? Download your ebook? Think about your goal and what visitors can do to help you reach it.
Gated Offers
Gated offers allow you to request basic information from the contact in exchange for your content. Use gated offers on your landing pages, which are the core of your lead generation strategy. Every marketing campaign should be tied to a specific landing page. The more you have, the more opportunities there are to convert visitors into leads.
Also, always follow good landing page practices so that you make the most of each one. Key components include share buttons, social proof, clear, concise copy and a simple design. For landing page designs that inspire creativity, read our post.
Pop-Up Forms
Pop-ups don’t have the best reputation, but there is a place for them. As long as you use pop-ups in the correct way, you won’t bother visitors. Pay close attention to where you place the forms and the type you use – welcome mat, overlay modal, slide-in box, top banner. Most importantly, the pop-up should feel natural rather than disruptive.
Here are a few more tips to keep in mind when creating pop-up forms.
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Offer something valuable and relevant so that users don’t feel interrupted during their visit
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Time your pop-ups accordingly, such as when a user makes a certain action or stays on the page for a certain length of time
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Use language that feels natural and human
Social Proof
The primary goal of your website is to convert visitors, so give them a nudge in this direction using social proof. You are asking people to hand over their information, so give them some reassurance before asking for their digits. This reassurance comes from:
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Customer reviews and testimonials. These short quotes come from real customers and can be placed on your website, landing pages, etc. To make your testimonials look most genuine, add a photo of the customer along with their name, company and job title.
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Case studies. More in-depth compared to testimonials, case studies are full stories of how your brand helped a particular client. The case study can be written or told through video. Include important metrics to show your effectiveness.
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Client logos. As long as they are well-known, client logos are worth putting on your landing pages. This instantly shows that you’ve worked with major clients.
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Trust seals. These symbols assure visitors that their information is safe with you.
Conclusion
As important as an attractive website is, you need more than this if you plan on using your site to convert visitors into leads. An optimized website, multiple calls to action and landing pages that are tied to various campaigns are all effective ways to increase leads. Remember to test your landing pages to see what works best for your audience. With continued adjustments and improvements, your website will bring you more and higher quality leads.
