How To Generate More Leads From Your Website

One of the common misconceptions we hear within the web design industry is that clients think a website’s sole purpose is to be a brand’s ‘brochureware’. Brochureware refers to websites or pages that have been created by simply taking an brand’s printed brochure and translating it directly online without regard for the possibilities of improving upon the new medium. In some respects, this is fine, what better way to bring attention to your brand than through the power of online and social media right?

What is often overlooked though is the fundamental purpose of a website – lead generation. Imagine having a salesperson that looks smart, reflects your brand’s personality through their attire and provides a few quirky one-liners but is hopeless at nurturing a lead and converting it into a sale. This same analogy can be applied to a website. It’s all well and good having a page that looks brilliant, communicates your brand theme and has some useful one-liners but if it is failing to generate leads that ultimately can be converted into profitable dollars then frankly, what’s the point?

Here we’ll show you how you can take your website to its full potential and ensure that it is completely optimized to become a lead-generating beast.

1. Identify Your Target Market

Yes, websites have target markets much like products and services do! The good news is that if you have completed your marketing strategy accurately, you can simply migrate the fundamentals directly towards your digital strategy. A great way to guarantee that you are correctly identifying and targeting your audience is to formulate a buyer persona. Buyer personas help you concentrate on suitable prospects, notify your target customers’ needs with product development, and provide useful information to all of your employees as to who your customers are.

2. Design Is Everything

It’s always best to start with the fundamentals when it comes to a website and that starts with design. Design encompasses many elements which we have detailed below which potential clients can resonate and engage with before leading to a conversion. Taking learnings from your newly discovered buyer persona, one can then apply the following design elements more accurately.

• Sitemap & Navigation – In a previous blog of ours, Sitemap and Navigation That Can Help Drive Sales, we highlight the importance of sitemaps and navigation for a high-functioning website. The key to a successful navigation structure is ensuring that you are effectively guiding your customers through your online material whilst avoiding hurdles or unnecessary ‘roadblocks’ that will stem the flow of information and hamper the user experience. A golden rule of navigation structure that we follow is ensuring a visitor can land on any of your pages in 3 clicks or less.
• Implement Images & Whitespace – A website that features multiple pages with walls of text will not develop lead generation or conversions. Engagement is a key aspect when designing a website – how are you going to keep visitors on your page longer? By cleverly using relevant images and making use of white space to break up the text, a website can grasp & maintain attention that may lead to a conversion.
• What’s Your Purpose? – Each page of your website should serve a clear and concise purpose. Is your About Us page telling a compelling story? Does your Products/Services page deliver effective and convincing information? Identifying each page’s purpose and effectively producing relevant content will put you in good stead for successful lead generation.      
• Consistency Is Key – We don’t mean to state the obvious here but a cohesive, fluid website will benefit you greatly compared to one that features disconnecting messaging and themes. Simple things like font styles, font sizes, brand themes & colours and general formatting will subconsciously resonate cohesively with your audience and make your brand notably memorable.
• Be Responsive – We can’t stress this enough but always, but always, always ensure that your website will be compatible with mobile devices before undertaking its design. With over 50% of all internet searches now being conducted on a mobile device it’s crucial that your website is mobile-friendly and optimized.

3. Be Strategic With Your Digital Channels

Your website is similar to a brick-and-mortar retail store. It brand focused, showcases all of your products/services and provides useful information should your customers need it. This useful information is usually in the form of brochures, booklets and marketing collateral which customers can take away, assess and review before making a buying decision.

The same can be said for your website’s digital channels. Social media, content marketing and EDM campaigns are brilliant ways of providing useful information to your audience as well as maintaining engagement and promoting specials.

Social media is a fantastic way to engage with your audience in a fun, meaningful and exciting ways that help to build trust and loyalty. Brands that have a substantial following are basically marketing directly to their target audience for free.  

EDMs for example is a cost-effective, highly informative and investment-savvy way to generate leads. Research from 2018 suggests that every $1 spent on EDMs saw a return on investment of $43. EDMs are also a brilliant way to track success for metrics like open rates, actions that were taken after opening and other valuable data.

4. Create Effective Landing Pages

How would you employ floor space in a brick-and-mortar retail store? Would you make sure that every section is being used effectively to showcase your amazing brand and product range with customer service interwoven to further enhance the shopping experience?  Absolutely!

The same can be said for a website. Focus on your core offering with supportive landing pages that further provide useful information to potential customers. The key components for an effective landing page include;

• Informative headlines that grab attention
• Beautiful engaging imagery and media
• Excellent copywriting, rich in SEO
• Offering a unique selling proposition (USP) i.e. your point of difference
• A call to action (CTA) that makes visitors want to click to where you want them to navigate to i.e. your product page or contact form

5. Let’s Chat

A growing feature on many websites is the live chat function that allows you to engage directly with a company representative. This channel is convenient for customers as email communications can take hours, days or weeks for a response whilst phone calls can be intimidating or difficult during work hours. Live chat on the other hand has a response time of around 2 minutes, so it’s no wonder that over 30% of consumers now expect to see a live chat function on every website.

Live chat also has the capability of increasing your leads and conversions. A research study found that B2B companies with a live chat saw a 20% increase in conversions. Much like the sales assistant in our brick-and-mortar analogy, the live chat function gives customers the opportunity to directly liaise with an online sales assistant that can handle any queries and guide an individual to making a buying decision.  

6. Build That Trust

For a new website, building trust will be an important feature in your digital marketing journey. Studies have shown that 92% of people will read testimonials before considering a purchase which can lead to generating roughly 60% more revenue for a business. So, it’s easy to see why this should be a big part of your digital marketing strategy.

For existing websites, showing the success of your business by strategically placing positive reviews throughout your website will build trust with visitors which can help with lead generation and ultimately sales.

7. Don’t Be Shy With Your CTAs

As mentioned in our Creating Effective Landing Pages section, CTAs are a great way to navigate and instruct visitors around your webpage. The easier a website makes visitors take the next step, the more people will do so. This in essence allows you to direct your audience to lead capturing elements, like subscriber information or contact forms, where you are essentially creating a warm lead. Other CTAs may prompt an already warm lead directly to your product/service page where they can begin to undertake their purchasing decision. And for those that need that little push, a CTA where a promotion is being offered in exchange for customer details or having a visitor share your product/service with their network in exchange for a discount is always beneficial!

8. Test! Test! Test!

Don’t fall into the trap and think just because you have implemented the above suggestions that everything is now going to be smooth sailing. Knowing that your website is meeting your strategic goals whilst also resonating effectively with your audience requires constant user experience testing (UX). There are several ways you can test your website, but we think the following are most helpful.

• Ask Your Audience – Don’t be shy in asking what your customers think. Sending follow-up emails about their shopping experience will greatly facilitate in identifying where issue lie and where opportunities lie. If you have the opportunity to communicate with your customers in person or over the phone, even better!
• Look For 3^rd Party Feedback – Seeking out UX professionals is a great way to gain an unbiased opinion of the performance of your website and whether it will create leads.
• Compare – Quite simply, see what your top performing competitor is doing. Identify and learn what features may be working for them that you can incorporate too.

So there you have it, 8 great ways to generate more leads for your website. Instead of seeing a website as merely a billboard that generates a small percentage of your total sales, business owners should see the opportunity that a website has in significantly growing their business and generating invaluable leads.

If you need help with improving your websites lead generation ability, then why not get in touch with us? As a business owner, your time is valuable, and you may just not have the ability to create or update a website that will work for you while also running your day-to-day business. That’s where Strong Digital comes in.

Based in Brisbane, we understand your unique needs as a local business and we’re here to help you succeed.

We’ve got zeal for creating our best work with a clear purpose to help you evolve your marketing strategy to include a website that generates leads and drives your target customers to purchase your goods and services. So if you’re ready to create long-term value for your business, get in touch with us and see what we can do for you!