Optimizing your website for lead generation should be a no-brainer. However, it's not as simple as adding a "Click Here" button to your homepage and watching leads flood in.
Marketers and designers should instead take a more strategic approach. Let's look at some quick ways to optimize your website for lead generation.
Creating a website that generates leads
In order to optimize our website, we must first gain a basic understanding of lead generation. How does a casual website visitor become a lead?
A lead generation process typically begins when a website visitor clicks on a call-to-action (CTA) on one of your website pages or blog posts. Visitors are directed to a landing page that includes a form to collect their contact information. Upon submitting the form, the visitor is directed to a thank-you page.
After going over the basics of lead generation, let's move on to the details. To create a lead generation website from scratch, follow these steps.
1. Define your goal
Think about your goal before creating a lead generation website. The main goal is, of course, to generate leads, but you should get even more specific.
How do you want visitors to use your website? Is it important to educate the buyer about your product or industry?
By submitting a form and providing their contact information, you can offer them a free resource like an ebook or whitepaper.
Maybe you want to increase the number of people who sign up for your product. Creating compelling landing pages and sign-up forms with strong calls-to-action will be necessary here.
You should consider your lead generation goals when planning which elements to include on your lead generation website.
2. Research CMS tools
Lead generation websites have a clear goal: to generate leads for your business. In other words, you need a CMS that makes it easy to capture and convert leads.
CMS tools with built-in lead generation optimizations are the best for lead generation. To track and measure your lead generation efforts, your lead generation tool should include forms - sign-up forms, contact forms, and more - email marketing capabilities, live chat, and built-in analytics.
You'll also want to look for a CMS tool that's easy to use if you're not a designer or don't have one on your team. Consider one that has drag-and-drop functionality or a built-in theme.
It will be easy to create a functional and attractive website without any coding or website development experience.
3. Design a landing page
After you've created your lead generation website, it's time to build your first landing page. A landing page that converts should be easy to set up and optimize with your CMS tool.
You must have the following elements on your landing page:
- Headline that grabs attention
- A few lines of copy
- Key benefits outlined in bullet points
- An image of the product
- A strong CTA button
Increasing your website's lead generation
After you've set up your lead generation website, let's look at 9 simple ways to increase leads on your website.
1. Include forms on the most popular pages
In order to track your success and determine the areas where you need improvement, it's important to benchmark your current state of lead generation before you begin.
You might not even realize that some of your pages are excellent lead generators.
Audit your lead generators to find out where most of your online traffic and outreach comes from. Visitors to a business may come from the following places:
- Email marketing - You might receive traffic from users who click through from one of your emails.
- Social media - One of your social media profiles might generate traffic from users who engage with your campaign.
- Live chat - Customers might reach out to your customer service team through a live chat window on your website.
- Blog posts - Your best-performing blog posts might generate traffic.
Your landing pages should do everything they can to nurture visitors' interests once you identify where your leads are coming from.
Suppose you track your leads using an analytics tool.
Next, you should update the pages they're visiting with content that keeps them on your website and keeps them engaged if most of your potential leads are clicking links from your LinkedIn page to your website.
Add long-form content to your most popular website pages that visitors can access through contact forms.
2. Evaluate the performance of each lead generator
Use Website Grader to evaluate your existing lead generation sources (including landing pages and CTAs) and get feedback on how to improve them.
Also, you can compare landing pages that are doing well with those that aren't. Suppose you get 1,000 visitors to Landing Page A, and 10 of them fill out the form and become leads. Landing Page A would have a conversion rate of 1%. Imagine you have another landing page, Landing Page B, that gets 50 visitors to convert into leads per 1,000 visits. The conversion rate would be 5%, which is excellent.
The next step would be to see how Landing Page A differs from Landing Page B, and optimize Landing Page A accordingly.
Last but not least, you could run internal reports. Find out which offers are performing the best by analyzing landing page visits, CTA clicks, and thank-you page shares.
3. Ensure that each step of the lead generation process is optimized
In the event that your visitor searches "lawn care tips" and ends up on a blog post called "10 Ways To Improve Your Lawn Care Regimen," you should not link that blog post to an offer for snow clearing services.
To capitalize on visitors' interest in a particular subject, make sure your offers relate to the page they're on.
Your website can begin tracking a visitor's conversion path as soon as they land on it. Lead generation starts when a visitor visits your site and ends (hopefully) with them filling out a form.
Sometimes, a visitor's path does not lead to the desired outcome. The conversion path can be optimized in those cases. How? You should test four key pieces of the lead generation process when running an A/B test on a landing page:
CTAs
Your site should use contrasting colors. Creating images is easy, quick, and free with a tool like Canva.
Landing Pages
Landing pages still benefit from inbound traffic. According to HubSpot's State of Marketing Report, inbound leads increased by 6.66% in 2022. Here are 15 examples of well-designed landing pages you can use as inspiration.
Thank-You Pages
In lead generation, landing pages often get all the attention. It's important not to overlook the thank-you page, which appears after a visitor submits a form on the landing page and becomes a lead.
A HubSpot study found that thank-you emails generated a 42% open rate and a 14% click-through rate.
On your thank-you page, include a link so your new lead can actually download the offer. Additionally, you can include social sharing buttons and even a form for another, related offer.
Thank-you Emails
You have the opportunity to send a kickback email after a visitor converts into a lead and their information is entered into your database.
HubSpot's email study referenced above found that kickback emails doubled engagement rates (opens and clicks).
In kickback emails, include a super-specific CTA and encourage sharing on social media and email.
4. Provide ebooks for download on specific blog posts
If your blog content promotes an ebook or whitepaper, your website visitors can learn more about the same topic they just read about on your blog. This is another non-invasive way to generate interest in your company.
In this case, search engine optimization (SEO) meets lead generation.
You can rank your website on Google by creating blog content.
In this form of lead generation, organic visitors from Google are often more intent on finding a solution to a problem you can help solve.
Start by researching keywords relevant to your industry. Organize a series of blog posts around this topic. Develop a report that delved much deeper into this topic.
Create a PDF file that your blog readers can download using their name, company, and email address.
Follow up with each lead through a kickback email that keeps their interest in the content you've provided by using the three-part conversion path described above.
5. Set up a live chat service on your website
As live chat services become more sophisticated, more people expect them when learning about vendors they might want to buy from. If you miss out on this lead generator, you could be losing out on a lot of business.
A recent HubSpot survey found that 26% of respondents prefer live chat over other customer service methods.
Find out which pages your visitors spend most of their time on on your website to generate leads through live chat.
Installing a live chat tool on pages where customers require assistance is possible with the right development resources. While answering their questions, you can collect and log insight into their product needs.
It is even possible to integrate your customer service team with your live chat feature depending on who starts the chat and what questions your visitors have. Regardless of where the conversation goes, every website visitor's needs are met.
6. Personalize your CTAs
You can customize your website's experience for each unique visitor by using dynamic content.
On your site, visitors will see images, buttons, and product options tailored to their interests, pages they've visited, or items they've purchased.
Furthermore, personalized calls-to-action outperform basic calls-to-action by 202%. Therefore, dynamic content and on-page personalization can help you generate more leads.
What is the process? An example of what your homepage may look like to a stranger is:
And here's what it would look like to a customer:
Isn't that "Welcome Back" header welcoming? Your website visitors are more likely to engage with you if they see pages that remember them from an earlier date.
7. Make sure you test a lot (then test some more)
The importance of this part of the process cannot be overstated. Click-through rates can be greatly improved by A/B testing.
Friendbuy, for example, found that a simple A/B test on their calls-to-action improved click-throughs by 211%.
Changing your CTA's wording, your landing page's layout, or your images can have a huge impact, as friendbuy saw.
8. Be sure to nurture your leads
You won't be able to turn a lead into a customer by magic. Nurturing leads is only as good as the effort you put into them.
Leads should be placed into a workflow once they fill out a form on your landing page so they don't forget about you and you can deliver them valuable content.
Lead nurturing should begin with relevant follow-up emails that include great content. Get to know them as you nurture them - and then tailor future messages accordingly.
An example of a lead nurturing email is as follows:
With this email, you offer your recipients some great content, guide them down the funnel, and get right to the point.
Capture leads, and go forth
Leads are crucial to closing sales and growing your business. You can take advantage of every opportunity without letting unsatisfied website visitors slip away if you follow the tips above.