Lindsay TjepkemaAre You Maximizing the Conversion Opportunities on Your Site?
These days, everyone knows that it is important to optimize your website for lead generation. But the strategy behind just how to do it is where the details can get a little blurry for many people. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as including a “contact us” form in the sidebar of every page or including a “subscribe now” button in your blog posts. If you want to convert visitors to leads, you’ve got to get more creative.
Here are a few things you should do today to optimize lead generation on your website:
1. Know Your Numbers
The first step in just about any strategic process that involves measurement should be establishing a benchmark. Get detailed snapshots of your site’s traffic, current conversion opportunities and SEO (search engine optimization) status.
Here are some possible questions to ask yourself in this important first step in the process:
- How much traffic does your site typically generate in a given time frame?
- How many leads is the site generating on average each month?
- What pages are people most frequently using to enter your site?
- What content, pages and keywords are doing well?
- How are the site’s current conversion opportunities performing?
Furthermore, you must also have an understanding of the trends on your site over the last several months. Has it been gaining or losing visitors? What does your typical conversion rate look like? What topics tend to be most popular among your visitors?
It’s impossible to measure results if you don’t know where you started. So before you begin implementing changes to try to improve lead gen on your site, take a moment to get to know your numbers.
2. Tune-Up Your User Experience
Try approaching your site from your users’ perspective. Is its design and structure optimized for a seamless, simple and satisfying experience for your user? Because your prospects have so many options in today’s crowded marketplace, if they have any difficulty at all navigating your site, you will lose them …long before they ever fill out any forms.
In contrast, if your site is designed with user experience in mind, your visitors will want to stay and explore. And while you may not be able to redesign your entire website, you can examine the UX (user experience) of your lead generation tactics.
Go through your website and analyze your lead generation opportunities from a user’s perspective. Examine your landing pages, CTAs, and forms. How user-friendly are they? Do they provide a high amount of perceived value in exchange for the information you’re requesting from them?
Remember, this is all about THEM. When you keep the focus on your users, you’ll be more likely to earn their interest, their trust, and their contact information.
3. Call-out Your Calls-to-Action
Go through your website and analyze your CTAs from a user’s perspective. Analyze their placement. Are they placed strategically so visitors would see them right after you’ve engaged them with valuable content? Are you, perhaps, presenting the call-to-action too soon? Or maybe they are too low on the page and you’re losing prospects before they ever see the CTAs? Try different types of CTAs to see if they resonate among your visitors.
Also, be sure to analyze your micro-content–that’s the text used in your CTAs. When it comes to your website, it’s the image captions, button text, and the short bits of copy used to convince the prospect to convert that can really hook a visitor. This micro-content is critical, but it’s often overlooked because it’s so short and seemingly insignificant. But if you really think about it, the content in your CTAs couldn’t be more important. If your prospect is actually at the point where they are reading that micro-content, they’re right on the verge of converting! You’ve successfully brought them this far – wouldn’t you hate to lose them right at the point where they could so easily become a lead?
4. Don’t Miss A Step
Lead generation is not a one-step process. There are several steps a visitor takes before and immediately after becoming a lead. Be sure you’re not overlooking any of these steps or you could easily get tripped up. It might help to choose one lead generation opportunity and write down every step a visitor would take there to become a lead. As you consider the steps in the process, ask yourself the following questions.
- How do they arrive at the page where they will convert?
- Will they be not only be satisfied but also delighted with the information they receive when they get there?
- What stage of the buyer’s journey are they most likely to be in?
- Is the offer available through this page relevant to their interests and their stage in the buyer’s journey?
- From the visitor’s perspective, is the information requested on the form worth providing in exchange for the offer?
- Is the offer provided immediately, clearly and in a way that is accessible to the lead on any device at any time?
- Is there a good plan for nurturing the lead once they convert?
These aren’t easy questions to answer, but they are important. In analyzing your lead generation efforts from this perspective, you will find that you are able to think about your prospects first and strategically optimize your efforts with their needs and preferences. And that will improve your lead generation greatly.
There’s no silver bullet when it comes to website lead generation optimization. However, time invested in improving your lead gen strategy will yield significant returns. Just remember to understand your site’s existing metrics and trends so that you’re able to measure them moving forward. Keep the perspective of your prospects and remember that everything you do should be about them – from the design to the content, the CTA location to the actual steps in the process – it should all cater to them.
Lastly, don’t forget to test and measure. All. The. Time. Try new things. See what works and what doesn’t. Then try again. It’s a work in progress so just keep at it and you’ll see – the leads will come.
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