The Elements of a Lead Generating Website

Not sure why your company isn't generating any qualified leads, the main cause could be your website.

You might be wondering what's exactly wrong with my website? Just because you have a website doesn't mean it has the necessary elements that make up a lead generating website.

While you might have a website with information everywhere, more often than not, your site isn't optimized for actual lead generation.

Unfortunately, you only have a couple seconds to capture the attention of your website visitors. Don't just focus on your homepage elements, you need to develop a cohesive inbound marketing website that turns visitors into leads and then converts those leads into customers.

The 6 Elements of a Lead Generating Website

Call to Actions

This might sound like a no brainer, but you won't be able to generate any leads if you don't have call to actions promoting your offers.

How else are you going to collect their information and push them down the sales funnel? We aren't living in the days when potential leads had to call your company to inquire about more information. Today, you just have to click on a CTA to request an assessment or download an Ebook to learn more about a company.

Adding call to actions across your site, is a great way to develop more lead generating opportunities. However, just remember to place them above the fold. Often times visitors are just skimming and glancing through the content and information on you site. If your CTA is ALL the way at the bottom, your visitors most likely won't see it. Your visitors will go to a different company and you loose an opportunity.

Consider adding call to actions to:

• Homepage

• Blog

• At the bottom of every blog article

• Landing pages

• Ebooks

If your call to actions aren't specific and clear, they won't do so well. Think of your call to actions as a crystal ball. So your visitors know exactly what they are going to get upon filling out the form on your landing page.

Educational Content

You won't gain any qualified leads if your content isn't top notch. You need to be able to provide your visitors with the information they're looking for. Every lead coming to your site is going to be looking for some different. However, they all have a problem. Through your blog and premium content you want to hold the keys to solving their problems and pain points.

Content can include:

• Blog articles

• Ebooks

• Whitepapers

• Webinars

• Infographics

• Checklists

If you do have educational content that can help your visitors, don't make it hard to find, by shoving it in the back corner. Your visitors aren't going to a corn maze. They are search your site for any information that can help solve their problem. Developing educational content is easy once you've identified your buyer personas. It is also important to note that you should provide your content in a variety of formats. In a recent study by Kissmetrics, they indicated that viewers are 64-85% more likely to buy after watching a video.

Mobile Optimized

Today's generation is now accessing the Internet more through their mobile device(s) rather than on a desktop or laptop. So wouldn't you want to take advantage of this opportunity to be able to attract more traffic and leads with a mobile optimized site? Unfortunately, many companies still don't have a mobile optimized website.

When developing a mobile optimized site it is important that you consider the page layout, how images and videos are displayed, the font and font size, as well as how your navigation bar will appear on the site. An added benefit of developing a mobile optimized site is the increase in search engine performance, resulting in increased visibility on the Internet.

The elements of a mobile optimized site include:

• Prioritizing customer centric content

• No flash

• Utilize whitespace

• Keep branding consistent

Usability

Your website is no longer four pages that stay within "above the fold". More and more companies are using parallax scrolling and developing longer pages on their site. You want to keep in mind that if your website isn't user friendly, you will most likely lose website traffic and visitors to your competitors and no one wants that to happen.

What do your visitors see during their first 10 seconds on your site? The elements on your page in those 10 seconds can make your visitors either stick around and view other pages on your site or they're hitting the back button. When you go to your website what do you? Are you clearly and effectively displaying your message on your homepage? If your visitors don't know what you do or how you can help them, they probably aren't going to stick around.

Usability within your website should include:

• Navigation

• Website layout

• Color scheme of your site

Testimonials

One of the most frequently asked questions is ... Do you have any customer proof or testimonials?

If your answer is no, you probably just lost a potential customer. Customer proof is extremely important, especially when your company provides a service. Potential visitors and leads want to know what your current or previous customers have to say about your company. Did they enjoy working with you or was it a total nightmare? Hopefully, they loved working with you and would recommend your company to their connections.

Analytics

If you've already implemented those elements, you might want to check your analytics and determine if the problem is located somewhere else within your site. Are you attracting website visitors to your site but aren't seeing any visitor to lead conversions? There could be a problem with your content. Don't just build your website and forget about it, you need to regularly check your analytics and content.

Some of the analytics you should check include:

• Number of leads compared to your goals

• Number of traffic

• Visitor to lead conversion rate

• Visitor to customer conversion rate

• What landing pages and call to actions are performing well and which ones aren't