Is your website generating leads? Here are three quick and easy things you can do to help

A website provides a shop window for your business to the outside world but it’s important that people stop, look through the window and come into the shop rather than just pass on by to your competitor. So how do you go about enticing people in?

You need to make sure your website is working for you, generating business leads and converting visitors to the site into genuine money-spending customers. Here is our quick guide to three ways you can turn your website from a window that people walk past, into one that draws them in.

1. Help your website to be found

If no-one can see your website, or come across it as they search for related and relevant content, then you are never going to generate any leads and there is little point even having the site.

You need to make sure your website is being found consistently in search engines – you want your business to be the one that pops up whenever people are searching for something relevant to you.

For this to happen, you need to create quality content – it’s this content which will drive good traffic to your website on a regular basis. Fresh, updated content helps to push your website higher in the search engine results, enabling your site to be found.

The important thing here is to create quality content which is of relevance to potential clients, for example, case studies which explain how you have helped other clients in the past; testimonials from clients saying how they enjoyed working with you and blog posts on subjects of interest.

The easiest way to ensure your content is updated and of good quality is to develop a content plan to make sure you are regularly publishing blog posts, case studies and testimonials so there is always something new appearing on your site.

Once created, you need to share the content as widely as possible so new and prospective customers will see it and use it to find your website. You can do this by sharing new content via social channels and email marketing.

2. Create a compelling offer

Nothing draws people in like getting something of great value to them, for free so creating a compelling free offer is a really good way to draw people in to your website and convert them to leads and then customers.

The offer should be something which is completely free and of value to potential customers – it should give them a way to try out what it would be like working with you or to experience how knowledgeable you are in some way.

It’s important to make sure there is no risk in the offer to the customer and that it is of value. For example, you could offer a free trial for your services, or give them something like a useful e-book which helps to solve a problem they have in their business. The important thing is to demonstrate how they would benefit from working with you.

3. Display a strong call to action

Once you have your offer set up you need to give people a way to respond to it - the strongest way is to create a clear call to action telling people what they need to do - for example, call you to book a free consultation appointment.

So often websites are set up but don’t actually ask the visitor to do anything or give them any opportunity to ask questions, so having the call to action which leads to your distinct offer is a great way to generate more leads.

The strong call to action should be displayed on every page so no matter where they land in the website, they can still call or email you or click to complete a contact form – whichever option you offer it needs to be consistent and it needs to work.

Ideally, the call to action should be at the bottom of every page and then it is worth considering adding in extra calls at the top of key pages, such as your services page when people might want to get in touch to find out more.

The call to action needs to be bold and clearly visible on the page – often these days they are buttons which you click to send an email, or on a mobile site, you click to directly call the person concerned.

Make sure it’s really clear what will happen when the person clicks on the button  - they need to know what to do to access the free offer, so make it very easy to understand.

4. Bonus Tip

Try using an “exit intent” pop-up. This is a pop-up advert if you like which pops up just as someone is about to leave your website and offers them an incentive to keep browsing around.

If you do have a free offer, then it could pop up to say, before you go have you seen our free offer, or something along those lines. Or it could offer them the chance to sign up to an email list or newsletter as a way to stay in touch.

Whatever you decide to include in your pop-up it can be a great way to capture a website visitor’s attention just as they exit the site and hopefully capture their details to allow you to develop the relationship and turn them into a paying customer.

Conclusion

Your website can be a great lead generator as long as you create regular, interesting content of value which draws people in. Having a compelling offer and a clear way for people to contact you are the other two key ingredients to lead generation from your website.

It’s important to make sure your website is working well for you and bringing in business, rather than just sitting there looking nice but not actually doing anything active.

Hopefully these tips have helped you to understand how you can increase the number of leads your website  generates . If you have any questions or need any help or advice, feel free to give me a call (01264 735 333) or leave me a comment below.