5 website optimisation tips for lead generation success
Optimising a website for lead generation is an obvious goal for any organisation that does business online. However, optimising a website for lead generation isn’t always simple, and throwing in a call-to-action and a “click here” button on a home page, unfortunately, won’t guarantee leads. Instead, marketers and designers need to opt for a more strategic approach.
In this article, we will look at some simple website optimisation tips to gear your organisation towards lead generation success.
Firstly, what is lead generation?
To understand how to optimise your organisation’s website for lead generation, you will need a basic understanding of how the lead generation process works. Here is a quick overview:
The lead generation process typically starts when someone visits your organisation’s website and clicks on a call-to-action (CTA) located on one of your site pages or blog posts. Once a user has clicked on a CTA, they will be directed to a landing page, which includes a form used to collect the visitor’s information.
Once the visitor has filled out and submitted the form, they are then led to a thank you page.
That’s the basic lead generation process. Now let’s look at 5 simple website optimisation tips that will help you to boost your lead generation.
1. Establish your current state of lead generation
Before you begin your efforts to optimise your website for lead generation, it is important that you benchmark your current state of lead generation. Once you know where you stand with your current level of lead generation, you can then track your success and work out the areas where you most need the most improvement.
A good way to test out your current state of lead generation is to try a tool like Marketing Grader, which evaluates your lead generation sources (like landing pages and CTAs), and then offers feedback on ways to improve your existing onsite content.
Another method is to compare your higher-performing landing pages with your lower-performing ones. For example, if you get 1,000 visits to Landing Page A, and then 10 of those people filled out the form and converted into leads. For Landing Page A, your conversion rate would be 1%. On the other hand, say you have another landing page, Landing Page B, that gets 50 visitors to convert into leads for every 1,000 visits, you would have an impressive 5% conversion rate. Your next step from here would be to see how Landing Page A differs from landing Page B, and then optimising Landing Page A accordingly.
You could also try running internal reports: evaluate your landing page visits, CTA click-throughs, and thank you page shares to determine which offers are performing the best and then create more that are similar.
2. Optimise each stage of your lead generation process
You should always make sure that your onsite content offers are related to the content of the page that they feature on, that way you can capitalise on your visitor’s interest in a particular subject.
As soon as a visitor lands on your website, you can begin to learn about their conversion path. This path begins when a user visits your website and ideally ends with them filling out a form and becoming a lead. However, sometimes a website visitor’s path doesn’t end with the desired goal. If this is happening on your site, this is the stage where you need to redesign your conversion path.
One of the best ways to work out how to redesign your conversion path is to undertake A/B split testing.
A/B split testing involves running two versions of a landing page to determine which tactics are performing better on each page. Sometimes the changes between these two can be fairly simple, such as changing a link to a button, adding a form to a page, or asking different questions on forms.
If you want to run A/B split testing on a landing page, be sure to test the following three key stages of the lead generation process:
a) Calls-to-action
Try using colour contrasting from your site. Keep it simple, and try tools like Canva to create images easily, quickly, and for free.
b) Landing Pages
According to a HubSpot survey, companies with 30+ landing pages on their website generated 7X more leads than companies with 1 to 5 landing pages.
With lots of well-designed landing pages, you can establish which ones perform better and why. You can then use this information to optimise the rest of your landing pages for optimum performance.
c) Thank you Pages
While the landing pages are one of the most important parts of the lead generation process, the thank you page (where the website visitor is sent to once they have submitted a form on the landing page and convert into a lead) should never be overlooked.
Along with thanking the visitor for completing your form, you should also include a link for your new lead to actually download the offer on your thank you page. It is also helpful to include social sharing buttons and even a form for another related offer.
3. Personalise your CTAs with dynamic content
Dynamic content lets you tailor the experience of using your website to each unique site visitor. People who visit your website will see images, buttons, and products that specifically cater to their interests, the pages that they have already viewed, or items they have purchased before.
Furthermore, according to Hubspot, personalised calls-to-action convert 42% more visitors than basic calls-to-action. In short, dynamic content and on-page personalisation will help you to generate more leads.
4. Keep testing
Testing is the bedrock of any organisation’s lead generation process and can do wonders for your website click-through rates.
Sometimes something as simple as testing your call-to-action copy, the layout of your landing page, or the images you are using, can have a huge impact on your lead generation. Be sure to test any changes you make to find out what works for your lead generation process.
5. Nurture your leads
It is very rare that a lead will automatically turn into a customer, so always remember, leads are only as good as the effort you put in to nurture them.
Once a lead has filled out a form on your landing page, place them into a workflow. Then, to make sure that they don’t forget about you, deliver them valuable content that matches their interest. Lead nurturing should begin with relevant follow up emails that include interesting and relevant content. As you nurture your leads, learn as much as you can about them, and the tailor all future content sends accordingly.
By implementing the above tips, you can be sure to boost your lead generation process and begin to bring in more quality leads.
To read how we helped to gain more leads for London’s Leading Independent Fibre Network, have a read of our Inbound Marketing case study for M24seven (formerly Venus business communications).
