How many of you have had a website designed, then sat back and waited for the phone to ring, but nothing happened.

I've heard this quite a few times when potential clients initially make contact.  The client feels the designer let them down because the website isn't bringing in any work.  But, it isn't the designers fault the website doesn't 'work'.  The designer did the job asked for, supplying a beautiful website.  It is vital small businesses understand the complexity, the volume of work, and the different people needed to market a website for lead generation.  This can all be completed by one company, or several different people.

Here is a list of what you should expect to have to go through to get a beautiful crafted yet high lead generating website.

• Website Designer
• Content Creator
• Photographer
• Data entree (if ecommerce)
• Software to monitor website performance
• SSL certificate (security certificate)
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Launch website
• SEO
• Lead Conversion Optimisation
• Social Media
• Face to Face Networking

Optimising Your Website For Lead Generation

Now you have a beautiful website, you've made it secure so you can collect peoples personal information and you've undertaken SEO so people can find your website in the search engine results.  So - now lets jump to conversion rate optimisation where you'll learn how to convert more of your website visitors into sales. 

To understand how to optimise a website, you have to understand the lead generation process:-

• Person arrives somewhere in your website
• Person clicks on a call-to-action (CTA) - lead generation starts now
• CTA leads to a landing page, which includes a form used to collect the visitor's contact information
• Visitor completes form and submits it to you
• Visitor will then be taken to a thank-you page

That's pretty much it, now you understand the process a little better we can go over some simple ways you can optimise your website.

1.  Add Forms to the Pages That Get the Most Traffic

First off you are going to need to do an audit to find out where most of your online traffic comes from.  This is where the software you connected to your website to monitor performance comes in handy.

Most businesses get some traffic from these areas:-

• Email Marketing: it is usual to have links placed in emails to bring the receiver back to your website to convert them.
• Social Media: people who engage with you in social media come to your website either from your profile where your website is listed, or through any marketing campaigns/adverts you are carrying out which link back to your website.
• Live Chat: this enables people to contact customer services while they are looking at a page on your website.
• Blog Posts: traffic could come from your highest performing blog posts.

Once you know where your leads are coming from, you will be able to make sure the pages they are landing on are doing everything possible to nurture a visitor's interest.

For example, through your analytics tool, you find most of your potential leads are clicking on inbound links to your website from your Twitter account, your next step would be to update the pages they are visiting.  Improve the content to engage and keep your visitor on your website.  On your most visited website pages, add longer-form content that visitors can only get access to if they leave their contact information.  Something like an ebook download. 

2.  Measure Each Lead Generator's Performance

Test how well each of your existing lead generators are doing.  You can either use Google Analytics along with a great CMS, or when you can justify the price, there are some great software programs out there that can evaluate your lead generation sources, and some even provide feedback for improvements.

Also compare one landing page against another.  Page A might get 1,000 visits, of which 10 people complete your form.  That gives you a conversion rate of 1%.  Page B also gets 1,000 visitors but 50 people complete your form, giving you a respectable 5% conversion rate.  Now look at both pages and see what is different about Page B when compared to Page A, change Page A to reflect what you think makes Page B better, test again.

There are other tests you can do, such as, evaluate landing page visits, CTA clicks, and thank-you page shares.  This will identify which offers are performing the best so you can create more like them.

3.  Optimise the Lead Generation Process

Your offers should always be related to the page content.  As an example, I enter a query in to Google for 'best exercise to burn stomach fat' I see the heading '10 Exercises Guaranteed to Burn Stomach Fat', I click on that heading to arrive on a page selling diet pills and little evidence of exercises.  I don't want diet pills so I leave the page and go to the next website.

Drawing people into your website is the first step, engaging them by matching your content to their question is the next step.  Then make your offer, which should be related to the topic of the page.

When visitors land on your website, at least you can start learning about them.  Either by using software such as Google analytics which can show you which pages people are dropping off from.  Or a CMS, like ours, that can show you which pages a visitor went to before they completed your form.

Once you understand why visitors leave your website, you can optimise the conversion path.  The best way to do this is with A/B split testing (two versions of the same landing page, but with a few difference).  Google can monitor A/B tests within Google Adwords or Unbounce can determine which tactic performed better.  Test at least three areas of the lead generation process.  Once you know which one performed better, sit down and take a good hard look at both to see what differences there are.  Some times it can come down to something as simple as a colour change to a call to action button, or something harder such as a complete re-write by a sales copywriter.

The Calls To Action
Use a colour that contrasts with your website so it stands out and keep it simple.

The Landing Page
The more landing pages your website has targeting one specific thing, or answering one question the more opportunities you have to convert visitors into customers.

The Thank You Pages
Don't forget to show your thank you pages some love.  Thank you pages are where visitors get taken once them submit a form on your landing page and convert into a lead.

Provide a link so your new lead can download an offer, and also include social sharing buttons and other related offers.

The Thank You Email
Once your visitor has converted into a lead and their information enters your database, you can then send them a Thank You Email.

This gives you another opportunity to tell them about your social media accounts and ask them to like your pages.  It could include a specific call to action to encourage your new sign up to share their interest in your company with their social media friends and family.

4.  Start with Your Homepage

Your home page is often the first page on your website people get to see, it sits at the top of the marketing funnel.  It's the best place to offer a free trial or a subscription to a recurring campaign (newsletter). 

'Subscribe to Updates'
When people first land on your website, rarely are they ready to buy from you.  They may want to know more about your offer and company before enough trust is built up and they become willing to part with their hard earned cash.

To teach them about you include a CTA that asks them to subscribe to an email that notifies them of industry trends and future changes.  It doesn't require any commitment on their part and gives you an opportunity to keep in contact with them.  If they stay on your mailing list personally follow up to gauge their interest and eventually turn them into a qualified lead.

'FREE Offer'
If you have a product or software it is often a great idea to offer a free trail or demos.  This allows you to generate demand in your business and create a contact list of leads who are currently testing your product.

Make the offer for a limited time, including the CTA and form where you can collect their names and email addresses.  Once their demo or free trial has ended, follow up with the user to see what they thought of it.

5.  Offer Ebooks for Download on Blog Posts

A nice non-invasive way to generate interest in your business is to create blog content that promotes an ebook or whitepaper, where your visitors can learn more about the same topic but in more detail. 

The blog is a great way to develop your page authority which in turn will help your website rank better in Google.  But those pages have to be linked to by other websites with high page/domain authority, or shared multiple times in social media.  Target your industries influencers in social media and get your content in front of them.  But make sure your content is better than everything else that is out there, or has a different opinion about your topic.

Organic visitors who come from Google are more intent on finding a solution to a problem they have been unable to solve.  This gives you lots of opportunities to grab their attention and convert them into customers.

Start with thinking of all the keywords you want to appear for in Google.  Using incognito, search to see who is at the top of the rankings, find out how many links they have to that page (moz link checker), have a look to see what keywords they are using.  Also make notes about the type of content they have used to rank well (text, photos, video, CTA etc).  Whatever these companies are doing, you are going to have to surpass to catch up, then to be able to move in front of them.

Knowledge is power - you have now armed yourself with knowing the best keywords to use, how many links you need, and what type of content will do well in the search engines.  The only information you don't have right now is how well those pages convert into leads.

Start Creating:-

• a group of blog posts around your topic that solves your prospects problem
• create a report that delves deeper into this topic, make it in to a PDF for download.
• ask for your readers name, company, and email address and only then give them access to the downloadable PDF via an email.

It's all about the numbers
This is where you start measuring your numbers. 

• Record how many people completed your form for the download. 
• Record how many people you emailed with a link to the downloadable PDF.
• Record how many people then went onto download the PDF.
• Record how many people read your follow up email.
• Record how many people dropped off your mailing list and when.

6.  Install/Develop a Live Chat Service for Your Website

Live chat services are increasing in popularity, they are great at helping you help your visitors convert into paying customers.

Firstly find out where your visitors are spending a lot of time.  Install the live chat system onto those pages where customers need the most assistance or information.  This allows you to collect and log insights into their product needs while answering their questions.

This ensures every website visitor has their needs addressed.

7.  Personalise Your Calls-to-Action

Dynamic content lets you cater to each visitors needs.  Each visitor will be shown images, buttons, and product options that are specifically tailored to their interests.  A great CMS can collect all this information so when the visitor comes back you know what they already have viewed or bought.

A simple welcome back message can increase the amount of time someone stays on your website.  The better the personalised calls-to-action the higher conversions you'll have.

8.  Never stop testing

People change, technology changes and the only way you'll keep up is to test everything all the time.

A/B testing can do wonders for your click through rates.

9.  Nurture Those Leads

No lead is going to magically turn into a customer.  That comes down to how good you are at nurturing them into a paying customer.

Keep in touch with your leads, send them valuable content that matches their interest.  Use relevant follow up emails that include great content.  While you're nurturing them, learn as much as you can about them, then tailor further emails to them.

Do Nothing, Nothing Will Happen
The only way your website is going to work hard for you is if you work hard on your website.  If you don't have the time, you'll have a valuable lead generation source sitting their doing nothing.  Get the right people involved in helping your website do it's job, in the long term it will generate far more revenue then the cost of paying someone to craft your website into a lead generating machine.

Do nothing and nothing will happen.  Start doing something and eventually you will reap the rewards from all your hard work, and it is going to be hard work because if running your own business was easy, everyone would be doing it.

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