How To Make Your Website Generate More Leads
Generating more leads – Intro
Generating more leads – Intro: Common Mistakes and Simple Steps
The very first thing to do is to scope your average sale. Ask yourself, “In my business what does an average sale look like?” Also, identify what a typical gross margin or profit is per sale. It’s a good idea to actually measure all the sales both for revenue and margin dollars made over a period of a month or a quarter and then calculate the average. It is surprising how many business people are actually way off when they guess this number. Having accurate numbers for this is critical to making profitable decisions later.
20% More Sales Per Month Is Worth What To Me?
Once you understand your average sale it becomes very easy to identify the value of increasing the number of incoming leads and what the resulting sales impact would be on your business. Specifically, ask yourself:
What would it mean to me if I closed just one extra sale per month?
What would it mean to me if I closed three extra sales per month?
What would it mean to me if I closed ten extra sales per month?
What would it mean to my business if I was able to increase monthly sales by just 20%?
Depending upon the nature of your business these are totally realistic goals, especially if your website does little for you right now.
Mistake No 1 – The Fortress
Don’t want more leads? Then Do This!
Mistake No. 1 – The Fortress
Don’t make your website a fortress. You have 3-6 seconds after a visitor lands on your website to get them engaged. When they are looking at your page for those 6 seconds, can they easily see:
- What it is that you do?
- Why they should work with you?
- What specifically you can do for them?
If your website does not do this effectively in the 3-6 second window, you are decreasing the number of visitors that ask for something or try to engage with you.
If you set your site up in such a way:
- That in order to understand what it is that you do
- Why they should work with you
- Or what specifically you can do for them
Your visitors have to do work, take time to study, or dig to find out these things, you will be actively decreasing the number of leads your website is generating.
In others words, “barriers” reduce conversion rates. It is the job of your website to make it extremely easy for your visitor to become a lead, the more work you ask your visitor to do, the fewer leads you will get.
Mistake #2 – No, or Poor CTA’s
If you want more leads, you should make it clear:
- What you can do for your website visitor
- Why they should take action now
- And then encourage them to take that action
You should do these things on the landing page (any page that a visitor might land on) you must make it very obvious, this is not something to be subtle about On the Internet generally people do not read detail unless they are extremely motivated to get very specific information and if its information they are looking for then they are typically not looking to buy. Most visitors to your site will only scan or speed read the headlines, before deciding to spend more time on your site. If your headlines do not convince them to take action they will move on very quickly.
Typical conversion rates, that is to say, ‘visitors to a site that turn into a lead’ are less than 1%… Think about that for a moment… For every 100 visitors to the average site less than one actually turns into a lead. If this is true for you it means that, if you can increase your conversion rate by just 1% you will double the number of leads you will get.
Mistake #3 – Not measuring your conversion rate
Do you know your website’s conversion rate?
Do you know how many visits you get to your website every month?
Take this action; simply identify how many visitors you get each month and divide it by the number of leads you get. You may be shocked.
Most companies can increase their conversion rates with just a few simple steps.
- How many leads do you currently get per month?
- What would it mean to your business if you got just 25% more?
More Leads – Measuring Your Conversion Rates
Do You Know Your Websites Conversion Rate?
How to increase your conversion rate with CTA’s
CTA’s (Call To Action’s) are a general term for anything on your website that specifically asks or directs the visitor to do something. There has been a lot of research on this subject and it has been shown over and over again that
- if you give your site visitor a strong suggestion to do something
- back it up with a good reason why they should do it (how they will benefit from it)
- make it very obvious what they have to do
- with a minimal amount of work on their part
the percentage of visitors that will take the suggested action will increase.
Mistake #4 – Weak CTA’s
Contact Us – is probably the worst and least effective CTA you can have on your website. While it is important to have it there for those visitors that are determined to contact you, for most people however something more compelling is needed.
There are some fundamental rules to apply when attempting to increase your conversion rate. They are:
- Tell – making sure that you actually tell your customer what you want them to do
- Easy – making sure it is really easy, with the minimum of effort to do what you want them to do
- Reason – making sure you have given them a good reason to do what you want them to do
- Variation – making sure you use as many ways as possible to tell them and to enable them to take action
- Everywhere – making sure you tell your visitors what you want them to do everywhere, at every opportunity, on every page
- Obvious – be obvious, this is not something to be subtle about. The point is to increase as much as possible the ratio of visits to conversions – if you currently have a sophisticated, subtle, cryptic, and or clever message, home page, and or site, while you may personally like it, you WILL be decreasing your potential conversion rate
Get More Leads Use Effective CTAs
Effective Calls To Action’s Drive More Leads
Let’s start with the place customers most often go when visiting your site for the first time. Your home page is where most companies immediately fail. Testing has shown that you have a very short window of opportunity when someone lands on your page to capture that person. You must do so within one eyeball scan across the visible area of your home page.
Take a look at your home page now and ask yourself, does it make it very clear, ‘what type of person’ you help ‘to do what’, ‘better than’ anyone else and specifically ‘what they should do’ now to take advantage of your product or service within one eyeball scan across the visible area of your home page?
Go on, look at JUST THE VISIBLE AREA of your home page see how well it serves it primary purpose. Even better, find someone who knows absolutely nothing about you or what business you are in and show them your home page for just six seconds and then ask them those questions.
It amazes us how many web pages, particularly home pages have no call to action which clearly tells its visitors what they are supposed to do. Often it’s actually quite difficult to get to the point where any action is clear or even possible.
Sites like these are great for you; providing they belong to your competition!
If you tell your customers, clearly and directly what you want them to do, you will increase your conversion rate. These calls to action can be as simple as
- CALL THIS NUMBER NOW (888) 111 2222
- Or ENTER YOUR NAME and PHONE NUMBER here, and we will call you
- Or ENTER YOUR NAME and EMAIL ADDRESS here, and we will contact you
You can further then increase your conversion rate if you make these simple “calls to action” more obvious and compelling with a variation something along the lines of a colored box as below.
Here are some example CTA’s from around the web
 Stronger CTAs – Emergency Click Here! Source: http://www.finestdentistry.com/ |
 Very Strong CTA! |
Moderate CTA – Too Much Information Required
 It’s Quick and It’s Painless – And It’s an Effective CTA… Source: http://grottocellars.com/ |
 Be Careful With Having Too Many Fields For the Customer To Complete – Effective CTA If Used Carefully… Source: http://grottocellars.com/ |
 Better Than Contact Us – Weak CTA… |
 One of our client’s CTA’s – Great CTA… |
 Another of our client’s CTA’s – Great CTA… |
 List Building CTA… |
Delta Know What They Want You To Do…
You Actually Have To Click NOT To Take Action
Source: http://www.undergroundtraininglab.com/48/traffic-getting-jumpstart/
SEO BOOK – Full Page CTA
Source: http://www.seobook.com/
TeleSeminar Secrets – Extremely Effective CTA
Source: http://teleseminarsecrets.com/eben/shy.html
 Product Launch Blue Print Call To Action – Extremely Effective CTA Source: http://www.launches.net/squeeze_pages/4243
|
 Product Launch Blue Print Call To Action With Video – Extremely Effective CTA |
An example of an EFFECTIVE web (home) page This site has it all, multiple (7) calls to action, different forms of the calls to action.
Source: http://www.revouninstaller.com/
This page is very clear about what this product does –
- It provides an obvious way to get more detail with the “Main Features” and “FEATURES” tab
- This is one of the best customer-centric (not company-centric) sets of tabs we have seen
- Their differentiators – a moving image that really catches your attention.
- EASY TO USE
- FULL NATIVE SUPPORT OF 64 BIT
- FORCED UNINSTALL
- Here’s a link to their Web Site: http://www.revouninstaller.com/
Extra Tip, ‘Images Of People”
“Pictures of people on your website increase conversion rates”
Why – The psychology of this is that when you put pictures of people in settings associated with your products or services most people more easily visualize themselves with your product. This is most effective when the people are seen to be directly interacting with your product.
There are many more things that you can do to increase the number of leads your website generates, those will be the subject of future articles
