There are a variety of different elements that go into mastering the art of lead generation. Most of the advice you hear is about strategies to drive traffic to your website, but what’s often missing is a focus on the most important tool for generating leads: your website.
There are lots of ways to generate traffic, but if your website isn’t designed to meet visitors and move them along the sales funnel, then it’s going to hinder your growth more than help it. This is why web design, optimized with high performing elements of lead generation, is so important to your success.
These words are easy enough to say, but what needs to happen to turn your website into a lead generating powerhouse?
Maybe you already know that each page of your website should intuitively guide the visitor to the next step of the journey, but you might be surprised to discover some of the website design strategies that make this happen. Here’s what you need to know to ensure your website is designed to exceed your lead generation goals.
Getting Back to Basics with Usability
Before worrying about anything else, you should be asking yourself just how usable your site is to the average visitor. Before a lead can be born, they must land on your site, navigate their way around and eventually supply you with some type of information about themselves.
None of this can happen if your site isn’t designed with comfort and usability in mind.
Usability can be considered anything that makes your website easier to use and more enjoyable to explore. Responsive web design plays a big role in usability because it provides a seamless experience across the multiple devices that a visitor is likely to use during their customer journey with you.
Take for example how fast images load. Maybe a customer visits you from their desktop and images pop up instantly, but later when they’re on their mobile device and want to show a friend, it’s obvious that a sloth has a greater sense of urgency.
Usability directly impacts bounce and exit rates, both of which are counterintuitive to lead generation. Considering that nearly half of businesses say that their leads require long cycle nurturing, it’s crucial to invest in web design that doesn’t give them a reason to not return.
Mobile Is a Priority
We’re going to stay on the responsive web design kick for just another minute here. Mobile internet usage now exceeds desktop, and we’re looking at a gap that’s only going to continue to widen. If a website isn’t providing an enjoyable mobile experience, then they can expect both the quality and quantity of their leads to suffer.
We can look at the importance of mobile optimization and responsive design from a couple different angles. Let’s start with SEO.
Google is continuing to move forward with its mobile first indexing, which means that having a mobile optimized site is going to become essential if you want a decent ranking in search engine results. It isn’t that your desktop site won’t get any attention, but mobile is going to be the star of the show.
Your lead generation capabilities are going to be severely limited if your indexing is based off a site only designed for the desktop user. Responsive design is an easy way to solve this issue.
We can also look at this from a customer journey perspective. Some very important moments of the journey happen from mobile devices, with the leap into becoming a lead happening more frequently on mobile. Visitors need to be able to quickly load your site, navigate and fill out forms with ease on a smaller mobile screen.
The takeaway here is that responsive design prevents the frustrations that prevent mobile users from becoming leads for your business.
The Lure
It feels incomplete to talk about lead generation strategies without bringing up features like lead capture forms and call-to-actions (CTAs). If you’ve kept lead generation in mind during the process of web development, your visitors are going to arrive at the point where they just need that final lure to pull them in. This is the purpose of CTAs and lead capture pages.
The important thing to remember is that you can’t assume that capturing the lead is going to be easy just because you got them this far. In fact, it’s at this point that many would-be-leads change their mind and walk away. This is the make or break point, and attention to detail and the consumer mindset is crucial.
The lead generation form is the pinnacle of all your efforts thus far. Landing pages are a popular spot for lead generation forms, but this isn’t the only place they can, or should, be. It’s more than ok to experiment with placement of these forms. For example, a form on your homepage or even in a footer can encourage a potential lead to take action.
It’s all about meeting them where they are and making it easy for them in the process.
Finally, getting a little creative with CTAs can have leads pouring through your virtual door. Each step that a visitor makes on your website should take them one step further in. Strategically placed call to actions can encourage this movement.
You shouldn’t limit yourself to the CTA on your lead capture form or landing page. CTAs can be added to your homepage, product pages and even worked into content. The right web design can do this subtly, without coming off as pushy or impatient.
A Website Design Company That Brings Leads to Your Door
We have a team of experienced web developers that know how to get results with lead generating web design. Successful lead generation includes layers of strategic design. We’re the web design company committed to building exceptional responsive websites that perform for lead generation. Contact Beyond Custom Websites today for a free quote.