This is how to build a website that generates leads a.k.a. a high performance lead generation website (sounds fancier).
The first step is to know what web skills you need. You might be tempted to focus on design, but it’s important to consider other factors like how people move around on your website, searcher intent and how to make someone want your product or service.
More generally, these other factors include:
- Usability — Ways of making the site simple for users so that they can easily uncover what they need and engage with the content.
- Mobile Design — Website mobile features convert what is now an enormous mobile user base,
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – On-site content is optimized to rank on search engines like Google, thereby increasing impressions and traffic.
- Copywriting — Techniques that generate interest and trust and encourage engagement with visitors.
- Conversion — Traffic means nothing if it doesn’t lead to conversion.
First off: Usability
No one likes a clunky website.
Unlike a brochure, a website that is meant to generate leads is a dynamic tool that guides users to 1) what they’re looking for and 2) opportunities to convert them i.e. obtain their email address, read more about a product and possibly buy it, or send in an inquiry for a product or service.
If your website has good usability, it should be easy for people to navigate through in order to find relevant information.
Websites with bad usability frustrate people and drive off prospects who might otherwise have been interested in the product. They just…bounce.
Site Speed
A build a website that generates leads is a FAST website.
Site speed has become one of the most important usability factors for a website. In fact, recent Google algorithms have placed site speed above most other site characteristics, including content! It is now essential for your site’s SEO.
Why? Because Google prioritizes the user’s experience and slow loading speeds is one of the primary reasons why users leave a website, not bad content (although that’s next…)
Responsive web design
A build a website that generates leads is a responsive website. (I’m just trying to be clear with these first statements and also use my targeted keyphrase.)
Responsive web design makes a website easier to use across devices like mobile phone, ipad and a laptop. Whatever the device, it shouldn’t really affect the users. That is, navigation should feel seamless, allowing the user to focus on the content.
Image Loading Tips
Images are the foundation for any well-designed website, and can be one of your best tools in achieving a high page loading speed.
Every decision you make when designing an image is important to keep file size down and load times up; from finding the most appropriate resolution or type for each photo, to where on your site it will appear. Images also play a major role in content marketing efforts such as social media posts that share every little detail about how great our company culture really is!
A good rule of thumb with images: always put them at least 1200 pixels wide (or taller) so they don’t get cropped by Facebook’s algorithm ; resize photos before posting much smaller than their original dimensions ; never embed videos without optimizing
To ensure your images are optimized for the web, use plugins that “smush” your images automatically like WP Smush It for WordPress.
White space = increased readability and navigation
Clutter is your enemy.
It makes it difficult for users to find things that are important and easy to consume, which leads them away from the content you want them looking at. The use of ample white space keeps navigation links easily accessible while conveying an image of efficiency and expertise–something clutter would never be able to achieve in its place.
Right now, website design revolves around clarity and minimalist design and that’s simply because that’s what works.
Rotating banners were trendy, but now they just slow site speed. Ditch the rotating banner. Few visitors interact with them anyways and, apart from the first banner, content is missed.
Sitemap and site architecture
Generate a sitemap (this can be done automatically with plugins like Yoast SEO) and include a link to it in your website footer.
A website is only as good as its navigation, and a site map helps to keep all the links organized.
A sitemap displays an overview of your website’s hierarchy for easy access if visitors get lost or can’t find what they’re looking for.
The individual clickable navigational elements are placed in logical order so that it doesn’t take long browsing through pages before locating desired information on sites with intuitive design. Such features allow people of varying skill levels to navigate easily regardless of their familiarity with certain technologies, such as web browsers and search engines (or any other internet-related tools).
A site’s architecture affects how content pages are arranged within its hierarchy – if done poorly this could significantly hinder usability by making pages difficult to navigate or categorize effectively (for instance, with too many categories).
Mobile design
Mobile is the new black. Nearly all navigation is done on cell phones and tablets, as well as laptops and notebooks (which are technically mobile, too!).
Your website, and all websites, for that matter, must be designed for mobile.
How?
Site speed
Not to sound repetitive, but with many mobile users working from cellular Internet connections, site speed is more important than ever.
Web designers must be up-to-date on techniques for optimizing page load time; for instance, being able to have images load as the user scrolls rather than loading all at once.
Sounds delicious.
In a responsive web design’s mobile view, main navigation should be “sticky” — i.e., remain fixed at the top as users scroll down the page.
This simple but underused technique keeps critical informational and conversion links in view (such as a phone icon), so users can convert at any time as they move around the website.
For example, make sure your company phone number (as an active link) sticks as users scroll down through your site. Simple as that.
Phone display
Along those lines, the phone icon in a mobile display is the main way to initiate contact with another person, as it represents an easy and convenient experience for users. With more people taking on smartphones, this functionality will be expected rather than seen as a bonus feature.
Responsive web design choices
In responsive design, elements visible to desktop users are eliminated for mobile devices. It’s important that designers decide which information stays and scrolls down in the view of a smaller screen than what is seen on desktops – but it can be difficult when some content may overwhelm those using a smartphone or tablet.
Anchor Text
Using this advice, you can set up your content so that it’s easier for mobile users to get around. This includes using full anchor text on links in body copy and ensuring that words are large enough for tapping via a touch screen device such as smart phone or tablet.
Another small but important design technique is providing ample anchor text when linking from one page of content to another – especially throughout the main body of an article with lots of headings like ours!
Clicking on just two words could be difficult; some people might give up rather than deal with the inconvenience instead opting out by scrolling back through our site or heading over to Facebook (or whichever other favorite social media network they enjoy).
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Ah, the internet is buzzing with these three words (or letters).
A good SEO strategy is absolutely essential if your goal is to build a website that generates leads.
Companies cannot afford to ignore the billions of Google searches that take place every day.
Yet many business owners are unaware of how their website fares on search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing.
Creating a high converting website requires the ability to design a user-friendly web design as well as an optimized.
High performance lead generation websites use experts who know exactly what will rank well and how you should reformat content so as not to violate copyright laws which could get both yourself and your company penalized by Google in the long run!
SEO has become critical component for Internet marketing. If you’re not sure where to start, contact us for a consultation.
DIY SEO checklist
That said, you can implement many SEO optimization techniques yourself. Here’s a checklist to get you started:
- Include title tags on every page
- Include meta description tags on every page
- Include header content on every page (One H1, 3-4 H2s)
- Include high quality body content on every page
- Use clean permalinks i.e. a clean URL structure and custom URLs. None of that …product=187343/ etc stuff
- Make sure you have a robots.txt file (SEO plugins can also help you with this)
- Make sure you have an HTML sitemap (again, plugins)
- Make sure you have an XML sitemap (p-l-u-g-i-n-s)
- Use 301 redirects from old web pages to new ones
- Clean up 404 errors
- Make sure your site has an SSL certificate i.e. it has https// not http// in the URL. Your hosting provider can probably set you up with one at a cost, otherwise there are free alternatives that require some technical knowledge for set up
- Use a content management system like WordPress or SquareSpace (I prefer WordPress)
- Make sure you’re using your blog as an SEO goldmine! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, get in touch.
Beyond SEO optimization = SEO-performing
Lead generation websites that are SEO-friendly will get a rankings boost when they go live. Preparation is key to this; if you have done the work beforehand, your website’s organic search visibility for items people want to buy should rise significantly. Some of these preparatory steps include:
Keyword Research and Keyword Strategy
Keyword research is a valuable asset for any company that hopes to stay competitive in the highly-saturated market. It’s an integral part of keyword strategy, which defines specific keywords with high conversion rates and organizes them into themed groups so they can influence or drive content structure on your new website.
If you’re just getting started with SEO, you should start with keyword research.
This will help you identify all of the keywords search engine users might use to find your products and services.
First, you need to do some in-depth keyword strategy so that only high converting keywords make it onto our new site – a process which includes factors like volume, intent, competitiveness and relevance.
Once we know what terms are most likely going to convert for us then we can create themed groups around these words; this is how navigation on the website gets created as well!
Sitemap
When keyword research is completed, a sitemap will be created containing every page of the new website.
The sitemap ensures no SEO issues exist; that is, there are not any overlaps or gaps with target keywords. If content from the old site needs to be transferred over onto this one for whatever reason it’s important to make sure these problems do not arise as they can crush ongoing SEO efforts and cause other unforeseen consequences like confusing visitors on your site who see duplicate information within two different pages which may lead them away from completing their task altogether because you’re covering similar topics in separate places all at once instead of just having everything together so people know where they need to go first before taking advantage of anything else offered by your organization.
As it turns out, the title tag is one of the most important on-site elements for SEO.
The best ones are written by an SEO specialist (like me 🙂 and include a targeted keyword in them while meeting various technical requirements like having unique content with no punctuation or being over 65 characters long.
Custom Meta Description Tags
Meta descriptions are short bits of text, “snippets”, that appear under the link in Google search results. Because they have a measurable impact on lead generation growth, professional copywriters skilled in conversion optimization should be used to create unique meta description tags for your business.
Headers, or H1-H6 tags are important places to insert keywords. Since google crawlers interpret headers as significant indicators of a website’s themes, these page headlines and subheads must be written in engaging style along with persuasively while also achieving SEO objectives.
Optimized Body Content
SEO-performing body content that is persuasive, relevant and informative should also be optimized with the proper use of keywords. A copywriter skilled in SEO can help you target your audience by using related phrases to engage them organically on search engines like Google or Bing. Using too many keywords will only confuse readers while not enough words makes it difficult for people who are looking for information about a certain topic area.
Copywriting
Professional copywriting is essential for lead generation. If it fails to inform, persuade and present relevant information, conversions will suffer no matter how much traffic funnels into the website.
Companies frequently underestimate the difficulty of executing high-level, lead generating content for their websites which can result in low performance numbers or a stagnant conversion rate if not executed well enough by an expert copywriter. Here are some key components of content that should be included on your site:
Information about what you do; why people need your services/product; where they can find out more info at etc.; testimonials from happy customers etc.
How to right good content
Did you catch my typo? Hehe.
If you’re wondering how to build a website that generates leads, good content is KEY. To maximize lead generation and branding, website content must meet a multitude of quality criteria.
- Relevance is important for targeting the right audience with appropriate subject matter in an engaging style.
- Persuasiveness is also vital to persuade visitors into making purchases by writing from their point-of-view, weaving customer testimonials throughout the copy, and employing psychological principles that stimulate decision-making like storytelling or applying persuasive words/phrases such as “limited time offer” or “exclusive.”
- Authority. All successful website content begins with the right research. That’s how you know if your message is relevant to customers and will solve a problem for them or make their lives easier in some way. Research also helps determine whether something that might be useful
- Your website’s content should be useful. A great deal of business content is not useful because it’s written too much from the company’s perspective rather than that of your customer. Content must solve a customers problem, make their life easier or in some other way provide important benefits to have any hope for being shared on social media and forwarded by colleagues.
- That leads to sharability. (Is that even a real word?) What makes a website’s content great is how shareable it is. If people share your content, you’re on the right track.
Typography and type styles
The font and formatting of your content can be the difference between a reader scanning past it or paying attention to every word.
The trick is making sure that important points are highlighted, while not distracting from other parts of the message.
There are many different fonts and styles to choose from–it’s up to you which one will best suit your needs!
- Make sure headers stand out as either H1 an H2 and paragraphs.
- Use bulleted and numbered lists.
- Bold important text and use italics (search engines spider pick up on the stylistic differences too!)
- Use short paragraphs to make reading easier. In fact, separate each sentence with a space, like I often do.
- Use a generous amount of line height to facilitate readability.
- Leverage your captions! Users will absorb more info through – info that doesn’t necessarily have to follow the logic of the other text.
Conversion Optimization
By now, everyone knows that the art of conversion optimization is a combination of science and creativity. Conversion Optimization (CO) techniques are used by designers or copywriters to make each page as effective at generating conversions as possible.
Even if your website has covered all traditional bases such as usability, mobile compatibility, SEO/content relevance; without sound CO you may miss out on meeting demand for leads!
Here’s what high-performance lead generation websites should have:
Calls to Action
It is no secret that keeping your user’s attention focused on what you want them to do can be a difficult task.
Using the “sticky” navigation discussed in Mobile will ensure that their conversion message never leaves their sight, but changing CTA button color and text colors may also have an impact on conversions as well. For instance, it makes sense for secondary CTAs to use different colors than primary ones because they serve separate purposes – one should not detract from the other by using similar or identical hues of blue!
Phone Number Placement
Some websites have found it more effective to place their phone number in the upper right corner of they navigation bar. This makes locating and interacting with the information much easier for a mobile user; however, this can be problematic on desktop view as scrolling is often necessary.
The easiest solution would probably be making sure that your contact info appears on every page you want visitors to go- whether or not they decide to call or email someone at your company directly following an inquiry submission form.
Form Design and functionality
The shorter the form and easier it is to complete, the better. Any more than four or five required fields will cause a company’s average user to exit rather than bother filling out their forms as they lose sight of what they are trying to do: get prospects’ attention.
Conclusion
So! That was a lot of info. How to summarize….
Basically, in order to create lead generation website content that meets substantive, SEO and branding goals, a balance between all the aforementioned elements must be achieved.
The reality is, this article really only covers the tip of the iceberg when it comes to creating a high performance lead generation website.
We can help you improve your website’s usability, function, conversion rates, ranking and more. Get in touch.