In the digital world, a business not having a website is the equivalent of not having a phone number, store hours, or a business card. For most businesses, a website is essential for them to collect payments, showcase their product suite, build credibility, become more visible, and so much more.
Skipping the step of creating a website for your brand may be directly correlated to turning down business opportunities. While 81% of users conduct online research before buying according to GE Capital Retail Bank Second Annual Major Purchase Shopper Study, being able to help answer your consumers’ questions about your product or service through an optimized website is crucial.
Unfortunately, just posting any website online is not the solution to this problem. If your business does not have a functional and clear website it may hurt your business in the long run. Poor user experience drives almost 50% of users to go with competitors instead, according to Zendesk Customer Experience Trends 2020, which further provides that your website is one of your greatest marketing tools.
So what makes a website effective and how can you optimize your current website to speak to your consumers, earn their trust, and make them fall in love with your product or service?
The journey > the destination
While potential leads navigate to your website, they generally are either looking for a specific question to be answered, social proof and credibility, or to see your offerings. If the user has to flip through many pages, dig deep or navigate through links that lead them to websites that aren’t the business’ website it becomes a less enjoyable experience, thus closing their mind to exploring further. A good experience is when they can easily access the information they were looking for such as product/service information, testimonials, pricing, etc, by the use of buttons, menus and pages combined with an action-evoking copy. When this happens, they will be more likely to spend more time on your website learning more about your brand and they may even check out your social media or engage with your lead capture form.
More than just a contact page
If a potential lead wants to inquire about your offerings, pricing, has a specific question, etc. they will most likely head to your website contact form. While this page is extremely important as it is the most direct way to generate leads, it doesn’t have to stop there. To fully optimize a website for leads it is important to have more than one way a potential customer can contact you. This means having the following:
- The right contact information such as email, phone numbers, and addresses are easily accessible
- A contact page where a lead can submit a ticket with their specific request or question and even fill out some more information about themselves (which helps you filter the leads).
- A way that they can keep in contact with you i.e. a subscribe page
With these three methods of generating leads on your website, your potential customers are much more likely to reach out to you, giving you the ability to nurture the leads into paying customers.
Pro tip: Adding a lead magnet/freebie to your website will help you generate even more leads!
One size doesn’t fit all
There is no quick hack or one universal tip to guarantee that your website will attract qualified leads and convert them into paying customers. Taking a holistic approach to optimizing your website takes time and a well-thought-out strategy. While some businesses may perform better with a simple website design and let their case studies shine, other businesses may yield better results with a modern design and good user experience providing a depth of information users can happily get buried in.
Whatever parts of the website are optimized, the most critical factor is if it fits into the holistic marketing strategy for your business. Ensuring your business is generating leads into your marketing funnel and you are nurturing them through each stage will make all efforts on your website, content, paid advertising, etc. pay off.
Check out how we optimized the user experience, created more than one way to capture leads, and aligned the website with the current marketing strategy in this case study
