You have a website, maybe it’s brand-new, maybe you’ve just revamped it but it’s just not generating any leads. This can be very disappointing and annoying, but there are ways to fix it!
To fix this we’ll go back to the basics for a minute. Let’s start with remembering the customer journey, shall we? Firstly, people need to be aware of you and be able to find you when they’re looking for your services or products. Then we’re on to the consideration phase, at this point, people will know about you and you’d want to get them to start considering buying from you or enquiring. And the last phase is the decision phase, meaning they’ve bought from you or got in touch with you to enquire about your services.
Now let’s have a look at what you can do to generate more leads through your website:
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Start with the quick fixes
Before you change anything on your website and marketing strategy, make sure everything on your website is working! You might be doing everything right but if your contact forms or checkout pages are broken, you will not get any sales or leads.
Keeping an eye on your website is important even when things are going right so that you know immediately when something’s broken.
Make sure your customer has the best experience possible
There are a few simple things that are really easy to miss, like page speed, the usability of your website, lack of call to actions and mobile-friendliness. (50% of global website traffic comes from mobile devices)
If your page is not loading quickly, people are going to be put off by it and will probably leave your website without waiting for it to load, because let’s be honest no one has the patience anymore. Everything has to be quick and up to your customers’ expectations.
Your website also needs to be so easy that even your grandmother can use it, so that you don’t miss out on the enquiries from the not-so-tech-savvy people.
Sometimes people just need a little push in the right direction and that is exactly why we have call-to-actions. Giving people that last nudge, whether it’s an email campaign, social media post or a button on your website might just generate that lead for you.
Website Audits and CRO
Website audits are a great way to have another look at your website and to put yourself in your customers’ shoes once again, to see what you can do better, what needs to get easier, what needs to be added to or taken out from your website in order to increase your conversion rates.
This can either be a simple process like getting your family and friends to have a look at it, using some CRO (conversion rate optimisation) tools like Hotjar to understand your customer behaviour or getting an agency/expert to do a full audit on it. We can sometimes get pretty blind to things we see often, like our own websites. There will probably be tons that someone else will notice that you haven’t noticed or thought anything of it before.
Just remind yourself that even though your main goal is to generate more leads, your conversion rates will not increase if you can’t create a smooth experience once a potential customer lands on your website.
Contact forms
Contact forms are a must to be able to generate relevant leads. They are so simple but can be tricky to get right. First of all, they need to be on the relevant pages, so think about what people would be looking at on your website before they enquire and add your contact forms to those pages. Make sure the forms are easily accessible.
You probably have a few questions to ask people, in those contact forms but really think about what’s a must for you to know because people will get bored if the form is too long and it’s going to take them longer than they expected. If this is the case there’s a big chance that people will leave without submitting the form. I’m sure you’ve done it before, I know I have – I’ve landed on a website, was just about to enquire but saw the contact form and thought ‘I just can’t be bothered to answer this many questions when all I want is a simple quote.’
Just use the contact forms as a way of getting in the enquiries in and when you’re at a point where you’re having an actual conversation with that person, ask them all your questions. Don’t lose people at that final stage!
SEO
Last but not least, let’s talk about search engine optimisation. If people can’t find you, they won’t enquire, it’s as simple as that. Investing in SEO can get you ahead of at least half of your competitors.
81% of people search online for a product or service before they buy, so investing in SEO is the way to go and for most business owners it sounds a bit intimidating and overwhelming, but it’s what will be the most beneficial for you in the long run. Once you’re ranking in a good position for ‘relevant’ keywords, people will start seeing you as a trustworthy resource in that subject and you’ll be sure to generate more leads.
It’s a good idea to remember SEO is the long-game! Google even announced that it might take up to 6 months for them to crawl a website, so don’t get disheartened when you don’t see any improvements/changes after 2 weeks.
Start with an SEO audit, or get experts to do it for you so that you can see what you’re missing out on and what you can do to improve it. It’s worth noting that SEO is not just about keywords and ranking for them but also about getting your domain authority to increase so that search engines like Google start trusting you.
Keep an eye on your competitors’ rankings, as well as your own and you might even see some opportunities there. If people can find your competitors, you want them to find you for the same search term so that you have a fair fight.
Blogs and downloadable content can be a great way to generate leads, through your own knowledge/skills and resources. With blogs, you give people the impression that you are an expert in that topic, and you can provide them with even better insights and expertise if they choose to work with you. Creating optimised content means there are so many opportunities for you to target the right people at the right time.
Lastly, when it comes to SEO, please don’t make the mistake of getting your whole website optimised and then leaving it to perform without even keeping an eye on it. Always check your insights and rankings, so that you can take the needed action right away if you see an opportunity or spot something that has stopped working.
What I’m trying to say is, it’s not that hard. But it is impossible if you just sit there and do nothing. Just make a plan and start working on it. And when things get a bit too much, our whole team is here to answer your questions, guide you in the right direction, and even do the work with you.
