5 Ways to Maximize Lead Generation on Your Website
Kerry Coppinger
|Data & Analytics | January 19, 2022
Marketers face a variety of challenges when launching a new website. From maintaining brand consistency to optimizing for search engines, attracting the right personas, and minimizing IT issues, website building can be a daunting undertaking. And once a website is launched, the work continues as marketers analyze several success metrics to determine if the website is achieving its intended goals. One of the key measurements of success for most businesses is an increased level of interest in their offering and, ultimately, new lead generation. In this article, we dive into some key areas marketers can focus on in order to maximize their potential for lead generation when building and launching a new website.
1. Create an intuitive user experience
When users arrive on a website, they come with a certain level of expectation for what kind of information they will find and where they will find it. It is great for marketers to get creative with website content, but if a website falls too far outside the general expectations of the website visitor, it can lead to website bounces and loss of potential customers. Navigation best practices include making high-level informational pages easy to find – like product pages, information about the company, and a way for visitors to contact the business. Furthermore, optimizing the site for a quick load time, minimizing redirects and 404 pages, hosting the site on a reputable service, and making the site mobile responsive can all be great ways to meet user expectations. Additional best practices for user experience can vary by industry and product or service offering. For example, e-commerce sites can become easier to navigate if their products can be filtered by product type, sorted by price or style, and if relevant options are suggested based on a customer’s previous queries.
2. Attract visitors in your ICP with relevant content
Website visitors who are considering a new product or service for the first time want to make sure it is something that will benefit them specifically. You wouldn’t want to lose a potential customer just because they quickly look around your website, don’t feel any of the information applies to them, and then incorrectly assume they are in the wrong place. By creating content geared toward specific personas, and carefully constructing use cases for their specific needs, you can help the visitors understand how your offering will help them solve a problem they currently have or make their day-to-day life easier.
3. Customize form fields to include crucial information
Lead generation forms are critical for acquiring website visitor information, which can then be used to better understand their interests and needs. Because this information is so valuable, some companies take the approach of asking website visitors to provide answers to 10 or 20 questions before they can access certain information on their website. While this can be very informative if someone completes the form, it can also deter potential customers who don’t want to take the time to fill out all of that information. On the opposite end, some companies want to acquire as many leads as possible and only ask for a name or email on website forms. While this is great for getting a lot of form fills quickly, the information the company has on those leads is minimal. A great way to find balance is by asking website visitors for the most critical information first. This can vary based on each business, but generally, email, location, name, and job title can be a good place to start. Then, progressive form fields can be implemented so that additional information is requested on future form fills.
4. Optimize your site for SEO
If your company is looking to reach new audiences and attract potential customers who are not yet familiar with your brand, prioritizing SEO is critical. A good place to start is by optimizing the content you’ve already created by ensuring every page has an up-to-date title and meta description and relevant header tags. This helps Google and other key search engines easily find your website and present it to internet users looking for the services you provide. Adding tags and alternative text to images can also help you appear in search results and assist with accessibility. Once your current content is optimized, SEO tools can be used to research new keywords to target. In general, it is wise to start with long-tail descriptive keywords with a high search volume but low competition. In other words, you want to optimize for keywords that a lot of people are searching for, but also keywords that your competitors aren’t already dominating search result pages for. If you are a local business, you can also take measures to create content around “shoe stores in Boston, Massachusetts,” for example, so that you can show up on geolocation-based search results as well.
5. Reduce the risk of invalid users and bots entering your funnel
Many websites that are carefully optimized can still fail when it comes to attracting relevant leads if they do not have the right security measures in place. Research shows that 27% of direct and organic web traffic is made up of bots and fake users. Even if your website is not being targeted by malicious bots or jealous competitors, invalid traffic impacts virtually every website to some degree. When bots and fake users make their way to a website, they frequently click around on different pages, fill out lead generation forms, and enter customer databases. If you are incorrectly identifying these fake users as legitimate website visitors, you are then making decisions based on skewed data. Not to mention, you are wasting valuable time and resources nurturing these fake leads and even making drastic changes to your website to better accommodate these fake users. In fact, a recent CHEQ study found that $115 billion in sales labor costs are wasted on invalid leads each year. In order to mitigate these risks, businesses can pay attention to the behavioral patterns of website visitors to identify which users could potentially be fraudulent. Some things to look for that can be indicative of bot activity are haphazard rapid clicks, traffic at unusual times or from unusual sources, and suspicious spikes in activity. Oftentimes, businesses decide to ultimately implement Go-to-Market Security in order to actively prevent bots and fake users from polluting their funnels and harming their lead generation efforts.
Building a new website can be a big undertaking. Because websites are crucial tools for attracting customers and gauging interest, it’s important to carefully assess how to optimize pages for the best possible user experience. Creating relevant content and showing up in search engines is just as important as making sure pages load quickly and can be accessed on different devices. Furthermore, businesses should make sure that their site is free from harmful, invalid traffic in order to get an accurate picture of how their website is performing.
Author
Kerry Coppinger
Senior Manager, Brand Marketing
As head of the brand marketing department at CHEQ, Kerry manages all things content and brand including: research reports, public relations, content marketing, copywriting, press, and other editorial features. Prior to her work at CHEQ, Kerry worked for several tech companies in New York.
