Creating an optimized landing page is one of the most effective ways to generate leads for your business. But, it’s more than just placing a “Sign Up Now” button on your page to see leads. Instead, you’ll have to be much more strategic about your approach.
First, let’s figure out how it all works. A unique visitor will click on a call-to-action (CTA) that drives them to a landing page. That page will have a form that’s used to collect the visitor’s information. If your visitor fills out the form, they turn into a lead. Your goal is to have them sign up for whatever you’re offering – so it’s important to optimize your landing page. (If you don’t know how to build a landing page, here’s a guide for you.)
Here are some simple ways that you can optimize your site so you can turn the casual visitor into leads.
1. Be Clear About the Conversion Path
The moment a visitor lands on your website, the conversion path is the steps they take to hopefully end with them filling out a form and becoming a lead. Make sure to take into account the following pieces to optimize the process:
- Clear CTAs: It should be clear to your visitor what they get for clicking on the CTA.
- Landing Pages: A well laid-out page can generate more leads. One study showed that if you have 30+ landing pages, you can generate 7X more leads than a company with only 1 to 5 landing pages.
- Thank You Pages: When your visitor fills out a form, the last step is a thank you page. Don’t overlook this step. Be sure to include some type of offer.
Pro Tip: Optimize your website and landing pages for all devices.
2. Add Fill Forms to the Pages That Get the Most Traffic
You probably have a few pages set up already. Whether from your emails, or social media, or blog posts, these landing pages may be generating some leads, but you’re looking to optimize so you can increase your leads. Go through and identify where your leads are coming from and create forms that visitors can fill out to transform into your next best fan. Remember when you create the form fields to make sure they’re the right fields and not to overwhelm a casual visitor to your site. It may be a turn off for a visitor to fill out too much personal information and they might abandon your site during the process. Keep it simple and straightforward – sticking to the basics like name, company, email, and phone.
Another word of advice is to test your lead generators to better understand what is the most effective. See what’s working for you and what is not.
Do the Math Before You Touch the Design
Most founders start with the homepage. New hero image, new colors, three weeks of opinions. Then the lead count stays exactly where it was.
Start with a spreadsheet instead.
Say your site gets 1,000 visitors a month and you get 5 form fills. That is half a percent. Now look at where those 1,000 people actually land. Say 400 hit the homepage, 350 hit two old blog posts, and 250 are spread across everything else. Your only form lives on the contact page, which gets 30 visits.
So 350 people a month read your two best posts and never see an offer. That is the leak. If you put one relevant offer and a four-field form on those two posts and just 2 in 100 readers take it, you add 7 leads a month. You more than doubled your leads and never opened the design file.
The numbers are made up. The pattern shows up on almost every small B2B site we look at. The traffic and the forms live on different pages.
Pull your own top ten pages by visits. Write next to each one what a visitor can do there besides leave. If the answer is "nothing," you found your first project.
3. Grab Your Visitor’s Attention With Headlines That Stand Out
Use strong verbs to create powerful headlines. Test out your headlines on your landing pages, blog posts, and more to increase your conversion. An easy way of creating a headline is by focusing on your value propositions. To do this, figure out why your audience is visiting your website. Look at how customers speak about you and focus on fine-tuning your value proposition to something strong by using verbs and cutting out the unnecessary adverbs.
4. First Impressions Matter
What does that mean? Make sure to create a landing page and website that is clean and easy to use. That may mean making your content scannable by:
- Using bullets
- Selling your offer in the first few words
- Taking a moment to bold keywords
- Using interactive elements like videos and demos
5. Make Your Offer Irresistible
Creating an offer that’s hard to say ‘no’ to isn’t rocket science. Here are 7 simple steps you can follow to create an offer that clinches the deal:
- Produce an offer that has a clear outcome so your audience can decide whether or not the investment is worth their time.
- Create an offer that speaks to your audience’s needs and alleviates their pain points.
- Use social proof based on results and testimonials to help persuade visitors.
- Make the value of your offer more valuable than the actual cost.
- Think about your active seeker who is searching for your product or service and create an offer that speaks to them.
- Include a guarantee – promise results and deliver on it.
- Speak to the general human need to belong and make your offer about something your customer is going to become a part of – like be a part of the marketing revolution.
If you’re having trouble growing your leads, it may be time to re-think your offer and follow the steps.
Rockstarr tip: Try creating a blog post that provides value to your audience by giving them important insight, then offering that they can learn more about the same topic in your ebook or whitepaper.
When all is said and done, it’s important to keep testing so you know that the formula is working. Also, nurture your leads to turn them into your lifelong fans. Keep delivering content they find valuable and send relevant emails that include great content that is tailored to them. Using these tips today, you can make sure every opportunity a casual visitor comes to your site is a chance to turn them into a customer.
What to Fix First When You Only Have One Afternoon
You will not do all five of these this week. Nobody does. So here is the order we would work in.
If your top pages have no offer, fix that first. Nothing else matters until a visitor has something to say yes to.
If the offer exists and nobody takes it, rewrite the headline and the button. "Submit" tells nobody anything. Say what they get. If headlines are the weak spot, we walk through the process in how to write attention-grabbing website headlines that convert.
If people start the form and quit, cut fields. Every field is a small request for trust. Ask for what you will use in the first conversation and get the rest later.
If people fill out the form and you never hear from them again, look at your thank-you page and your first email. A lead who gets silence for three days has already moved on.
Change one thing. Leave it alone for a month. Check the number. Then change the next thing. Founders who change four things at once never learn which one worked, and they end up redesigning the whole site again next year.
Frequently asked questions
What is website lead optimization? Website lead optimization is the work of changing your pages, offers, and forms so more of your existing visitors become leads. It focuses on what people do after they arrive, so it grows your pipeline without requiring more traffic. For most small B2B firms, that means clearer calls to action, shorter forms, and an offer on the pages people already read.
How do I get more leads from my website without more traffic? Put a relevant offer and a short form on the pages that already get the most visits. Most small business sites keep their only form on the contact page, which few visitors ever reach. Check your analytics for your ten most visited pages and give each one a clear next step.
How many fields should a lead form have? A lead form should ask only for what you will use in the first conversation, which is usually name, work email, company, and one qualifying question. Every extra field lowers the number of people who finish. You can collect the rest once someone has replied or booked a call.
What is the most common mistake that keeps a website from generating leads? The most common mistake is having traffic and forms on different pages. Visitors land on a blog post or service page, find nothing to say yes to, and leave. A redesign will not fix that. Adding one specific offer to your busiest pages usually will.
How long does it take to see results from website lead optimization? Give each change about a month of normal traffic before you judge it. Low-traffic sites need longer, because a handful of visits cannot tell you anything reliable. Change one element at a time, record the form fills before and after, and only then move to the next fix.