The best way to improve the results of a search engine optimization campaign is to increase the effectiveness of the traffic being driven by your efforts.
This is as true for search engine marketing programs for lead generation sites as it is for ecommerce sites.
The more leads you get from the traffic coming in, the more profitable your search engine marketing efforts will be.
Conversion Rate Optimization
Many companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars tweaking their pages to increase conversions by a couple of percentage points.
And this effort is worth the price.
Increasing a site’s conversion rate even a couple of percentage points can be worth a lot of money, both in the short and long term.
But not every company can afford to shell out thousands of dollars to run the months-long tests necessary for a full conversion rate optimization program.
Over the years, I’ve worked with hundreds of companies looking for leads from their digital marketing programs.
For businesses looking to increase leads, every conversion is precious as every conversion could be a paying customer.
For some, especially those in the B2B space, one lead can be worth millions of dollars.
It’s important not to miss any leads.
But it’s not always practical to spend thousands of dollars on a formal conversion rate optimization program.
Here are five things that work well when it comes to increasing conversion rates on lead generation-based sites.
1. Where Is Your Phone Number?
Not every prospective lead will want to convert on the site itself.
Many, especially those considering a significant purchase, want to speak to someone on the phone before filling out a form.
But they can’t do that if it’s hard to find your company’s phone number.
It’s still surprising to me when a company comes to our shop and complains that their phone isn’t ringing, but it’s almost impossible to find their phone number on their site.
Many businesses say that they don’t put their phone number on their website because they don’t want people calling and disturbing their staff.
This is backward thinking.
If you have to, create a separate phone number that goes to a sales voicemail. You can also create a separate number for technical support if needed.
Look, phone numbers are cheap these days.
But not having your phone number on your website will not only cost you leads but can also cost customers.
If a customer is worried about customer support, the fact that there is no phone number on a website is not comforting.
It’s important to make sure that your phone number is not only present but visible.
Studies have shown that the most prominent portion of a website in the top right-hand corner. That’s where your phone number should be.
And it should be in the top right corner of every single page.
After all, not everyone visits your home page first.
2. People Want to Chat With You
In our agency, we have seen an average 37% increase in conversion rate on sites that have implemented a chat function.
The most common objection to a chat function is that companies are afraid they won’t have the resources to man the chat inquiries.
However, a chat function doesn’t mean that someone in your company needs to be chained to a chair in front of your computer waiting to answer chat requests.
In fact, on our own site, most of the time we use our chat function like an additional form – or, as I like to think – an answering machine.
And chat doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg.
In fact, for my agency website, we use Drift’s free chat function and it works great for our needs.
3. Put Your Best Foot Forward – as in, Above the Fold
Designers love pictures.
And I get it, a picture is worth a thousand words.
But sometimes, a picture is just a picture – and it doesn’t mean much.
This is especially true when using stock photos.
Many businesses opt for form over function when it comes to design.
I will tell you that in many cases, an ugly website will convert better than a pretty one.
Especially if the pretty one doesn’t do a good job of setting the company apart from its competition.
Many websites that I look at in the B2B space don’t even adequately communicate what the company does, much less why anyone would want to do business with the company.
If you don’t know your company’s unique selling proposition, you need to figure that out first.
Once you know your USP, put it front and center on your site.
Especially on the home page.
The best place to tell customers why they should do business with you is where they are looking for someone like you to do business with.
4. Avoid the Slider
There are countless usability studies that state that too much movement on a webpage will decrease conversions. This is especially true in lead generation.
Movement distracts researchers from completing their task, which is hopefully to contact a company and become a lead.
Business owners love sliders because they want to communicate as much about their business as possible. But in reality, the more you communicate, the less your prospect will take in.
In almost every case, animated sliders decrease conversions.
It’s best to avoid them.
5. A Form for Every Page
The biggest fights I’ve had with designers over the years have been over my insistence that every page on a lead generation site has some sort of lead form.
I get it, forms can hinder a designer’s vision.
Forms aren’t sexy design.
But in my 21 years of working with websites, I’ve never seen an instance where adding forms to a page decreased conversions.
And I have countless case studies that prove that a form on every page will increase conversions.
In my opinion, a good designer can maintain an attractive design while putting a form on any page.
When we are looking at increasing conversions, the golden rule is to make it as easy as possible for prospects to convert.
Forms make it easy for prospects to convert.
So put a form on every page.
In Conclusion:
These five tips aren’t meant to be the end-all-be-all of Conversion Rate Optimization. In fact, these best practices merely scratch the surface of what is possible.
Increasing conversions is the best way to improve your return on investment in any digital marketing program.
And the first step in increasing conversions is to make it as easy as possible for your prospects to convert.
Put these tips into place and you’ll be on your way to increasing your conversions and, in turn, your leads.
More Resources:
- 14 Conversion Rate Optimization Tactics You Can Steal From Amazon’s Product Listings
- How Can I Get My Website Traffic to Convert?
- 101 Tips & Tricks That Will Boost Your Conversion Rates
Image Credits:
Featured image by author
