5 Fundamentals Of A Lead Generation Website

Business websites occupy the central place in the complex lead generation ecosystem. Ads, social media profiles, email campaigns and newsletters, affiliates, and referral sites are all designed to provide a steady supply of prospects to the central location, where the conversion magic happens.

Or at least, that’s what should happen. A lot of effort can go into creating a lead generation system, only to have it all undone by a weak website. To ensure that your lead generation website is actually capable of generating leads, you should know that most of them, at least most of the good ones, are built using five fundamental elements.

1.) Professional Design:

People judge things based on how they look. We use our visual sense to judge other people, the food we eat, the products we buy, the businesses we interact with. It shouldn’t surprise you, then, that people will also use their eyes to judge your website.

It might surprise you to what degree the visual matters. A study of health-related websites showed that, when it comes to leaving the first impression of trustworthiness, design elements accounted for 94% of important factors. Content elements accounted for only 6%. Content does come into play later when describing a liked or trusted website. But for a website to get to that point, it needs to dazzle visually first.

If you’re not sure how to design a lead generation website, you should strongly consider hiring a website design firm. Good design is simply too important to be left to those who think that they can compensate their lack of expertise with sheer enthusiasm.

2.) Copy And Content:

Once your website passes the first impression test, it relies on copy and content to further nudge prospects towards becoming leads. Writing copy for a lead generation website is a craft of its own because the copy needs to be powerful enough to convert yet brief enough to avoid tiring the reader.

It can be the usual sales copy that follows the problem-solution-reinforcement form. It can break the mold and rely completely on using powerful words and action verbs. Either way, it will probably be tested before the site goes live to ensure maximum effectiveness.

Another approach is to include video content in your lead-generating website. Video is very big in marketing right now, and it’s a great way to give visitors an impression that they’re a part of a conversation, instead of simply being talked at.

3.) Call To Action:

Your lead generation website is designed to get its visitors to do something. The good thing is that they also probably up for it, otherwise they wouldn’t be visiting the website. So, to help them do what you want them to do, you should include calls to action across your website.

There are two misconceptions about CTAs you need to be aware of. One is that it can only be included on one page of the website, and the other is that you can only call to one specific action.

You can, and probably should include a CTA on each and every page of your website. You should call on the visitors to do different things, and allow them to enter your funnel at different stages. Having one main call to action is, however, a good idea, and using it somewhere above the fold on the main page is a sound strategy.

4.) Forms, Forms, And More Forms:

Just like calls to action, forms are a necessary ingredient of a high-performing lead generation page. When people fill out the form you give them, they stop being visitors or prospects and become leads. And that makes forms important. It also makes them a much researched and thought-about element.

Forms are usually placed somewhere near the CTAs. You can create forms that take multiple — usually two — steps to complete, but the important thing to remember with forms is to ask only the information that you absolutely need and to give something back. Having to fill out an overly long form will turn off a lot of visitors. On the other hand, asking for visitors to give you some of their information in exchange for something they find valuable makes it more likely that they’ll go through with it.

5.) Testimonials:

Your lead generation website will need some kind of proof that you’re able to deliver on the things you promise. Credibility can be established in many different ways, like adding a phone number of your business even if it’s web-based and including quality seals into the design. But what your website desperately needs is some social proof to help build trust.

Testimonials are the ideal type of social proof for your website. You want real testimonials, not some copy written by a copywriter. You also want to include photos of the people who are speaking about the quality of your products or services, as pictures increase credibility and humanize. Just make sure that the pictures are high-quality, and that people on them look friendly.