The 12 Essential Elements of a Lead-Generating Website
The following 12 elements help you increase your website conversion rate to generate more leads on your small business website.
Here’s a brief overview:
- Persona-Based Architecture
- Credibility
- Permission Marketing Lead Capture
- Free Download
- Tell Your Story
- Persuasive Copywriting
- Search Engine Optimization Copywriting
- Clear & Friction-Free Call-To-Action
- Elements for Interaction & Education
- Analytics
- Easy-to-Update Content Management System
- Clean & Professional Design
Element #1: Persona-Based Architecture
When you understand personas, you can consciously craft your marketing messages and organize your website content to cater to each, resulting in increased leads and sales and greater customer engagement.
Rather than steering them on your terms, you provide the means by which they navigate and buy on their terms.
Based on the Myers-Briggs approach, there are four primary personas. When interacting with marketing materials, companies, products, and/or services, each persona looks for different things, asks specific questions, and resonates with certain words and processes.
Element #2: Credibility
Credibility can come in the form of endorsements, testimonials, credentials, education, qualifications, awards, media appearances, official designations, experience, trust symbols, and others. It can apply to individuals within your company and/or your company as a whole.
Element #3: Permission Marketing Lead Capture
A permission database is list of individuals who have given you permission to market to them. They land on your website, like what you have to offer, and subscribe to receive information from you by giving you their personal information.
Their data is captured by webforms created by customer relationship management (CRM) or email marketing software. You then cultivate them over time by giving them relevant, valuable, educational content.
Element #4: Free Download
The easiest way to motivate people to get into your database is to give them a valuable download. This can be an e-book, white paper, video or video series, audio recording, recorded webinar, podcast—the possibilities are endless.
Element #5: Tell Your Story
Strangely, very few business websites really tell the story of the business. The content is the bare-bones essentials. It doesn’t highlight their most important messages or competitive advantages. It doesn’t share the interesting, obscure details that make their business unique. Essentially, your story is:
- Who you are
- What you do for your customers
- Why you’re different and special
- Your philosophy, principles, and values
Element #6: Persuasive Copywriting
Of course, it’s not enough to just tell your story—you must also use the art and science of persuasion to move website visitors to take action. This includes using knowledge of psychology, the differences between the left and right hemispheres of the brain and how to cater to each, the three levels of memory, how to surprise and delight Broca’s area of the brain, the power of details, how to tap into emotions, etc.
Element #7: Search Engine Optimization Copywriting
You can’t persuade and convert if you can’t get found. Your website content must be written to both humans and search engines alike. Not only does this help increase your organic search engine rankings, but it also ensures that visitors will stay longer on your site—assuming your site is relevant to their search.
Element #8: Clear & Friction-Free Call-To-Action
How do people engage with you? What’s the first step for them to get started working with you on the web? Your call-to-action could include any of the following and more:
- Free trial
- Free quote
- Free consultation
- Download content
- Register for an event
- Product purchase
- Learn more
Whatever it is, it needs to be clearly-defined and made prominent in strategic places throughout your site using buttons, hyperlinks, and forms.
Element #9: Elements for Interaction & Education
The most important elements here are a blog with an RSS feed and social media icons (which, of course, is predicated upon you actually being active in social media channels). Read The Beginning Blogger’s Bible to learn why an active blog is essential for most business websites.
Element #10: Analytics
Analytics track massive amounts of website visitor patterns and data and tell you how people are interacting with your site, where they’re spending time, where they’re losing interest and leaving, places where they’re experiencing friction, etc. They allow you to continue optimizing your site to increase your conversion rate over time
Element #11: Easy-To-Update Content Management System (CMS)
A good CMS, such as WordPress, makes it simple for anyone to update a website, whether they’re technically-inclined or not. Building your site on a user-friendly CMS is critical because of the need for constant testing to optimize your conversion rate. It allows you to be lean and quick and make changes on the fly.
Element #12: Clean & Professional Design
Finally, your site must look and feel good. If it looks like something your brother-in-law threw together over a weekend, well, your visitors will treat you accordingly. People won’t invest in you if you’re not willing to invest in yourself.
About the Author
Stephen Palmer is a persuasive copywriter and website architect with The Website Architects, a small business website design firm with an audacious, money-back guarantee. He and his team “architect” small business websites for optimal lead generation. Learn more by downloading his free e-book, “The 12 Essential Elements of a Lead-Generating Website.”
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