Leverage your site to capture leads

When clients come to Kinesis and ask us to design a website for their company, they often don't know of all of the exciting ways to leverage their website to capture leads, build customer loyalty, and differentiate their company from the competition.

So, to help give you ideas, here is a list of the top 10 things you can do to improve your website:

1. Calls to Action: On every page of your website, include a call to action. This is a verb that tells your visitors what to do next. People don't have time to search around your site, so make it as easy as possible for them to do business with your company. When I write website content for clients, here are some I use frequently: Click here to..., Call us today to..., Subscribe now, Visit here to..., Contact us to..., E-mail us to..., and so on.
2. Social media widgets: If you are using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other social media platforms, then make sure you tell people about it! Include widgets on your site that tell your website visitors the other places on the website that they can connect with you. If you have key individuals in your company that have a social media presence, include widgets for them as well on their bio page.
3. Clickable graphics: Graphics are interesting and they catch people's attention. If there is a service or product that you want to highlight, use a picture or illustration to highlight it. Make it clickable so that people can navigate to the page that will tell them more.
4. Testimonials: There is nothing more powerful than social proof. When other people explain how you have helped them solve problems, it has a very powerful impact on prospects. I recommend creating a separate page for testimonials - you can also weave them throughout your site. Include the person's name and company to add credibility. Number are powerful, so provide as much quantifiable data as possible. For example: "ABC company saved us $25,000 in taxes last year,"  or "XYZ firm helped us increase our efficiency by 34%." To learn more about collecting testimonials, see two blog posts I wrote on the topic:
   
   Tips for gathering great customer testimonials
   Create a system for asking for customer testimonials
5. Capture names: People are easily distracted - especially when they are using the Internet. So, while they may like what you have to offer when they land on your site, they may get a phone call or have to check e-mail or go to their Facebook page to upload a picture. Click! And they leave your site and forget about your company. That is why you should have a way to capture the names and e-mail addresses of your visitors. Offer them something of value in return such as a white paper, a report, or a tip sheet. And, along with this, you can subscribe them to your newsletter or ezine. You now have a qualified lead who you can market to over time until they are ready to buy.
6. Optimize your website (SEO): Paying to have your website optimized for search engines (SEO) will give you one of the best returns on investment. This process involves matching specific industry key words with your website and working them into your Title tags and content. Done correctly, SEO will allow your website to rank well for those keywords, helping people to find your company when they are using search engines. You can see my post, Using SEO to Get High Rankings for more details.
7. Contact info: Make it super easy for people to get in touch with you. People typically scan web pages - they don't read them word for word. So make sure you have your contact info in the navigation and on every single page (and/or in the header).
8. Instructions: You website visitor usually won't understand your business like you do. And they may not be that accustomed to using the Internet. So, if you want them to take a complex action, give them explicit instructions. It may not be as easy as you think for them to open a PDF or download a report or fill out a contact form. So, make it easy for them by providing the step-by-step how-to.
9. Make content scannable: People scan websites to find specific content. Break up blocks of text with headlines, subheads, and bullet points so that it's easier for the average Internet user to read quickly down the page and find what they want.
10. Benefits: Most of the things that you are think are interesting and important about your company are NOT of interest to your web visitors. They are on your website to solve a problem. That is it. And, they want to know how you can solve it. So, tell them. Describe what it is that you will do for them.

Getting ahead of your competitors

If you do these 10 things to your website, you will be ahead of at least 75% of your competitors.  And here is a bonus tip: make sure you have Google Analytics installed on your site before you begin implementing these changes. Then you can see what effect these improvements have on your metrics.

Do you have any more tips? Post them in the comments section below!