So you have a company website that looks beautiful, but you’ve noticed that your phone still isn’t ringing, and those lovely contact forms on your website never seem to get filled out. At this point it may be difficult to figure out where you went wrong.
Believe it or not, the problem may actually be with your website. No matter how attractive a website looks, if the proper lead generation features are not incorporated into it, it will not be successful at lead (or revenue) generation.
Read on to learn 10 of the most common mistakes and how to avoid them.
1. Not Mobile Responsive
There is a reason we ranked this at the top of the list. A website that is not designed to be responsive to any platform, browser, or device users are searching on will be a lead-generation flop. More and more people are accessing information on their mobile devices instead of desktops. (point in case – I just looked up data on phone even though I’m writing this on my desktop computer)
If mobile users do not have a positive user experience(UX), it may give them a negative impression of your brand, and likely will not make them interested in spending their money with you. The solution to this is a responsively designed website – meaning a site that automatically resizes and reformats itself to accommodate any size screen or device. If you have not already made your company website responsive, what are you waiting for?!
2. Complicated Contact Forms
The contact forms on a website need to be simple and streamlined. Trying to get too much information requires users to put in more effort, and this is a common mistake we see companies make. Most users will give up and find a company with a simpler contact form.
3. Misplaced Contact Forms
There is a “golden rule” for lead generation websites: “Don’t make me think.” (By the way, read the book “Don’t Make Me Think” to really understand user behavior on your website.) The point is to make things as simple as possible for your users – if your contact forms aren’t obvious and easy to use, potential sales leads will go look for a competitor with a more user-friendly website.
We suggest placing links in these places, since users naturally look for them there:
- the main navigation menu
- periodic text links in the body copy
- the footer
4. Misplaced Phone Number
Location, location, location! Usually, telephone leads are the easiest to convert, so your phone number needs to be highly-visible to users. Prominently display it in the header, and provide obvious “click-to-call” links to streamline the process even more for users.
Many companies overlook this, burying their phone number in a footer, and then wonder why their phone never rings.
5. Under-Whelming Content
Users must be quickly motivated to complete a contact form, or make a phone call. The content on your website is instrumental in this. Focus your website content on solving customers problems instead of product features and self-congratulatory statements. need a lot of motivation to phone in or submit a form.
Great lead generation websites bombard users with “what’s in it for me” content — making them keen to learn more.
6. Copy Overload
Aligning with #5, good lead generation content will not reveal the whole story, either. It acts to pique user interest, making them eager to know more. Attempting to tell the whole story may result in is ridiculously long pages that bore or confuse potential clients, or not even get read at all.
It is crucial for companies to remember that lead generation is not meant to sell your products and services, but merely to create the lead. Its an important distinction. doesn’t tell the whole story; rather, it tells just enough to make the user curious.
7. Slow-Loading Pages
A website truly designed for lead generation is built for speed. We all know how frustrating it is when trying to get information on a website where pages take forever to load or function. What do most people do? Leave. Quick page loading is a function of proficient website development and design: How hosting is set up, pages are programed, designs are created and implemented, and how images are handled all have an incredible impact on loading speed.
8. Shaky SEO Foundation
If you have an enormous brand following like Apple or Target, you might not need SEO for your website to generate leads. Most companies aren’t like Apple or Target, though, and cannot rely on users searching for them by brand exclusively. They need an SEO-friendly website to be successful at filling their lead generation funnels.
These are just a few of the common SEO issues we encounter: internal linking and worded navigation, poorly structured URLs, no keyword optimization in the content, lack of unique and keyword-optimized title tags and meta titles, and too much keyword optimization in the content.
9. Poor Form and Phone Lead Tracking
Companies who are genuinely serious about website lead generation track form submissions and phone calls granularly, so they are able to determine the source of every single lead. Consider this: If you don’t know whether that great lead came from a Google search, a Bing search, a paid Google ad or an email, how do you know which of your digital marketing campaigns to invest in more/less, fix or leave alone?
Setting up proper tracking is a web design function that requires a lot of development experience and in-depth knowledge of Google, Bing and other search engine’s operations.
10. Failing to Validate Sales Leads
Finally, careful readers will notice in the last section that I wrote about tracking submissions and calls. Remember, though, not all phone calls and form submissions sales leads — this is crucial! They also can be customer service calls, misdialed phone numbers, sales solicitations, personal calls, spam, or something else. Unless there is a lead validation system in place to separate leads from non-leads, you will never fully know which online marketing campaign is generating the best ROI — and you will also overestimate lead generation results, possibly by as much as 45 percent.
Avoid these 10 mistakes and your website is sure to improve its lead generation performance! To discuss how we can help you, call or request a quote.
