What is a business website anyway? Is it just a place to share information about your business or a gateway to make sales? In a lot of cases if you’re not actively selling a product online, your website should be a lead generation tool. If that’s the case for you, it goes without saying that having an attractive website will help you gain leads but without some lead generation strategy baked into your design, you’re really just creating a nice looking web page. Aside from using responsive web design and having an intuitive interface, you’re going to need to squeeze everything you can into your site to truly leverage it as an asset for your business’ growth.
In this article, I’ll give you five web design tips that can help you utilize your site for lead generation and conversion.
1 - Deliver a Message Using Images and Illustrations
The saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words and it's very true when it comes to selecting imagery for your site
. Every image you choose needs to help convey the message you want your prospective clients to absorb as they learn about your business. You can use images and illustrations to get your audience to engage with your brand and to empathize with your products, services, or ideas. By displaying emotion-evoking images and illustration
s on your site, you can also help your audience connect with you on a deeper level and make them more likely to trust you. Don’t be afraid to show pictures of yourself, especially if it’s you performing the service you are offering. The more authentic the content of your site is, the better. Or, if your brand is conveying a story, make sure the imagery is cohesive. For Torch, I wanted to really lean on the metaphor of a flashlig
ht lighting the way through a dark and confusing tech world so that’s why I chose the color
s I did and used the imagery and animations you see throughout the site, right down to the logo itself. Customers need to be able to understand why they should consider your business rapidly and images are a great tool to do just that.
2 - Make It Easy for Your Site Visitors to Find What They Need
Think about how many times you’ve gone to a website and clicked on “pricing” or “hours of operation” before looking at anything else on the site. Every time we engage with a website we have a set list of conditions in our head and we review the content to see if it matches or disqualifies the offering based on that criteria we’ve set. Make sure you include a navigation bar on your site that allows your visitors to quickly navigate to the most important pages of your website. By making it easy for your site visitors to find what they need, you can limit the number of opportunities they have to get lost. If a visitor wants to contact your sales team, they should be able to do it with just a click of the button.
3 - Give Your Site Visitors a Lot of Options
Think of a website like a funnel. You provide the highest level of information first and slowly add details about those offerings on every subsequent section of the website or further pages allowing the customer to do their own investigation and validate if they agree with your offering or not. When it comes to web design, you want to give your site visitors a lot of options to dig deeper. Now, you have to strike a balance here because you both want to make sure that you give them all of the information they need to make a decision but also don’t overwhelm them with too many choices. This is especially true when it comes to your products and services. Each product or service you have should get its own page with details about the offering but the potential customer can choose to just get the overview (think of a catalog page of all of your products) or they can dive deep on one product (think of a product page for one product and all of the information about it.
4 - Use Your Design to Guide Your Leads along the Funnel
In the last tip I mentioned you should think of your site as a funnel and when it comes to pages like your homepage, literally think of it as a funnel as they scroll down the page. At the top, you have to have the highest-level value proposition “we offer this service” and in the following sections as you scroll down the page, you offer more details about that service and why it’s the best. Throughout the page you are offering quick jumps to the end of the funnel, your call to action, where they will sign up, buy, give their information, etc. A good website design will guide your leads along this sales pipeline. You can do this by giving your website visitors a clear, straight path to go down and this will naturally make your site more user-friendly and your visitors more likely to follow the path you set out for them.
5 - Include a Call to Action on Exiting Pages
Think about how you explore a website. Like I said before, you might jump to key information like pricing and if that fits your needs, go back to the homepage to make sure you understand the offering. Then you might check out the About Us page or the blog to further validate you trust the business and that leaves you with next steps which should be clearly called out by the site. It’s this last moment or page before you exit that will either get you to act or come back later and if it’s not easy and clear that you should submit a form or call the business, you’re going to just leave. Make sure you include a call to action on all of your pages, especially these exit pages. An exit page is a page that is the last page of your website so in the scenario I just described, that could be the About Us page. If a visitor is getting ready to leave your site, it is important that you let them know that you have more content for them to explore. Including a call to action on these pages can help you get even more leads.
Conclusion
Website design can be a powerful tool for marketing your business. It doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective. All you have to do is follow the tips outlined above, and you’ll be on your way to a fantastic lead generation website.
Should you be in need of business solutions to make your company more successful, come to Torch Digital Labs! We partner with small and medium-sized businesses to create achievable digital strategies to meet their goals.
