Having a website live on the Internet is one thing, generating leads and sales from it is another.

Why spend the time and money creating a website if it’s going to just sit there and only trickle in a few leads?

This article includes some quick tips and ideas on how you can increase the number of leads to and through your website.

A quick overview of what’s covered in this article:

1. Make it super easy for people to contact you
2. Make it worth their while to contact you
3. Make sure your website instills trust
4. Make sure your website design is clear and easy to follow
5. Write articles that potential customers might be interested in
6. Track, test and track some more!

Here we go…

1. Make it super easy for people to contact you

This one is very straight forward and more common sense than anything, but so many businesses simply don’t do this.

Does your website have the following?

1. A link to the contact us page that can be easily found?
2. Your address and phone numbers on the contact page? (this also helps with building trust)
3. A contact form on every page?
4. Your phone number on every page?
5. An easy to fill in contact form? Or does it have so many fields that someone will look at it and not bother contacting you?

The more options you can give to make it easier for website visitors to contact you the better. Obviously do this tastefully and don’t put a contact form after every paragraph on your website.

2. Make it worth their while to contact you

Why should someone contact you? There is so much competition out there these days fighting for business.

Give something away when they contact you. Offer something of value to them. You can give free consultations, free reports, ebooks and anything else that suits your industry and that suits your potential clients needs.

Maybe you should consider giving something away without them having to fill in a form or give you any details. Your potential clients may be looking around for information at the moment and not necessarily ready to contact any companies yet. If I have to give my details in order to download something for free, 99% of the time I won’t bother because I get enough emails every day, and don’t really want to be added to another spam list.

You could give away a free white paper or eBook without collecting their details. Make sure you include within it links back to your website pages and your contact information. You never know, they might contact you again 6 months down the track ready to do business with you, or even pass the free information they downloaded onto friends.

Here is an article on giving away content for free.

3. Make sure your website instills trust

Do you think if you provide hardly any information on your website, that people are going to trust you?

Do you think having a contact page with only a form and no address and phone numbers are going to make you look legit?

Do you think not having testimonials on your website is going to give people more peace of mind that you are a reliable company to work with?

You might think the above questions are silly, but the number of websites I’ve seen who don’t do any of the above amaze me. Online fraud is a big issue these days and people are only going to buy from those whom they trust. I am one of those people.

Here are some things you can do to build trust through your website:

1. Display your address and contact details.
2. Create a page that displays your team members and a little blurb about them. Photos are good too, just make sure they are nice
3. Create a testimonials page.
4. Put testimonials throughout your content so visitors can read them as they browse your website.
5. Give plenty of information and photos about your products and services.
6. Give a guarantee about your product and service.

We also wrote this article about The Secret To Building Trust Online which you might be interested in reading.

4. Make sure your website design is clear and easy to follow

I hate messy websites where I can’t easily find what I’m looking for. And there’s nothing worse with paragraphs and paragraphs of information that looks so overwhelming that I won’t even bother reading it.

Here are some tips on how you can make your website design and content clear and easy to follow:

1. Use lots of white space – don’t clutter your design and content. Make sure it’s easy to read.
2. Use big headings to outline the content of each section of text. The article you are currently is a good example. I’ve created a big heading for each section of text so it’s easier to follow.
3. Use icons and boxes to break up your text. It’s amazing how much easier it makes your content to read.
4. Make the navigation bar clear.
5. Get friends and family to look through the website and tell you how they find your website when looking through your pages.

I’ve played around with a lot of websites in my time, and I have always increased leads after making the design and navigation clearer.

5. Write articles that potential customers might be interested in

Search Engines are a great way to drive traffic. Search Engines like content. What do you need to do? Keep creating content relevant to your product or service!

This way potential customers, who would have never found you, can find your articles through the Search Engines, and hopefully contact you and do business with you. The possibilities are endless!

Create a blog or an article section on your website and write a new article for it at least once a month. There are so many articles already out there, so if you are having a hard time coming up with ideas then do some searching and draw ideas from other articles, but add your own spin and expertise to it. You can also hire copywriters to create articles for you if you don’t have the time.

Submit links to your articles from your social media profiles such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. It may not bring much qualified traffic but you never know, there might just be that one person who reads the article who ends up doing a lot of business through you.

6. Track, test and track some more!

What’s the point of making all these changes if you are not testing if they are working?

Creating a system as simple as noting down each time someone contacts your through your website (if they call, ask them how they found you) so that you can go back and compare the changes in leads. This also motivates you to continue making improvements because you are seeing the results

And trust me, there is always room for more improvement. I still tweak my websites to this very day.

Here are some forms we have developed to track leads:

1. Daily Testing and Measuring Tracking Form
2. Weekly Testing and Measuring Tracking Form

Conclusion

Like I said in point #6, track, test and track some more. The key is to keep improving both your website and the way you present yourself. Make sure you aren’t over-cluttering your website with cool little icons, boxes and giveaways. There is a fine line between just right and too much.

If you have any other ideas you use to help increase leads through your website, feel free to include it in a comment