83 Lead Generation Suggestions for Improving Your Website Conversions
The name of the game online is lead conversion.
If you have a website, you probably try to convert your website traffic in one way or another. It might be for donations, email signups, sales leads, e-commerce sales, ticket sales, etc…. (we know the list goes on and on).
The point is, you want to convert traffic once you have spent money and time to get people to your website. Unfortunately, it is getting harder and harder.
Why Is It Harder to Convert Traffic?
We are way past the days of creating pretty pictures (although there are a lot of pretty websites out there). Everyone can grab a WordPress template nowadays and put together a “decent” website.
The main reason it is so much harder is the crowd. The web is a crowded place with over 1.2 billion websites online right now! In 2007, there were only 121 million, so competition is growing fast!
What Can You Do about That?
There are a lot of things we can rewrite and recommend (like how to use popups effectively, the best CTAs for a blog post, and why the email signup box fails), but today we are pulling in some of the best lists we have found that include a wide variety of ideas.
The following lists include just about every reasonable idea to help convert your website traffic. Getting traffic is a lesson reserved for another day (or month!), but once you have it, you want to convert it.
How to Use These Lists
You will undoubtedly get overwhelmed if you try to implement more than 5 of the techniques you find in these lists. We do this every day, so we know when it is overkill.
Instead of trying to do it all, think about your website. Think about your traffic. Maybe look at your ideal persona (customer avatar). Think about what they want to see, why they would visit your website, and what they would click/complete/do to become a lead.
Then read through each of these lists and identify some commonalities that apply to your traffic. Look at the examples. Pull the suggestions and recommendations together (maybe us a spreadsheet with ranking factors, if you are crazy analytical like that).
Make a list of the top 10 ideas you like and can implement.
Then rearrange the list into a list of priority. Take the top 5 and do them!
How Do You Know When They Work?
You have to track the progress. You have to set a baseline for your current conversion stats and compare the difference.
If you already track your leads, conversions, etc., you already have some form of tracking to determine if these tactics are successful.
Not tracking this yet? Now is the time to start!
Let me give you a few key stats to start with that shouldn’t overwhelm you to track.
TRACK THESE STATS TO DETERMINE CONVERSION IMPROVEMENT:
- Traffic (overall traffic to your website)
- Leads (whatever your lead is -> emails, form submissions, downloads, purchases, etc.)
- Customers (how many leads become a “customer”)
- Traffic to Lead % (how much of your traffic becomes a lead)
- Lead to Customer % (how many leads become customers)
These are the key statistics to track to determine if your website is working for you and where you can improve.
There are obviously a lot more items you track, tweak, and obsess over, but these will give you a good snapshot of what your site is doing for your business.
On to the List of Lead Generation Ideas
Okay, now for the ideas to improve website conversions. Each of these lists comes from different sources with a different spin on the ideas.
They are all useful to one person or another, so look for similar suggestions that work for your perfect target.
5 Lead Generation Ideas to Help You Increase Your Website’s Conversion Rates
Moz.com is a leader in the SEO world, and they share great content. Even though they only share 5 ideas, there are screenshots, examples, and a lot of depth for each suggestion. One of my favorites from this list is the Launch Post concept (#4 on the list).
25 Ways to Increase Sales and Lead Generation
Hubspot is a content marketing giant, and they really want you to use their marketing software. You can find a lot of great content from them just like this list of 25 ways to increase sales on your website.
They break down their suggestions in to several groups:
- How to Improve your Calls-to-Action
- How to Improve Landing Pages
- How to Improve Offers
- How to Improve Lead Nurturing Campaigns
- How to Improve Your Entire Campaign
12 Ways to Boost Your Website’s Lead Generation Performance
This list from Act-On contains a few of the “regulars,” but they also include a few ideas that make a lot of sense. This list focuses heavily on B2B marketing, especially since Act-On sells lead generation and marketing automation software.
They also include data to back up their suggestions and recommendations along with more details on the type of content you should use!
31 Clever Lead Generation Ideas You Can Implement Immediately
I included this list, because it is rather lengthy and it has a wide variety of suggestions. Not all of the suggestions on this list are for your website.
They go beyond your website and dip into traffic generation on some of the recommendations, but I think you will want to consider some of the items as you make changes to your website.
One good tip is #26, Simplify Your Landing Page. This is good advice for all of us!
The Ten Commandments of an Awesome Lead-Generating Website
Rounding out our collection is a list from kissmetrics. Kissmetrics offers customer engagement automation software, so they are invested in making pages convert more.
Want a great list of the essential elements for a landing page and possibly the home page? Use this list of 10 items. This list contains a lot of “must-haves” for your website/landing page. Consider most of these optimization ideas for your website.
Is there something missing from the list? Disagree with something? Tell us what you think.
