One of the most effective way to attract warm leads is through your website. There are dozens of ways you can use your site to bring in new business, but these are eight essentials. Don’t miss out on quality leads – a great website can really help your business!
1. Sidebar Offers: Your sidebar is an opportunity to collect email addresses for your list or promote your latest offer. Choose one goal for your sidebar, such as building your mailing list, and then prominently feature your sign-up form. Keep your offer above the fold so that it is easily visible (this refers to the top section of the website that your visitors see when they land on your pages). Don’t lose it in sidebar clutter of badges, links, tag clouds, archive links and search boxes.
2. Compelling Offers: Don’t fall into the trap of overgeneralizing your offer. Too many small businesses make the mistake of claiming they can help with anything. Or saying that a products’ uses are “only limited by your imagination.” Make it clear in your offer what problems your product and services will solve. If you’re not sure, you may need to refine your business niche.
3. Analytics: You’ve heard the saying “you can’t change what you don’t measure.” Using Google Analytics is key to measuring the success of your site and changing what doesn’t work. For example, the visitor flow feature on Google Analytics can show you what pages cause the most visitors to leave your site. Make changes to those pages to create stickier traffic.
4. Regular Blog Posts: Google and other search engines index can index the blog post on your website. The more frequently you update your blog, the better your chances are to be found in searches. The benefits to posting regularly aren’t limited to search engine optimization. Providing high quality information on a regular basis is a great way to build trust with visitors to your site.
5. Core Value Statement: You have approximately eight seconds to catch a visitor’s attention. Make sure that in those eight seconds visitors can find out who you are and what you do. Once they are assured that they are in the right place, they will dig deeper and learn more about you.
6. Contact Info: Make sure your contact info is visible on every page. If visitors to your site likes what they see, make it easy for them to get in touch with you. They will leave, or worse, assume you’re up to no good, if they can’t quickly find contact information. A visible address and phone number reassure prospects that they can easily reach you, and suggest that you’re more likely to be responsive after you’re hired. You can either put the contact info in the footer of your website or create a Contact page (or both!).
7. Social Media Links: Some visitors to your site may not be ready to contact you right away. However, they may be interested in getting regular updates from you via your social media pages. Having links to your Facebook and Twitter profiles, or any other social networks that you might be on, makes it easy for visitors to turn into followers.
8. Calls to action: Calls to action are statements that encourage visitors to take a specific action on your website. For example, you can encourage visitors to learn more or view your services page. Alternatively, you can encourage people on your mailing list to share your newsletter. Other effective calls to action encourage visitors to get in touch with you to schedule a consultation or request estimates.
Let your website do your prospecting work for you! Make it easy for visitors to your site to get in touch with you and to enter your sales funnel. Adding these eight must-haves to your website is an important start.