A Winning Website: How to Convert your Firm's Website Visitors to Leads

Message the value

Which statement speaks to you more?:

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Positioning or packaging your content so that the value and relevance to your audience are highlighted improves conversions. Get in the mindset of your buyer personas when you are writing the positioning for your freemiums.

What are their pain points? What is important to them? Sharing how your content will address their needs makes conversion more likely than a no-hitter.

If you already have content offers on your site, a great exercise to help improve conversions is to review your existing landing pages and see if they pass the blink test—in 3-5 seconds could someone understand the value of your offer? Value is the key here. This is not about whether someone understands what the offer is, but how it will benefit them.

Is the page header the actionable title of the offer (i.e., Download our {insert name of offer})? Try replacing the header with content that speaks directly to a specific persona or to state how a specific pain point will be addressed (i.e., the value statement). Then use the subheader for the actionable title (i.e., Download our…) and supporting content (short sentences and bullet points) to expand on specific values and details.

Build landing pages with purpose

Landing pages are different from the webpages on your site. Just as each player on a team has a specific position, your content offer landing pages have a specific role to play—conversion. To hyper-focus on the goal of the conversion, a landing page should remove all other “noise.” It’s not uncommon for landing pages to eliminate the primary navigation to not distract a site visitor into leaving your page before converting. If you choose to do this for your landing pages, I highly encourage you to create a "Thank You" page for site visitors to be directed to after they submit your form, which reintroduces the primary navigation so your visitors can continue to engage with your site. 

A team’s starting pitcher sets the stage for the game’s success, and the top of your landing page does the same. While I generally dislike the term “above-the-fold” as it applies to web design, it is true that the most important content should be listed first. The top part of your landing page should include the value content you’ve already written and the submission form. While you don’t necessarily need anything else for your landing page, you can bulk it up (performance enhancement free) with content related to the freemium—a preview of what they will find or information about the author’s expertise on the subject. While internal linking (the practice of linking to another page within your site) is generally a best practice for web pages, I strongly discourage this for landing pages. Remember, the primary role of a landing page is to convert the site visitor so you want to minimize the distractions or opportunities to abandon the conversion as much as possible.

It’s all about stats

Baseball is a numbers game—pitch counts, batting averages, OPS, and RBIs. Managers obsess over each data point before, during, and after every game. As marketers (or the marketers of our firm), we should take a page out of their playbook. Monitoring the performance of your content offers and landing pages is the only way to understand the success. 

Coming from someone who is responsible for a lot of data, it can be overwhelming. My best advice is to start small. Pick a few meaningful metrics that you are going to measure and then track them. For your content offers, important stats are unique pageviews and form submissions which then allow you to calculate your conversion rate. Depending on the platform you are using to host your landing pages and forms, all of this may be captured for you. Set a regular time to review this data and look for trends. By keeping an ongoing pulse on the performance of your campaigns, you know when you might need to make adjustments (i.e., amp up the value statements) or when you need to call in the bullpen (i.e., swap out a new content offer).

Teams spend years, sometimes decades, and millions of dollars building a World Series club. Fortunately, you don’t need to do either to create a website that drives home conversions. With some key plays, you can knock your prospect goals out of the park. 

Good luck (and Go Twins)!

About the Author

As XYPN’s Marketing Systems Administrator and former Webmaster, Katie DeMars plays a major role in communicating XYPN’s value proposition to the world through digital mediums. Her career experiences span marketing and web roles giving her a unique perspective when approaching each project.

Katie is passionate about creating exceptional virtual experiences and is excited to share XYPN’s story through digital platforms. She enjoys helping members succeed online.