Lead generation for your WordPress based site

Your website is there to do a job, it should be working for you.

When working with clients on web projects I often use the metaphor of you website being an employee. In the same way that you wouldn’t hire someone and then just abandon them you shouldn’t launch a website and then just leave it be. It’s needs to be built upon, tweaked and tested for performance.

You should expect results from your web site investment

Lead generation is often one of the core functions and indicators of a good performing website. Perhaps it’s getting leads to your sales team, attracting users to sign up to your email newsletter or making a sale if your site does e-Commerce.

Optimise for lead generation

There is no one size fits all here. Every site is going to be different as the content and audience is unique. So let’s look at this in general terms, I’ll present just a couple of ideas to think about.

Make the call to action simple

I think I could fill a blog post with just this point alone. What ever it is that you want the user to do; fill in an enquiry form, signup to a newsletter etc.. make it simple.

• Ask only the minimum number of questions
• Make the form easy to find in the menus and elsewhere in your site
• Consider putting the form inline with your content

This example is from the our very own blog. At the bottom of each blog post (just scroll down you’ll see it!) we show the user a form to sign up to the our eMail newsletter.

Consider new ways of getting attention

We have been using a new WordPress plugin on a few projects lately called Opt-in Monster. While it’s primary focus is getting users subscribed to an eMail list, with recent updates it can be used more generally within a site.

It can show visitors a pop-up message, perhaps directing them toward your contact page or telling them about a special promotion that you have going on at the moment.

The clever thing about Opt-in Monster is that there is a lot of smarts in the background. Rather than annoying a user the moment that they hit your home page, you can show the pop-up message based on the visitors behaviour. For example, as they land on a specific product page show a message there or my favourite, show the pop-up just as a user is about to leave your site – giving you that last chance to win them over before they go.

The plugin also provides other tools apart from the pop-ups. You can have a call to action or sign up form that sits in the sidebar of the site or the footer as well.

Analyse the stats!

Whatever the tool you use you need to be looking at the statistics. Call me a data nerd but I can tell you how many leads we’ve had this week, is that number higher or lower than usual and probably have a general stab at why it’s better or worse than usual.

Over at our sister website HelpForWP.com we sell WordPress plugins. We get a lot of traffic from around the planet and we’re constantly trying new things to improve sales. It might be trying a new placement for the buy now button or showing people about to leave the site a discount coupon code via a pop-up.

None of these tweaks are worth doing if you don’t have an eye on the statistics to guide you if the change is making conversations better or worse.

We install Google Analytics on each site we launch, with a bit of know how and time to learn it all the information is there for you too.

This post is part of a 3 part series: breathe new life into your WordPress website. Be sure to check out the other two posts here.

Part three will be published 26th June.