So, how do we create a lead generating website?
Let’s break it down together.
Competitor Research & Product Research
A lot of business owners believe that all they need to do for potential clients to find them is to mention the service they offer somewhere on their homepage.
There’s some logic in that. After all, if I run a catering business for example, what difference does it make if I pull in customers who want catering for a wedding party or a fantasy book lovers convention?
That’s the thing though, even if it doesn’t matter to me – it matters to my customers.
They want to know that I’m capable of providing them the exact services they’re looking for.
So, before you start building or even designing your lead generating website, step back and ask yourself:
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Who is my target audience?
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What are their fears?
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What are their pain points?
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What problems do my services/products solve for them?
I would assume the majority of you can’t answer all of these questions yet, and that’s ok.
Here are some ways to find them out
Competitor Research on Google:
Go on Google and type in the name of your service/product. Click on your competitors’ websites and try to notice if there are things that you see repeating themselves.
Are they addressing certain fears? Pains? How are they solving their customers’ problems? How are they enticing them into taking a desired action?
Write all these things down for yourself, they will come into play later.
Competitor Research with Facebook Ads Library:
All you need to do is type in a keyword and this amazing tool will show you all your competitors’ ads.
I would recommend you filter the ads to show you only ones that have been running for at least 3-4 months. That way you know that they are probably successful.
Product Research:
Type in the service/product you’re providing and the word ‘reviews’ afterwards.
This will allow you to hear your potential customers’ needs from their own mouths.
Just like in the previous research methods, note down things that repeat themselves –
What things are they happy with?
What frustrates them?
Are there particular words they use a lot?
Sometimes this step will allow you to find out things that your competitors completely missed.
User Interface & User Experience Design
Now that you have a clearer idea of who you’re targeting and what they need –
It’s time to translate those insights into the wireframes of your lead generating website.
Let’s go back to the catering example.
Say that I found out that my customers are young couples planning on getting married soon.
Say that I also found out that a major fear of theirs is that the catering company they hire won’t be reliable and ruin their special day.
How do I quiet this fear?
I could dedicate a section on my homepage to mention that I’ve been in the business for years, or that I worked with popular event planning companies in the past, that I have countless happy customers – or even that I was on an episode of Masterchef.
This is an example, at least let fantasy me achieve that dream.
Maybe I also found out that the bride is usually the one who has the final say (a shocking discovery, I know), and that she’s looking for a catering service that specializes in the aesthetic side of things.
As a result of that I might add a section showcasing my work and my attention to detail.
Important UI UX Tips
Intuitive navigation: The visitors of your website should have an easy time finding the information they are looking for.
Practically though, what exactly does that mean?
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The navigation menu shouldn’t be stuffed with links to irrelevant pages, and it should be organized and easy to browse. If, for example, you have a lot of services that could be grouped into a category, then use a dropdown to present them.
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Make sure that the hierarchy throughout your pages is clear. For example – your main call to action should stick out more than a button that just takes you to the FAQ section.
Responsive design: 60% of traffic comes from mobile devices, so it’s critical that when you design your website you take that into account. Sites that don’t do that end up losing a lot of potential leads.
One last tip for those of you who would like to experiment more with UI UX design: check out Figma.
Figma is a free tool that allows you to not only design your pages, but also create dynamic, interactive prototypes of your work.
Content Writing
Every website needs content, but a common mistake people make all the time is writing something irrelevant just to fill the space.
Lucky for you guys, you’ve already done your research and you know exactly what your customers want to hear –
Fear of commitment? Our software has a 30 day free trial!
Don’t remember to drink enough water in the summer? Our app will give you reminders and save you unnecessary headaches!
Can’t think of a third example for the blog you’re writing? Don’t fret, ChatGPT will write one for you!
Another tip I would give you is to think of the pages of your website as a journey you’re taking your users on. Your content should take them from point A to point B.
Point A could be an explanation of how your service/product can solve a problem they’re facing, and point B could be clicking on the desired call to action.
In the middle you have room to address their fears, to show them that you’re capable of solving their problems and maybe even put a smile on their face.
Development
The development stage can be the most intimidating one for a lot of people, and I can understand why.
Yes, you can build a website yourself, but not many people are willing to put time into doing it the right way.
I’m here to give you the basics. From there I would encourage you to do some research on your own.
Building websites with WordPress & Elementor
43% of all websites are built using WordPress, and that’s no coincidence.
WordPress is intuitive and easy to use, it’s free and SEO friendly.
And what’s Elementor?
Only the most useful plugin you could possibly stumble onto, at least as far as I’m concerned.
It’s got two main benefits:
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It gives you much more control over the design of your website.
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It makes everything visual – you can see any change that you make in real time.
But where do we start?
That’s where an awesome, simple tool enters the picture. Local allows you to experiment with building websites without having to purchase hosting or a domain for your website.
It runs on your computer instead of on a server.
If you’re hesitant to practice on your actual website, or just want to get a feel for building websites, I highly recommend it.
Ok, so you installed Local and are sitting in front of the WordPress dashboard for the first time. What now?
Step One – Setup
So one of the first things you’d want to do is install Elementor.
Look at the side menu and locate Plugins. Inside plugins you’ll need to click ‘Add new plugin’.
Type ‘Elementor’ into the search bar, then install and activate it.
The next plugin you’ll need to download is YOAST, which I’ll cover in the SEO section of this blog. For now though, install and activate it too.
Step Two – Elementor
Time to create your first page!
Click on ‘Pages’ and then on ‘Add New Page’. Name it, save it, and then click on ‘Edit with Elementor’.
Welcome to the elementor editor! Let me walk you through the basics.
Elemntor works with containers that contain elements.
For practice, drag a container from the sidebar into the middle of the screen.
Then click out of it and drag a ‘Title’ element into the container you just created.
Now you can see that the sidebar changed. Instead of the ‘Elements’ and the ‘Global’ tabs you had before, you have new ones. Content, Style, and Advanced.
Click on ‘Content’ to change the text and on ‘Style’ to change the color, font and the size of your title.
To create space between elements click on ‘Advanced’ and add either margins or paddings.
When you’re done working on your page, click publish and that’s it – your page is live!
Important Tips
Unfortunately I see a lot of website developers (both experienced and inexperienced) making the following mistakes without realizing just how much they are sabotaging themselves.
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Not optimizing images: Images that weigh a lot slow down page-load considerably. Studies have found that shortening page-load from 8 to 2 seconds improves conversion rate by 74%!
If you don’t have access to Photoshop I recommend img2go.
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Too many plugins: Each plugin you add introduces potential points of failure, increasing the risk of conflicts, security vulnerabilities, and performance slowdowns.
When you play around with Local feel free to test out as many as you want, but on your actual site try to only download plugins that are essential to your website needs.
Preparing your Site for SEO
I wrote a more in depth blog about SEO if you’re interested in a deepdive, but for now let’s get the basics out of the way.
Remember YOAST? This is where it comes into play.
What does YOAST help us with?
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It ensures that Google can find, read and index our pages.
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It helps us with tips that are unique to the page we’re working on.
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It shows us a preview of how our pages will appear to our users when they come across them on Google.
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It creates an XML sitemap of our site which we can then submit to Google to make our site visible quicker.
Technical Optimizations you should Consider
Websites are built using HTML. Without going into boring details, HTML is like the skeleton of your site.
When Google crawls your site, it tries to understand its structure. If it can’t, it lowers the chance that it will show your site to potential leads.
Sounds complicated? Don’t worry – WordPress does most of the work for you.
The only thing you should be familiar with is HTML tags.
Remember we dragged a title element into a container element before? Well, what happened behind the scenes is that an HTML tag was added.
This HTML tag is an H1 – a main heading.
Every page you build should have only one of those. Secondary titles should have an H2 tag and so on so forth. Usually I find that I only ever go up to an H3 tag.
But how do you access those tags?
Simple – Elementor. When you click on an element and look at its ‘Content’ tab, you’ll see an input labeled ‘HTML tag’. You can change it from there.
There are a few more HTML tags worth knowing, but for the sake of this already overly-long blog I won’t go over them.
Instead, I’ll leave you with something a bit more exciting –
Using AI Tools for your Lead-Generating Website
Almost every week now I hear about another new cool AI tool that I’m just dying to use.
Some of them are incredible and others are only great if you know how to use them properly.
You can find people who would recommend that you build your website from scratch ChatGPT, but in my experience – we’re not quite there yet.
That being said, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that you can and should do with AI.
Some tools that will make your life easier:
Relume: Relume is a great tool that allows you to generate wireframes of your site based off of a prompt you give it. Simply type something like ‘A website for a catering business focused on weddings’ and let it generate a layout for you.
You can then edit it yourself or even export it into figma. Just make sure that you keep in mind the research you did before.
Midjourney: I’m sure many of you have heard of this tool before, and for a good reason. You can create amazing images with it based on the prompts you give it.
I mainly use it to generate graphic elements I use in my designs. I’m not a huge fan of using fully realized images yet because I find there are still too many details that give it away.
Plus I want full control over my designs, and Midjourney saved me so much money I could’ve spent on stock photo services.
ChatGPT: Just because it can’t build a professional website from scratch yet it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t use it.
I use it in practically every project I work on – whether it’s to plan things out for myself, research or even add some simple CSS to my websites.
Wiply: Wiply is a tool for creating interactive mini games that excel at raising your conversion rate. Very helpful if you run an Ecommerce business.
Ok, you made it to the end of the blog!
I hope you came out of it with a deeper understanding on how to build a website that brings you quality leads.
If there is a topic you’d like to read more about feel free to get in touch with us 🙂
