Companies with lead generation websites tend to under-prioritize conversion rate optimization (CRO). This is especially true of small and midsize firms when it comes to their initial web designs and ongoing website testing and maintenance.
Neglecting CRO is a huge mistake. Frankly, it’s a bigger one than even our agency realized until we completed a massive study of more than 300,000 online sales leads. Then we learned something very surprising.
This research data is discussed in more detail in the presentation below, 10 Ways to Make Your Lead Generation Website Convert on the First Visit, and led to our agency offering first visit conversion advice.
We realized the do-or-die importance of getting visitors to submit a form or phone-in on the first visit. I created this CRO guide to help companies bring the conversion readiness of their websites to a higher level. The goal is also to keep their lead pipelines flowing, or start them flowing.
The importance of data and testing
CRO is a very technical and data-driven discipline within the web design field. E-commerce companies are masters of CRO because their very solvency depends on it. CRO involves big-picture issues, such as the writing style of content. It also involves micro-details, such as the shade of color of a “Submit” button on a contact page.
There are literally thousands of variables on web pages. These variables affect a visitor’s decision of whether or not to submit a form or place a phone call. E-commerce firms have big budgets for CRO and perform a multitude of tests on a continuous basis. They do all of this in order to squeeze more and more conversions out of product pages, as well as out of other pages.
CRO is complex and comprehensive. I therefore approached this presentation with the goal of putting some manageable scope around CRO for lead generation websites. My intention is to help companies like yours know which of the thousands of CRO items should be high priorities.
If you’ve never engaged in a serious CRO program before, it’s wise to start with a limited focus. Otherwise, your efforts will be haphazard and unlikely to lead to any noticeable improvement in first-visit conversion rates.
It’s an ongoing process
As a final introductory thought, it’s important to view CRO as an ongoing part of the marketing plan.
You could implement the tips in this presentation as a one-off project. In that case, you might see a marked improvement in conversions. Whether or not you do will depend a lot on what your starting point looked like.
However, to really turn your website into a lead generating machine, you have to keep testing. People are unpredictable—if you have a sales force, you already know that. No matter how good the theory is behind a CRO-driven website change, there’s no telling for sure how visitors will react.
That’s why you need to observe their on-site behavior through analysis of data and then try alternative changes. Testing will put miles of distance between you and the competition in lead generation.
See the presentation now:
The post Why Lead Generation Websites Need Great CRO appeared first on Growmap.
Why Lead Generation Websites Need Great CRO
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