7 Tried and Tested Strategies to Make Your Website a Lead Magnet

Building a customer base is one of the biggest challenges that new businesses face. While large enterprises will spend thousands of dollars on pay-per-click ads and social media campaigns, small businesses don’t have those kinds of budgets and often have to rely on organic ways to find their customers. However, this should not dissuade you from starting your business.

Fortunately, there are several easy-to-implement and inexpensive methods of capturing useful leads for your business, such as your official website. The advantage of using your site as a lead magnet is that you have full control over what you publish and how you track visits and conversions. Moreover, it just improves the overall quality of your website, which is crucial when you are competing in cyberspace.

If you are looking for ideas on how to turn your website into a lead magnet, read on for seven useful tips.

1. Pick the right domain name

This may seem unusual, however, it is a great strategy to attract quality leads. Your domain name is the first thing people will see when they search for you. Finding the right one is a small yet crucial first step towards creating a strong web presence. By making it easier for people to find you and remember you, you increase the likelihood of converting them into leads.

When thinking about your domain name, you must consider the following:

• Is it short?

Long and clunky domain names are hard to remember, prone to being misspelt, and may also seem spammy. For instance, if you are looking to buy a secondhand car online and find two links in the search results, would you rather click on www.used-carz123.com or www.usedcars.store?

Pick a domain name that’s short and simple, ideally not more than 18 characters. Avoid using a hyphen, numbers, or modified spellings that may confuse people.

• Is it contextual?

Avoid going with something random and completely unrelated to your business just because the domain name of your choice wasn’t available. Try finding your top preferences on new domain extensions such as .STORE, .ONLINE, .SITE, .SPACE or .TECH.

Not only are they easier to acquire, but they also provide more context to your domain name. For instance, if you come across the domain name www.getgrocery.online, you immediately know what the website is about and the domain name has an appealing ring to it too.

• Is it creative?

You need a domain name that sets you apart from your rivals and intrigues people to click on your URL and learn more about you. Try to be creative without being cryptic. For instance, www.yourzen.space is a great choice for a wellness and fitness center.

2. Focus on your website’s design

Your website’s design should be clean, aesthetically appealing, and easy to navigate. Cluttered layouts can be off-putting for visitors and also make you come across as unprofessional, whereas a well-designed site shows your visitors that you are skilled, experienced and care about the finer details.

Your design should inspire confidence in the visitors’ mind that they have come to the right place. It should reflect your industry and your brand’s personality. For instance, a website that sells children’s learning aids should use playful elements and bright colors, while a news website should focus on high picture quality and clear, easy-to-read fonts with less distracting elements.

3. Reduce the loading speed

The Internet is all about instant gratification. If your website takes a long time to load, the bounce rate is bound to be high. According to this 2020 report by Ezoic, loading speed of 1-3 seconds may lead to a 32% bounce rate, while a speed of 1-10 seconds may lead to a 106% bounce rate. Make sure that your website pages load within seconds by finding the right web host, compressing your images, installing fewer plugins and minimizing HTTP requests.

4. Start and maintain a good blog

Customers spend a lot of time researching the products they need online. Why not provide them with everything they need on your own website? Starting a blog is not only a great way to engage, educate and inform your audience but also to strengthen your credibility as an expert in the field.

Post content related to your industry and products, such as latest trends, product reviews, guides and how-tos in different formats such as articles, videos, infographics, and even podcasts. For inspiration, check out these blogs by Walmart, ExxonMobil, and Hewlett Packard.

5. Provide clear call-to-action (CTA) in your blog

Make it easy for visitors to take the desired action by providing relevant product links and CTAs throughout your blog posts. For instance, if you are an online fashion store and your blog post is about 5 stylish must-haves this monsoon, you can provide links to the products mentioned in your post along with short and simple CTAs, such as “Buy these boots at flat 10% off”.

6. Optimize your website for mobile

A lot of online browsing and shopping takes place on mobile phones these days. According to a report published on Broadband Search, mobile traffic in 2019 had gone up by 222% compared to 2013. With so much online traffic coming from mobile phones, every website needs to ensure that it is optimized for use on phones. You don’t want visitors bouncing off your website just because it takes too much time to load or the layout looks weird on their mobile devices.

Test your website on various mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to see how long it takes to load, how simple the navigation is, whether the layout looks good, and whether the pictures look high-quality and the text readable. You can even run it through an online test such as Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to get a report on what are the strong points of your website and which areas need improvement.

7. Ask for their email addresses

When visitors create accounts on your website, provide you with their email addresses, and subscribe to your newsletter, it helps you get repeat business from them. You can use their information to track what they are browsing, which products and services are of interest to them, their purchase history and whether or not they have abandoned their shopping carts.

This will help you retarget them with relevant information and products that they are likely to buy and even get them to complete the purchases in their abandoned cart through discounts and other special offers.

Your website would be the ideal place for capturing people’s email addresses. However, new visitors will most often be wary of divulging personal contact details unless you give them an incentive to do so. For instance, you could offer them a free product such as an ebook, access to tutorial videos and other premium content or attractive deals (Sign up now and get flat 30% off on your first purchase!). Once you have their information and have a fair idea of their shopping and content consumption behavior, your chances of converting them into leads and eventually into repeat customers will increase manifold.

Conclusion

Your website is like your storefront in the online world. It is a reflection of your identity and your personality. If there is one investment that you must not compromise on, it is the quality of your website. A well-designed website with a professional look and feel and useful information can be your most useful tool for lead generation, which is the first step towards creating a large loyal customer base.