The web is a polyvalent media that meet the needs and goals of all kinds of users. While we are in the middle of a digitalization era, you shouldn’t ask yourself is you should be online, you should ask yourself how to be online.
Like the storefront of a traditional shop on the street, your website must attract people. Its design, visual identity, content, as well as the customer experience will be crucial for lead generation.
After defining your goals, according to your core business, you will implement a web strategy in order to meet these goals. It will allow you to identify what you need to do to design the website that suits your company best, and that will best suit the needs of your clients, existing as well as future ones.
The content you chose to display is crucial and you have to consider its relevancy in a serious way. Through this article we will provide you the key points to improve your lead generation with the improvement of the browsing of the visitors of your website.
The Best Practices
UX design helps users to find quickly and efficiently the information they are looking for on your website. It consists in thinking and designing a website with the most effective possible user experience.
In order to create a positive user experience for your visitors, your website must be practical, and easy to navigate within. To move around within your website must be natural and fluid for the web user.
Trying to provide for a unique experience to your visitors is a good thing, except if it makes their navigation uneasy.
By emphasizing user experience, you reduce the risk that the user leaves your website frustrated and increase the probability that he will find what he is looking for!
1. Optimize your navigation menu
Having too many elements in your navigation menu can be discouraging for web users. Reduce the size of your menu by using a drop-down menu, create a secondary menu that you will play within the footer (for the less important or legal pages). Be creative and find other ways to promote some of the pages of your website.
Try to stick to easy content and do not have more than 5 or 6 element in your menu, as well as not more than 4 pages in the drop-down menu. If you have elements in your navigation bar, think about a way to reorganize it all to create a better user experience.
The order of the elements of your menu is also important to create a positive user experience. It shouldn’t be decided randomly. Your navigation menu, from left to right, must follow the logical order of the steps that you want the web user to follow.
What information you think is relevant to your target? Prioritize them. Does the user want to know more about you, see your work, request the help of your services and contact you? In that case the order of the element of your menu will be: home, about us, services and contact us.
2. Call to action—CTA—and forms
The thing that will interest you the most are the potential prospects that your website will bring you. In that matter, you can use the various contact forms (also called CTA for “call to action”). These forms are crucial for the conversion and the management of leads. However, no one likes to fill in contact forms which is why you need to make these forms as pleasant as possible. Then, once the form has been filled, you have to follow up through a rigorous process.
As well, as your menu is logical, your visitors must navigate naturally from page to page. The content of each page must guide the web user toward the next page. Look for the pages that don’t include a CTA and add one.
3. Homepage: a vital entry point
Some entrepreneurs, especially those who started their business with a blog, don’t have a homepage. It’s too bad because a homepage is really worth it as a starting point during the visit of your website. It helps the web user to know where he arrived by answering the questions “who?” “what?” and “for whom?”.
If by typing the address of your website the web user directly lands on your blog, it could be disturbing. The role of the blog is not to explain what you do nor to guide your visitor.
4. Include a search bar
In order to make the navigation friendly, it would be smart to include a search bar on your homepage. You will avoid the frustration of potential customers looking for a specific article on your website. You can include one in the key area of your website: header, footer, sidebar, archive page of your blog…
5. Place the important element above the float line of the website
It is vital because this line marks out the visible zone of the web page without that the user having to scroll down.
By placing the key information above the line, you will make it more visible for visitor and will therefore improve their user experience.
But be careful, trying to put too many elements above the float line is not a good idea! It can create confusion about your message instead of putting it forward. You’d better have to prioritize the information and space out properly the element of the page for it to become more readable.
6. Have a responsive website
You have to take into consideration that the way to surf online has evolved through time and technologies. Having a responsive website that adapts to the various existing devices (phone, laptops, tablets) will help you not to miss any of your potential targets and clients.
7. Make sure your pages are loading quickly
Now that everything is going fast, in the way to consume as much as to move around, you have to optimize your website the best possible way in order to reduce the loading tie of the pages. Otherwise you would risk annoying your visitors, which would immediately affect your customer experience. Chose the hosting formula that fits best to your website, its content, as well as its traffic.
There are many ways to improve the browsing experience of your website in order to generate more leads. If some changes could be difficult to make without redesigning your website completely, there are many optimization that you can implement as soon as now. Spending time on it is crucial because your website is the first touch between your client and your business. Like on traditional sales and marketing, the first impression plays a critical role since the remaining of the sales process starts from there, until the purchase and the customer loyalty.