How to Turn Web Site Visitors Into Sales Leads
These days everybody has a web site but most sites are not designed to capture leads.
The Call to Action
How often do you see a site where the only meaningful way to contact the company that owns the site is by clicking a hard to find "contact us" link?
If you have interested visitors to your site you want to present them with an easy to find, "call to action". Make it enticing for the person to reach out to you with language that will motivate them to act. When I read "contact us" I think; for what?
On every page place this call to action. For example if you or your company sells financial retirement services you would want to have a large, well designed banner on every page of your site with a call to action about the product and services you sell. Here is a good example;
This banner is much more enticing than hunting around for a text link that says "contact us".
Capturing Information
The next critical, but so often overlooked element to capturing leads from your site is to do exactly that; capture the information. After your visitor has found the link for contacting you so often they are given an address, phone number and an e-mail. The person is then presented with picking up the phone and calling you, to get your business!
A better way is to present a form to the visitor. Research has shown that there are a great many aspects to forms and which designs people fill out more than others and we will touch on that in the future. Suffice it to say for now any form is better than no form. Why? Because with a form you now have the data as opposed to collecting it from the prospect over time. The information is available for further follow up. For example say the person actually picks up the phone and calls the number you displayed on your site. You chat for a bit but you still don't have the correct spelling of their name, their phone number or address. Suppose they get another call, or the dinner starts to burn and they have to hang up; all that and your still in the position of hoping the prospect calls you. You can't even mail them a brochure.
Asking the Right Questions
Form length is a critical component and you want to keep the form as short as possible but you want to collect a little information beyond just contact info. The most important question beyond the contact info is WHY they are interested in your services. If you know this then when you reach out to the prospect you will have some insight into what they are looking for, and how to sell that to them. For example if you are selling financial retirement services ask a few soft questions regarding the most important area they wish to address.
What is your area of biggest concern?
- Saving for the future
- College fund for my children
- Paying for care should I need it
So, if its paying for care, then you can approach the prospect with products to address that; you already know what they want before speaking with them.
What Happens After Submit?
There are two ways to handle leads driven off of a form from a web site; data base entry or conversion into an e-mail. The data base method is superior but more costly. We will cover a lot about data bases and how they can be effectively used. For now this method drops the information into a data base that you access on-line from an interface. Sounds all technical and scary but it really isn't. With the e-mail method what happens is when the person completes the form and hits submit you get "form = action". What that means is the form turns the information into an e-mail and sends it to you.
The e-mail method is very popular and when just starting out is the easiest way to get going. You want to run several tests to make sure the e-mails are being delivered and not caught by a spam blocker. The next thing is create a rule in your e-mail system that will send all the leads into a separate folder. That way they don't get lost or over looked.
Beyond the Submit Button
A really nice trick you can implement into the form action is the sending of an e-mail automatically to the prospect. This is why you always want to collect the prospects e-mail address in the form. As soon as they click the submit button the lead is sent to you, and an e-mail message is sent to them thanking them for their inquiry and telling them you will be following up shortly. Most importantly in that e-mail you want to have all your contact information and certainly list any highlights or specials going on.
What this does is get all of your contact information into their possession. It's sort of like instantly handing them your business card. Of most importance in all this is that now the prospect has your e-mail address. Very often people like to start conversing with a sales person via e-mail, they feel less threatened or likely to endure sales pressure.