A Simple Guide to Quickly Increasing Website Leads

Today, websites are vital for businesses to engage with potential leads online. The main difficulty for businesses trying to succeed online starts with a common misconception: the idea that websites alone generate leads. In this article, we've detailed why websites are more accurately a lead capture system, not lead generators. Understanding these processes will ensure your business speeds through traffic generation and lead conversion with ease.

Understanding Lead Capture vs. Lead Generation

  • Lead generation involves attracting and converting strangers into prospects interested in your business through outbound strategies including ads, email campaigns, and social media marketing.
  • Lead capture, meanwhile, is how websites gather visitor information in an effort to transform them into potential customers after visiting.

Websites alone do not inherently drive visitors - they actually rely on external sources (like the examples above) to do this. Therefore a website's true purpose is to first capture this traffic and then convert them into potential leads. Without a steady flow of qualified traffic, however, even the most modern websites cannot deliver the desired results.

The Origin Sources of Traffic

For a website to capture leads it needs a consistent influx of visitors from multiple channels. Every source may require its own unique strategy to attract the correct audience:

  • Organic Search (SEO): organic search using engines like Google or Bing provide excellent long-term visibility through search results, but can take some time to fruit.
  • Paid Advertisements: paid ads bring in immediate traffic, but require an continuous financial investment.
  • Social Media Marketing: each social site has a unique potential customer base. Platforms include Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.
  • Referral Links: these come from content marketing opportunities and partnerships.

Optimizing for Conversions

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is a key performance indicator of the number of visitors who then take a desired action on the business website. These can vary based on the type of business or campaign you may be running, but two of the most common examples include:

  • Making purchases
  • Filling out forms

In order for a customer to do any of the above actions, the business needs to have created

  1. A user-friendly website
  2. With clear calls to action,
  3. Persuasive content,
  4. And intuitive navigation.

If any of these steps are off, it can create friction for the user that results in bounce rate, reduced time on site, and the loss of a lead or sale. Every aspect of the website should guide visitors seamlessly toward taking an action.

Tools such as the following will help refine user experience (UX) and maximize your conversions:

  • A/B testing
  • heat mapping
  • user feedback

Depending on your particular website, you may need to also:

  • Optimize landing pages
  • Simplify site navigation
  • Ensure mobile compatibility.

These functional components are the health of your web property. You can monitor the results of any changes on user interactions with tools like Google Search Console or Analytics.

Clarifying Lead Source Attribution

A website is not an origin source where leads or traffic spawn. You must trace where your visitors actually originate - do you get more traffic from search engines, social media, paid ads, or referrals? This knowledge will show you where to allocate your resources and efforts.

The flowchart below shows how social media platforms and Google Search can direct potential clients to your website, while the website itself acts as a central destination, capturing visitor information, and ideally converting them into leads. In this example, the lead goal is calling or emailing the business.

Embracing a Holistic Approach

Websites are crucial for capturing and converting leads, but they can only do this through the use of several diverse traffic-generating sources. Understanding this difference between lead generation vs. lead capture is a critical component of helping your company create a well-rounded digital marketing plan. 

In the end, only by both attracting the right visitors and optimizing their journey for conversions can companies enjoy remarkable online success. Evolving your website into a powerful tool for engaging and converting your audience starts with understanding how everything works, so you can make simple changes with ease.