How to optimize your website for leads

Your website's copy and layout matter—that's why companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft conduct thousands of experiments per year. Even a minor tweak in the design or wording of a page can have an impact on visitor behavior.

Of course, those sites have millions of visitors per day. Your firm doesn't have that luxury, but you can still make changes that improve your chances of converting site visitors into leads.

It all starts with prioritization: The top of the page is more important than what's at the bottom. Headings and buttons matter more than paragraph text. And the most important element of all is the specific action you ask visitors to take — your offer.

Decide on your offer

"What can I do here?"

This is one of the first things people try to figure out when they land on a website, and that includes future clients landing on your site. Make their lives easier by making the answer as clear as possible.

This means thoughtfully choosing a single action that suits the majority of visitors, and making sure it's prominently displayed in multiple places on your site.

I've seen CPA websites with a jumble of big, bold buttons featuring unclear options: Pay Now, Suralink, Portal … what do these buttons mean to a prospective client? Nothing. If you want your site to bring in new business, you need to offer an action that makes sense to prospects. Most likely one of the following:

• Contact us; or
• Book a call.

Which one should you choose?
If you're looking to bring in as much business as possible, let visitors book a call directly from the website. That's a step they have to take before becoming a client, so let them skip right to it.

If you need to filter out leads so you don't waste time on unqualified prospects, have them fill out a form. You can follow up by phone or email at your discretion.

In either case, once you've settled on your website's primary offer, you've still got work to do.

Make it obvious

Whichever offer you choose, there are a few tried and true user experience (UX) principles worth your attention.

First of all, put a button with your call to action (CTA) in the top right corner of your site's navigation and in the top section of your homepage. Include it where appropriate on other pages, and repeat it somewhere in the middle of longer pages.

Make sure these buttons stand out from the background of the page, and that they're large enough to tap, even on a small phone screen.

Visitors won't be ready to book a call (or contact you) immediately after landing on your site. But when they see this repeated CTA, they'll know that's the next step. This knowledge helps them frame their journey. They don't need to learn everything about your practice in one visit — they just need to learn enough to decide if they want to take action.

Speaking of which, how do you convince them to do so?

Make it appealing

Technically, everything on your site contributes toward convincing visitors to take you up on your offer: your case studies, blog posts, even your smiling face. But the biggest impact you can make is in framing the offer itself.

Optimizing "Contact Us"

Motivating visitors to fill out a form is all about providing context and setting expectations.

What kind of follow-up should they expect, and how soon? What will you do with the information they submit in the form? (It's usually a good idea to state explicitly that you will not share or sell their personal details.)

Be sure to remove distractions from the form page itself. Turn off your chat widgets and popups on this page. (You might consider turning them off everywhere, for that matter.)

While you're at it, remove any form fields you don't need. Don't ask them to type their company name unless it's required for your follow-up. Don't ask for a phone number unless you plan to call them.

Compare these two forms. Which one would you be more likely to fill out?

Optimizing "Book a Call"

Context and expectation-setting apply to this offer as well, but visitors will have different concerns.

What questions will you answer during the call? What should they prepare before showing up, and what will they take away from the conversation? What hesitation might they feel about scheduling this conversation, and can you address them directly? (For example, you might say, "This isn't a sales pitch. It's just a quick discussion to better understand your tax and financial situation.")

Make sure the duration of the call is clear, as well. Most calendar solutions make this quite easy, but don't skimp on the "Event description" field! Consider the following two calendar booking widgets. Which one gets you motivated?

Don't forget mobile

Once you've made these updates to your site, be sure it looks good on your phone.

You've added some buttons to make your offer obvious — great! As long as they don't cover up other text, or float off the screen.

You wrote some copy to highlight the benefits of a consultation call—well done. But is that copy easy to read on mobile? Or does it look like this?

What next?

If your website has a clear, compelling, easy-to-find offer, you've solved the single biggest point of confusion for prospects visiting you online. Well done!

At this point, you might decide to shift focus away from the content on your site and simply work on driving more traffic.

But if you still have a feeling that your site could be doing more for your business, you've got a couple options:

1. Consider conducting some simple usability tests to make sure everything really is as obvious to others as it appears to you. This could involve asking people you know — so-called "hallway usability testing."
   
2. Consult a list of other common website problems, and attack the most impactful issues first.

Wherever you go from here, your user-friendlier and more focused website should be saving prospects time, and bringing more of them your way.