Once upon a time (and not a long time ago), it was enough for a business to have any kind of website, and they could have as many customers as they wanted.
Alas, those days are gone. Nowadays a website is only the initial step – it is necessary for any kind of commercial success. Yet, you would probably be surprised if you found out some rather interesting online business statistics.
For example, did you know that 6 out of every 10 small businesses in 2018 didn’t have a website? If you’re among the 60% without a website, you better hurry up and build one using WordPress.
Why WordPress? Because 33% of the web uses WordPress to power websites. It is the most convenient CMS, and it offers great themes and plugins for your website.
But even if you do have a WordPress website, you probably need to optimize it for better lead generation. If that wasn’t the case, you probably wouldn’t be reading this article.
Let’s take a look at the best tips for optimizing your WordPress website for lead generation.
Get The Right Hosting Plan
Obviously, the first thing you should do, even before starting to build your website, is to choose a quality hosting plan. Your web hosting is your website’s ‘home’, so you don’t want to make too many compromises here.
Your Web Hosting Service Has To Provide:
- Fast and stable hosting.
- Ongoing maintenance and improvements.
- Reliable customer service and support.
It is important to choose the best WordPress hosting provider and plan that meet your business’s requirements. Don’t let your first step be wrong.
Check Out This Excellent Website Hosting Article At Hosting Foundry
Pick A Visually Appealing Theme
You are a visual creature, your coworkers are visual creatures, and everyone you know is a visual creature. So, why would your website visitors be different?
Your website needs to be recognizable and make a strong visual impression on your customers, and that is why you have to choose an appealing WordPress theme.
When Picking A Theme For Your Website, Consider The Following Aspects:
- Beautiful and responsive design.
- Up-to-date functionality.
- SEO friendliness.
- Easy customization features.
Also, make sure you choose the right set of colors to evoke the right emotions in your visitors and create a strong association with your brand.
Speed Up Your Website’s Loading Time
Regardless of your business idea, your website needs to be fast. Users have zero tolerance for websites that take ages to load.
Your website speed largely depends on your website hosting plan, but there are also some tricks that you can do to make your website load at the speed of light.
- First, compress visual media and remove any large images, videos, or documents.
- Use the appropriate tool to run high-quality videos.
- Next, minimize HTTP requests required upon loading.
- Use fewer plugins.
- Finally, you have to use browser caching – this is a must.
Keep Your Plugins Updated
WordPress is well known for its hosts of useful plugins that can help you do anything you can imagine. If your goal is to improve lead generation, try using some of the best WordPress lead generation plugins on the market and see what you can achieve.
However, it is not enough only to use them, you also need to update them regularly. If you fail to update your plugins on time, you put your website security at stake, and that is something you don’t want to do.
Also, keeping your site up to date means that its speed remains as high as possible, which helps reduce your bounce rate and generates more leads.
Practice SEO Regularly
Next on the list is search engine optimization. No website optimization is complete without proper SEO.
Here is how to use SEO to increase your website traffic:
- Create effective keyword targeting and keyword management strategies.
- Research your competitors.
- Create valuable content.
- Make sure you have advanced internal and external linking on your website.
Design A High-Converting Landing Page
Landing pages can make or break your lead generation. High-converting landing pages are crucial for your conversions, and you can create a landing page easily.
When Designing Your Landing Pages, You Need To Consider The Following:
- Headline – Conveys the right message and encourages visitors to convert.
- Design – Color contrast, logo, formatting, and visible CTA are very important.
- Visual Elements – Images and videos grab people’s attention faster than words.
Create Engaging Content
Content builds brand awareness, which is the first customer touchpoint on your customer journey map. Creating valuable content on a regular basis is necessary for modern marketing, as it helps your audience solve their daily problems.
Based on your keywords research (remember SEO?), figure out what bothers your target audience and build your content around those keywords, answering their questions.
Start by running a blog and then share your content across social media and other places where your customers spend time online.
And, of course, always try to produce better content than your competitors.
Use High-Quality Visuals
Again, we are visual creatures and there is not much we can do about it. We tend to think that beautiful people and things have more value. Would you trust a website that uploads low-quality, blurred images? Exactly.
Keep this in mind: you stand much better chances of generating leads if your website has high-quality images and videos since consumers are much more likely to consider search results that contain visuals.
You can find beautiful images on royalty-free websites like Pexels, Unsplash, Pixabay, etc. On the other hand, if you would rather have custom images, you can always hire a photographer or a designer.
Optimize For Mobile
Finally, no matter what industry you’re in and who your target audience is, you need to optimize your website for mobile devices.
Nowadays, everybody uses mobile to browse the web – from baby boomers to children. As a matter of fact, according to a study by Statista, as much as 52.2% of the total web traffic in 2018 was generated through mobile phones.
If your website is not mobile responsive, not only will it attract fewer visitors, but it will also be penalized by Google. Google understands the latest web browsing trends. How about you?
If You Don’t Need More Reasons To Start Optimizing For Mobile, Let Us See How You Can Do It.
- Make your text readable immediately, without requiring users to zoom or scroll.
- Make sure your videos and images are visible on mobile devices.
- Your interactive buttons need to be large enough for everyone to be able to tap on them easily.
- Improve your page loading time, as mobile devices normally have slower loading speeds than computers.
Final Thoughts
Lead generation is one of the pillars of modern marketing, and we can’t really overemphasize its importance.
If you want to get your lead generation to the next level, you will need to do your best to optimize your WordPress website. The listed strategies will help you learn how to do lead generation in WordPress the right way.
And one final tip before we part – don’t expect success overnight. Website optimization is a process full of testing and making sure that your improvements really work. So, take your time and enjoy every step.
Our Guest Blogger
Dave Schneider is the marketing manager albacross.com, the free B2B lead generation platform. In 2012 he quit his job to travel the world and has visited over 65 countries. In his spare time, he writes about SaaS and business at DaveSchneider.me
