Your website is the foundation of your online presence, which all adverts, social media accounts and online interactions point back to.

Before creating a site, you’ll need to choose a content management system (CMS) that can facilitate your design, content management and optimization needs. You could instead hire a web developer to create your site for you, but with this, there is a risk of losing control over the final product.

Learning to use a CMS allows you to change content easily and reduces the cost of launching a new website. You’ll also have acess to options you might not have thought of yourself.

For example, if you’re an eCommerce business you might want to consider creating a site of Shopify. There are tools that allow you to customize your site, market your products, and track your performance all in the same space.

An effective website will convince visitors that you can solve a problem or meet a need for them, especially if you’re a business. Of course, they’ll also want to learn about your brand, product or service. But you’ll need to present the specific benefits of what you’re offering to provide a good customer experience (CX).

1. Choose a domain name

When choosing a domain name, make sure it’s relevant to your brand or product. Most businesses will just use their company name for their site domain, and we recommend you do the same.

When people search for you online, you want to appear at the top of the first page. Using your company or brand name as the domain will be a primary indicator for search engines that you’re relevant to a user’s search term.

Try to avoid anything too gimmicky and always check that your company or product name doesn’t have some other intentional meaning when written as a single string.

You can take a look at this list of the worst domain names to get an idea of what we mean.

It’s hard to recover from a bad domain name. Whilst you can rebrand and change it down the line, it will have some impact on your search engine rankings. Which loses you some of that vital exposure.

So, really take the time to think about what will work in the long run.

2. Create pages and content

You may want to throw up a pre-launch page that notifies visitors when you’ll be launching. The other benefit of a pre-launch page is that you can start generating a buzz for your site.

Consider including a countdown to your predicted launch date and either a sign-up form or a “Notify Me” call-to-action to start building a prospective userbase early.

That way you can start building relationships with your target audience immediately. If this is your first time building a community for the launch of a new website, take a look at how to create engaging welcome emails.

Now it’s time to get writing your site content. You’ll want to focus on creating quality content that’s valuable in some way to your target audience. Value can come in many forms, but for the most part, you’ll be aiming to solve a problem for people. Whether that’s through your product content or a “how to…” blog post.

Home page

Arguably, your homepage is the most important page, as it’s likely the first thing that people will see when they visit your site.

Firstly, you should focus on content that is above the fold (if you’ve not heard this term, it’s any content that appears on a page before a visitor scrolls).

Here’s a summary of what should place here:

• Your logo
• Navigation menu (usually in the header)
• Headline
• Call-to-action (CTA)
• Reviews/ testimonials/ social proof
• Eye-catching imagery/ product photos

Your logo should be at the top of the page for immediate brand recognition for your visitors. The nav menu will then allow visitors to move around your site and find other content that’s useful to them.

The headline should be a concise and persuasive paragraph that sums up your value proposition. Confirm to people why they’ve come to your site and convince them of why they should stay.

Your CTA will encourage visitors to take the next step in the sales funnel. You may want leads to fill out a registration form or send them over to your product page, whatever enables them to learn more about what you offer.

Reviews and testimonials are essential to showing visitors you’re a trusted and user-tested site. This can be difficult to source when you’re creating a new site, but it’s definitely an element you should consider adding further down the line.

Ensure to add branded imagery or product pictures that visitors can reference when reading. All of this should be in line with your site design.

What you include below-the-fold will depend more on your industry and the service you provide/ But here are some general suggestions:

• Secondary CTAs
• Benefits of your product service
• Company info
• Features
• Resources
• Footer (company info, more links, primary CTA repeated)

Landing pages

Landing pages are standalone pages with a singular purpose or “sell” for visitors. They’ll usually only include one CTA, and have content focussed on persuading visitors to take an action. For example, generate newsletter subscriptions or showcase a promotion.

Landing pages are targeted at leads in the middle of the funnel, where they just need that final push to convert.

The great thing about these pages is that you can use the entire space to encourage conversions, but they must still adhere to the same principles of above-the-fold content as your home page.

Before you launch, create as many landing pages that are essential for selling your product or service. Here are a few examples:

• Product pages
• Feature pages
• Case studies
• Use cases/ solutions
• Promotions/ discounts
• Lead magnets
• Newsletter subscriptions

If you want to learn more about creating great landing page content, take a look at this article: create lead capture pages that convert visits into clicks.

Blog posts

Blog posts allow you to build authority in your industry by sharing insights, news, articles and stories with your visitors. They’re useful for raising brand awareness, increasing organic traffic to your site and generating conversions.

Typically, your blog posts should be keyword focused to get ranked highly on search engines. Meaning users will easily be able to find you based on their search queries. But, you’ll also be creating blog posts for your existing customers and newsletter subscribers.

When you’re getting started, you might not have time to build a whole catalogue of high-quality blog posts. But you should set aside some time to create around 5 strong articles that will get you ranked for keywords that are relevant to your brand or product.

This will not only increase the overall visibility of your domain in search rankings but also allow you to easily link between your articles and web pages to create a clear site architecture.

Calls-to-action

Calls-to-action (CTAs) are the linchpins in converting website visitors. Each of your pages should have at least one CTA that directs visitors to somewhere else on your site. 

They’re intended to encourage people to move down the funnel, whether it’s to complete a form or make a purchase.

Here are some tips for writing CTAs:

• Design them to stand out from other content
• Write action-based copy that compels visitors to click
• Place them where they are most visible
• Frame the CTA in a way that solves a problem for people

About page

An About page is essential for visitors who’ve stumbled across your site and want to learn more about you. It’s a great opportunity to build a strong brand image by sharing your story, messaging and mission.

You can use this space to convince prospects why they should trust in you and your company, so make it as personal as possible. Tell them about what got you started, who your team is and why you’re different from all the competition out there.

Contact page

Your contact page will likely be the first point of contact with you for prospects, so don’t hide it away in your nav menu. Make it easily accessible and encourage visitors to get in touch.

Some basic content for your contact page is as follows:

• A contact form
• Your email address (and any other department-specific emails, e.g. sales)
• Where you’re based
• Links to your social media accounts

3. Search engine optimization (SEO)

It’s no good writing all that content if people can’t find your site, so you need to ensure all your pages are optimized for search engines. SEO friendly content enables you to rank higher in search engine listings, which increases the visibility of your site in the digital space.

Increased visibility will mean more traffic to your site, which will be more opportunities for you to grow your customer base.

SEO is a topic all of its own. But here are some of the basics for you to keep in mind when launching a new website.

Keywords

These are words or phrases that search engine users use to find information on a topic. These search terms are usually specific to that user’s specific needs.

When you’re writing content, you need to integrate keywords (search terms) with your text. This will lead to search engines recommending your content based user queries.

Typically, each page has a primary keyword and a number of secondary keywords that enrich the relevance of your content.

Your primary keyword should be used a few times to show search engines you are relevant to that query. But don’t overdo it, keyword stuffing can make your content unreadable and may be punished by search engines.

You should also avoid using the same primary keyword on multiple pages, this is known as keyword cannibalization.

There are multiple tools you can use to aid you in keyword optimization. Niel Patel has created a free tool for finding keywords relevant to your target audience. If you’re using WordPress as your website designer, then you can use the Yoast SEO plugin (which has free and paid features).

If you’re looking for something more comprehensive and have some spare cash, take a look at SEM Rush. It has a host of tools for finding keywords, checking your content for optimization issues and tracking what performs best on your site. We’ve used it for a number of years and couldn’t be happier with the service.

Meta-data and tags

Meta-data is intended to provide extra information to help search engines rank your webpage. The most common meta tags are <title> (page title) and <description> (meta description) is placed in the <head> (header) section of your page.

This information is then included along with your site link in search engines. There are more meta tags you can use in your HTML, so take a look at the Moz guide to SEO meta tags.

You’ll also be using tags in the body of your webpage. One of the most important is the header tag, which allows you to set headings and subheadings in your content to create structure. They also enabled you to rank for featured snippets on search engines. These results are provided to answer a specific query for users, so are usually long-tail keyword focussed.

The Search Engine Journal has a great article on how to use header tags for SEO.

You should include your primary keyword in these tags in order to optimize your content and rank higher in search results.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO covers everything that you’ll need to do to optimize your website to be crawled and indexed by search engines. Essentially, you’re illustrating how accessible your site is to users and your technical SEO is the evidence for that.

Here’s a Technical SEO checklist you can work through when launching a new website:

• Optimize URL structure
• Clear site architecture (e.g. site.com/category/page-title.com)
• Generate an XML sitemap (list of all posts and pages for search engines to crawl)
• Robots.txt (instruct search engine on which pages to crawl)
• Schema and structured data (provide search engines with the context of your pages and content)
• Fast page load speeds (low speeds lead to page bounces)
• Optimize for mobile (Google introduced mobile-first indexing)
• Add SSL to enable HTTPS (an important ranking signal regarding your site’s security)

You should perform audits of your technical SEO strategy fairly often, as it can affect the domain authority (a score that determines how likely you are to rank highly). Here’s a great link for how to optimize your technical SEO.

Link building

Link building is the process of acquiring backlinks to your pages and posts from other sites. This is something you’ll focus on once your site is launched, but it is absolutely essential to your SEO strategy.

Google takes the number of links to your page into consideration when ranking you, as they’re a signal that your content has value to those other sites and so you’re likely to have value for their users. They work best when the site linking to you operates in the same industry or creates content on topics relevant to your own.

You should absolutely avoid using directories and other dubious tactics in order to build your link portfolio. Google (and other search engines) look down on this behaviour and may penalize your site for it.

The quality of the site linking to you is also important, if their domain authority is low then the link won’t do much for your ranking. And if there’s domain authority is notably low (that is considered a spam site), their link can damage your own reputation.

There’s so much to consider with this strategy, so I’d recommend heading over to the experts at Moz for their guide to link building.

4. Branding, design and usability

You’ll likely want to think about your site design whilst you’re writing content to determine the balance of text and images on each page.

But this should one of the final checks you do before launching your website, as it needs to be consistent and eye-catching. It’s also very important to ensure your website is easy to navigate and use.

Global styles

You should have a consistent design across all your pages to make them all feel as though they belong to the same brand. Enabling global styles in the tool you use to design your website will ensure that page designs are consistent, e.g. colors, fonts and logos.

This isn’t to say you can’t differentiate each design slightly. If anything, that will stop your site from feeling stale. But don’t make grand departures from your homepage design on other pages, this will make your site feel like a jumble of different ideas. Which may reflect in visitors’ perceptions of your brand or company.

Responsive design

It is essential to test your site across multiple devices (desktop, mobile and tablet) and multiple browsers to ensure your design is stable and page elements are working correctly.

The last thing you want is to create a bad impression with a new visitor because your design is broken. This may lead to a high bounce rate, which can be a signal to search engines that there’s an issue with your site.

Usability testing

If your site has a lot of content or a lot of options in your navigation menu, you may want to perform a usability test. This is where you collect a group of ‘representative users’ and ask them to complete a number of tasks on your website to determine how easy or hard it was for them to do so.

You want all processes on your website to be as easy as possible for your audience, whether they want to get in touch with you or make a purchase. Poor usability leads to friction with your users, which creates a poor customer experience.

5. Connect to an analytics tool

Now your website is ready to launch, you’ll need to connect it to an analytics tool. If you’re just getting started up, we’re going to recommend you use Google Analytics. It’s free to get started and provides most of the information you’ll need to monitor site performance, so it’s great for new sites and start-ups.

All you need to do is install the code in your site code and you can start tracking traffic to your website. Here are a few suggestions for what metrics to keep an eye on:

• Organic traffic
• Direct traffic
• Traffic channels (where visitors come from)
• What content receives the most traffic
• What content users engage with (clicks, comments, shares, etc.)
• User demographics
• User devices (for further optimization of your site)
• Bounce rates

If you do opt for Google Analytics, then you should also connect to Google Search Console. This free tool allows you to monitor different aspects of your technical SEO strategy, such as broken links, issues crawling your XML sitemap, page speeds and missing or incorrect structured data.

6. Promote your website

Now we’re post-launch, which means you’ll need to start promoting your new website. There are so many ways you can do this, both free and paid, so here are a few suggestions to get you started.

Submit URLs to Google Inspection Tool

Submitting your fresh URLs to this tool prompts Google to crawl your pages and may result in them being indexed faster. Just keep in mind you only need to submit them once, multiple submissions will not get you indexed quicker.

Create social media accounts

Creating accounts with social networks is one of the best ways to build an audience for your brand. Every link you share and all the interactions you have with people go that bit further in increasing your brand exposure and building relationships.

Run paid ads

There’s always the option of running paid ads on search engines and social media platforms. They’re easy to set up and can increase exposure for your site, but do require you to pay-per-click.

They can also take a little time to find the right keywords that work for you and there’s a lot of other competition out there.

Social Media Today has a great infographic on the pros and cons of paid advertising platforms.

Incentivize visitors

Once you’ve got people coming to your site, you’ll want to give them a reason to take the next step. There are lots of ways you can do this, such as offering a discount or promo code to encourage people to make a purchase.

But it’s not limited to encouraging sales, you can also create leads magnets to grow your email list. Once you have your users’ email addresses, you can build more of a rapport with them and offer discounts down the line. 

For more ideas on promoting your websites through free, paid and earned media, head over to our article on the RACE model.

Conclusion: How to launch a new website

So, that’s our website launch checklist. Hopefully, it will help you get your new site set up. Just remember to keep your eye on your analytics to see what is and isn’t working. Here’s a roundup of our guide on how to launch a new website:

1. Choose a domain
2. Create pages and content
3. Ensure all content is optimized for search engines
4. Make sure your site architecture is clear and logical
5. Start a link building campaign as quickly as possible
6. Branding should be in pride of place (and be consistent)
7. Connect to a web analytics tool and monitor the performance of your content
8. Promote your newly launched website

Continue to create content for your website and blog to keep the organic traffic rolling in and don’t let your social media accounts dry up.

If you forget to create content your audience may lose interest in your brand.

The post How to Launch a New Website: A Step-by-Step Guide appeared first on Shout.com.

• What is a lead form?
• Lead form optimization
  • 1. Place forms above the fold
  • 2. Consider the best form length for your audience
  • 3. Think about which fields are required
  • 4. Make it clear what information you’re asking for
  • 5. Write a strong call-to-action
  • 6. Write compelling copy with the form
  • 7. Split test forms and CTAs
  • 8. Minimize friction on forms and pages
  • 9. Include your Privacy Policy

What is a lead form?

Lead forms are designed to capture email addresses and other personal information from potential customers.

The type of form you create depends on what you intend to do with that contact information, but the most common forms are:

• Registration forms
• Newsletter sign-up forms
• Contact forms
• Content downloads

If you’re collecting lead information for email marketing purposes, you should consider offering something in return. Take a look at these lead magnets and how they can grow your email list.

Lead form optimization

Your lead generation page has been specifically designed to increase form conversions, and the form is the gateway for them to make that conversion. So it’s essential that your lead generation form is the best it can be.

Take a look at these tips for lead form optimization and you may see a sharp increase in lead generation.

1. Place forms above the fold

Your lead forms should be placed above the fold, which is all the content visitors will see before they scroll.

Your form is the next step for leads, so has to take pride of place on the page. It’s where engagement is highest on any page, so you’ll want to take advantage of that. 

Plus, you have to consider that not all visitors will scroll down through your content, and you don’t want to risk losing leads because it was hidden away at the bottom of the page.

2. Consider the best form length for your audience

The number of fields you include is an important factor in lead form optimization. Longer forms with too many fields can be off-putting to leads. Not just because they can be frustrating to fill out, but also because not everyone wants to hand over all their information.

Shorter forms with one or two fields covering the essentials (like names and email addresses) will convert the largest number of leads.

But here’s the catch. Longer forms will generate more qualified leads.

What do we mean by more qualified leads?

The more form fields a person is happy to fill out, the more qualified they’re considered as a lead. Qualified leads are much more likely to become a customer, which is evidenced by their willingness to hand over that information.

So which is better, long or short forms?

Well, this wholly depends on your target audience, where they are in the sales funnel and the intent of your lead gen form.

More people are likely to complete the form if there are fewer fields. So, if you’re collecting subscribers for your email list, then a short and snappy form is best (as you’re playing a numbers game). And, you can easily leverage additional information from subscribers with a promotion further down your email series.

A longer form might be more suited to free trial sign-up forms. Leads who’re interested in a trial are further down the sale funnel, so are more likely to fill out more fields to test your product.

The other benefits of collecting this much information for this example is that you also gather marketing data about what type of leads are interested in your product and how much they’re using it. Allowing you to employ a data-driven strategy and easily inform changes in the future.

3. Think about which fields are required

Required fields are those a lead will need to fill out before continuing. It’s likely that at least the email address field of your form will be required, as this is the basic information you’ll need to nurture a lead.

It can be tempting to make all fields required when creating a lead form, in order to collect as much contact data as possible.

But this can be a deterrent for leads, as they’ll be reluctant to share too much at once. Stick to the essentials like Email, Name and Company at first. And collect more targeted data when you’ve built trust with them.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t include optional fields. If you have one or two required fields, there’s no harm in asking for some other details. Leads can make the decision on whether to fill them out.

By doing this, you can identify your more qualified leads.

When building forms with Shout, you can easily make forms fields required.

Mark required fields accordingly

Most commonly, required fields are denoted by an asterisk (*) next to the field name. But if you’re concerned your leads won’t recognize this, then there’s no hard him writing ‘required’ next to each field that needs to be filled out.

You should also have something set up to highlight required fields that leads have missed when trying to submit. We’d recommend an auto-scroll back to the first field they missed and let them work their way back down.

4. Make it clear what information you’re asking for

When a lead is filling out a form, they should never have to click away or delete their text to check what information they’re entering.

By this, we’re alluding to field names. It’s common practice to put the field name above the text area. But we’ve seen some form builders placing the name inside the field itself, which then disappears when a lead starts filling out the text.

If a lead then forgets if they’re supposed to be entering a name or an email, they have to delete the text to double-check. This will create friction and may prevent them from converting.

Lead form optimization is all about user experience. If your form is clear and easy to use, you’ll see a higher conversion rate. So, the best practice would be to place the field name above and inside the text area.

5. Write a strong call-to-action

Your CTA can be the determiner for whether or not a lead converts. A strong call-to-action is eye-catching and compels people to take the next step. But it this can be a difficult feat to achieve when you’re working with such limited space.

How do you write a CTA that stands out?

Here are a few things to consider when writing a CTA for your lead form:

• 
  Ensure you have a great design
• 
  Its design should contract with the rest of your page design (for it to stand out)
• 
  Write compelling copy (that is action or benefit based)
• 
  Place it where there is maximum visibility
• 
  Address a need or problem for leads
• 
  It shouldn’t compete with another CTA

Your CTA is equally as crucial as the form itself, so it’s essential you put work into optimizing it. What specific CTA buzzwords you use will depend on what step you’re encouraging leads to take.

Take a look at our article for more information on writing a call-to-action that converts. 

6. Write compelling copy with the form

Whilst you’ll have a strong CTA to match your web form, you’ll also need to write copy to accompany them on your lead gen page.

Your page needs a persuasive title that makes it clear why leads are there or describe your promotion (if you’re offering one in return for their personal information).

Then, write an appropriate amount of content below the fold inline with your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy to generate organic traffic to your landing page.

Here are a few tips to optimize your page content:

• Personalize copy
• Focus on the benefits of your offer
• Ensure your content is readable (concerning text size, grammar and spelling)
• Concise and clear (people don’t have time to read reams of text)

We’ve written a whole article on this topic, why not take a look at how to create lead capture pages that convert visits into clicks.

7. Split test forms and CTAs

Conducting A/B tests on your content (forms, copy and CTAs) is the very best way to determine what produces the highest conversion rate.

When it comes to split testing your lead gen form, you’ll need to consider changing the following elements between variants.

• Number of fields
• Which fields are required
• CTA button text
• Design
• Page headline

But don’t test more than one element at once. You can create multiple variants for a single element, but in doing so you’ll also need to collect more data. Typically, you should be collecting data from at least 100 visitors per test variation.

8. Minimize friction on forms and pages

Friction is caused by any element on a landing page that’s stopping leads from converting. One of the most prolific causes of friction is content that is bunched too closely together.

Your page copy needs to be scannable, or leads may become overwhelmed by all the content. A good solution to this is to include plenty of white space on your page, to give leads a chance to breathe.

The other benefit to white space is that you can easily draw attention to page elements with your design (such as that all-important CTA button).

We mentioned in Tip #3 that you could include optional fields in your lead generation form. This will give some agency back to leads and remove some friction by allowing them to choose what information they hand over.

Here are a few other tips to reduce friction for lead form optimization:

• Only make essential fields required
• Create a great design for your lead gen form and page
• Ensure text is readable and scannable
• Make sure your page load time isn’t slow
• Have a clear value proposition

9. Include your Privacy Policy

Linking to your Privacy Policy from your form illustrates transparency, which will go a long way in building trust with your audience.

If you’re concerned about a link competing with your primary CTA, you can create a quick privacy statement below your form instead.

Something along the lines of “No credit card required” or “Unsubscribe anytime”. Although simple, it relates to your offer and encourages leads to put a little faith in you.

Avoid using words like “spam” or “fraud”. The association of these words alone is enough to decrease conversion rates.

The post Lead Form Optimization: 9 Tips for Converting appeared first on Shout.com.

• What is a lead capture page?
  • Why are lead pages important?
• How to optimize your lead capture page
  • Minimize friction
  • Strong call-to-action
  • Focus on the benefits of your offer
  • Personalized copy
  • Form positioning
  • Create a lead magnet
  • Length of forms
• Other elements of a lead capture page
  • Compelling headline
  • Link to your Privacy Policy
  • Relevant content
  • Social proof
  • Testimonials
  • Trust seals

What is a lead capture page?

A lead capture page is created with a specific intended action for prospects. They’re often used to collect contact information or to nurture leads through your sales funnel.

The type of lead capture page you used will depend on what leads you’re targetting in relation to their position in your funnel.

For example, if you still have a large number of prospects in the ‘Discovery/ Reach’ stage (top of the funnel), then you could create a lead page to encourage subscriptions to your email marketing list.

Alternatively, if you’re targetting leads at the lower end of your funnel you may decide to offer a free trial or product demo.

Either way, you’ll need to learn how to calculate a lead score to determine which leads are worth the time spent by your sales stage.

Why are lead pages important?

Lead pages are important not only because they allow you to collect contact details from leads, but also because they encourage potential customers to learn more about your product/ service/ organization.

And the more they know about you, the more trust is built. Which, in turn, generates quality leads and creates loyal customers.

How to optimize your lead capture page

What elements you include and where you place them can determine whether your lead capture page will be effective. Here are our top tips for ensuring yours is a success:

Minimize friction

Leads will be resistant to handing over their contact information, especially this new age of stricter data protection awareness.

So, it’s important that you design your lead pages (and lead capture forms) to ensure there’s as little friction for prospects as possible.

What is page friction?

This is caused by any page element (of content or design) that prevents or deters leads from converting. Some examples of page friction are:

• Page length
• Unappealing design
• Competing CTAs
• Bulky sections of text
• Slow page loading times
• Text that is too large (or too small)
• Poorly written content (spelling and grammar)
• Lack of a clear value proposition

A high converting page will have taken all these factors into consideration. We also have an article about lead form optimization, if you need some more tips regarding forms, fields and friction.

Strong call-to-action

A great CTA is essential to increasing conversion rates on your lead capture pages. Strong CTAs create a sense of urgency in leads, encouraging them to take the action.

They should have an eye-catching design, personalized and completing copy, be placed where it has maximum visibility and ideally they will allude to solving a problem for leads.

Why not take a look at our article on writing a call-to-action that converts?

Focus on the benefits of your offer

This rule is a staple of any modern digital marketers content strategy. Leads want to see how your product or service can solve their problems, as opposed to a list of features.

But not everyone applies this strategy to advertizing, promotional and lead pages. Just because this content is more focussed on conversion, benefit-central content is still the golden rule. Because it works.

Beyond working as a conversion strategy, it also creates consistency across your website content. And consistency is key to building and maintaining trust.

Personalized copy

This is another golden rule for any copy on your website. It should be written in a way that feels personal to each individual readers.

This means more than just using second-person (or even first-person) personal pronouns. The copy itself should reflect the wants and needs of your audience. In doing so, you can easily frame your product or service (or deal) as the solution to those.

Form positioning

More often than not, your form should be above the fold. If you’re not sure what that means, above the fold refers to content that’s visible before a leads scrolls or clicks. In other words, it’s the first content they see.

This is where people will be most engaged with your content. They expect to be hit all the information they need and the means of continuing without any further effort.

That’s why it’s essential to have a form there, you’re making the most of that peak engagement. If they need more information (i.e. a bit more of a push), that’s what the rest of your page content is for.

And this isn’t to say you can’t have another form at the tail end of your page. In-fact we encourage it to capture leads who continue reading through your content. You could even set a pop-up form to appear once leads reach maximum scroll depth or click away from the page.

Create a lead magnet

Lead magnets are pieces of content or offers designed to incentivize leads and capture their contact information. This is to say, you’re offering leads something extra in return for handing over their details.

What type of lead magnet you create will depend on your audience’s needs. It’s essential that they’re targetted in this way for them to be effective.

Here are a few examples of lead magnets for you:

• Ebooks
• Content upgrades
• Free ‘lead capture’ tool
• Product demos
• Free trials
• Surveys and quizzes

If you’d like to learn more about these, take a look at our article on lead magnets and how they can grow your email list.

Length of forms

The more fields your form has, the more magnetizing your offer has to be. It has to seems like a fair trade to leads, where they hand over their contact details and incentivize that.

But that’s not all.

When it comes to form length, you have to consider what type of leads you want to capture. Single field forms will cast the widest net, as most leads will be happy to fill it out. However, a longer form requires more effort and time on the lead’s part. So, those who do fill it out show more commitment to your offer.

The short of it is, longer forms generate more qualified leads.

Other elements of a lead capture page

Here are some of the basic elements that make for an effective lead page:

Compelling headline

Just like your CTA, your headlines have to grab attention and but it also has to encourage leads to keep reading.

It should be larger and bolder than all your other content and match your design to a tee. And most importantly, it should contain your unique value proposition (UVP) in some way.

Link to your Privacy Policy

Including your Privacy Policy on lead capture pages (and any other pages that collect personal information) shows you’re willing to be transparent with prospects and is a great first step to building trust with them.

Relevant content

Both your page copy and images should be wholly relevant to what you’re promoting with your lead capture page.

So, if you’re SaaS company promoting software, you should be writing about and including images of that software.

Something else we’ve found is that you should avoid stock images of employees and workplaces. They just feel a little stale.

Social proof

Social proof is essentially any evidence you can show leads to demonstrate your trustworthiness. This proof can come from a number of sources:

• Celebrity endorsement: Celebrities and influencers have large audiences that trust them a great amount. A social media post or testimonial from them will encourage their audience to consider you a trustworthy organization.
• Certification: Approval or recommendation from a pre-established industry leader. E.g. A badge from G2 Crowd for leading in reviews.
• Experts: A recommendation from an industry expert means you’re seen as a top pick out of all the competition out there.
• Users: Reviews and ratings are a powerful tool for converting leads. You can also provide user social proof with a subheading stating how many users you currently work with (e.g. “Join over 4 million users in signing up”).

Testimonials

Customer testimonials are one of the most powerful tools for building trust. Typically, testimonials contain a name, a job title, a short paragraph detailing why they love you, and a picture.

Once you’ve collected a decent number, choose your most persuasive testimonials and place them on your lead capture page. Try to place them as close to your form or CTA button as possible, this may aid you in increasing conversions.

Trust seals

Trust seals (or secure site seals) are badges or logos of reputable website security services placed on pages that collect information. You’ll see them more often on payment pages, but anywhere you place them will show leads they can trust you with their data.

The most common trust seals will be for a site’s SSL and TLS certificates.

The post Create Lead Capture Pages that Convert appeared first on Shout.com.

• What is a call-to-action?
• How can a good CTA improve conversion?
• Improving your conversion rates
• 8 Tried and tested CTAs
• Conclusion

What is a call-to-action?

A call-to-action (CTA) is a piece of content on a webpage or advert that prompts your audience to take the next step, whether it is to make a purchase or learn more about your products.

Your CTA can be an image, hyperlink or button. But buttons are by far the most commonly used format for a call-to-action, so keep that in mind.

Types of CTAs

You’ll have a host of CTAs across your website, which type you use will depend on the intended action for leads. Here are a few of the main purposes of CTAs:

• Lead generation
• Grow your email list
• Collect form submissions
• Encourage readers to learn more
• Take leads to your store
• Share your feature list
• Direct to your social media accounts
• Sign up new users
• Promote events

How can a good CTA improve conversion?

A good CTA will stand out to your audience and creates a sense of urgency. You have to remember that website visitors (or ad viewers) will see the same old words and phrases over and over.

So, you have to find a way to be both original and persuasive in a concise way.

There also has to be clear intent in your CTA. This is to say that anyone who reads it will know exactly what action they’re about to make when they click.

It’s not just the CTA text that has to draw your audience in. There are multiple factors that contribute to an effective call-to-action.

• Eye-catching design
• Compelling copy
• Placement and visibility
• Solve a problem for your audience

Eye-catching design

First of all, you should already have a solid design for your page/ blog post/ advert.

This design should be consistent with your branding and will be one of the first indicators to readers that your content is worth sticking around for.

Your CTA should then stand out from all your other content. Usually, this is done by choosing a button color that contrasts with the rest of the page.

It’s also important to consider how your content and design encourage a natural flow towards your CTA, both in messaging and structure.

Compelling copy

Whilst your CTA button design is a factor you have to consider, its copy is much more important when it comes to converting visitors into leads or customers.

Now the big challenge here is the limited amount of space you’ll have to write compelling content, especially if you’re using a button.

The CTA text itself should convey the action your audience is being asked to take. E.g. “Discover our products” or “Visit our store”.

If you’re worried about overfilling your button with text, you can always write some copy in the surrounding area to accompany it.

Slack is a great example of this, giving a summary of what prospects will be taken too without overloading them with information.

And you can do it without writing a whole paragraph, HelpScout targets readers who have a larger user base and offers them a custom CTA: “10 users? Get A Demo”.

Placement and visibility

Where you choose to place your CTA is essential to its success. Firstly, it has to be visible to your audience. You can’t expect readers to go searching for your CTA, it absolutely needs to get their attention on its own.

And secondly, the content itself has to have an impact on them. You can achieve this by offering a solution or writing copy that evokes emotion in readers.

Below are some stats collected by Grow and Convert on the what CTA placements have the highest conversion rates.

• Sidebar CTAs: 0.5% – 1.5%
• Generic end of post CTAs: 0.5% – 1.5%
• Pop-ups: 1% – 8%
• Sliders and bars: 1% – 5%
• Welcome Gates: 10% – 25%
• Feature box: 3% – 9%
• Navbar: Varies

As you can see, where and how you display your CTA has a massive impact on your conversion rates. And it’s clear that Pop-ups, Welcome Gates and Feature boxes are likely to have the highest return.

Pop-ups and Welcome Gates are more aggressive than the other options, so overusing them can frustrate your audience.

But as they have such a high click-through rate you will want to take advantage of them, so it’s just about finding a good balance.

Solve a problem for your audience

Audiences will be reading your content because they have a need or a problem that needs to be solved. Whether it’s to fill a gap in their knowledge or service they need to be provided, they’ve come to you for answers.

Use your CTA to show leads you can provide that knowledge or solve their problem. This is a tactic sure to increase your click-through rate and build a stronger relationship with your audience.

Improving your conversion rates

So you have a CTA you like, but it’s not performing the way you want it to? Don’t worry, you’re not the first to experience this.

Here are a few tips we’ve picked up for improving the “clickability” of your CTAs:

A/B test your CTAs

If you’ve not heard of A/B test (split tests), it’s where you create two or more variants for content and show it to different people in your audience randomly.

Split testing is essential for increasing conversions, as you can identify which call-to-action button performs the best with your audience.

Don’t split test too many variables at once, as the more you have the longer you’ll need to test for a definitive result.

The best thing about split testing is its versatility. You can run an A/B test on any of your campaigns or content to improve your overall digital marketing strategy, whether it’s an email subject line or Facebook ad.

Write copy in the first person

We’ve already made it clear that effective CTAs address a need or solve a problem. You should couple this with copy written in the first person to further personalize each leads individual experience.

By first-person copy, we mean using “my” instead of “you” or “your”. This makes your content all about the reader and each action feel unique to them.

Add a muted CTA

A muted CTA is a second button placed next to the first that encourages leads to make a different action.

This might seem counterintuitive, as you don’t want two competing CTAs in the same space, but they’re a good option for when you want to provide leads with more information before they click your main CTA.

It is essential that the muted CTA is a different or ‘muted’ color, as not to draw attention away from your primary CTA.

Each has a target audience at a different stage of your sales funnel, so it’s important to highlight this in the CTA design.

Below you can see that Asana does this expertly, encouraging leads to request a demo before creating a free account.

Those who are ready to sign up are ready to make a decision and convert, whilst those who interest or evaluation stage will need more information before committing.

8 Tried and tested CTAs

We wanted to give you an idea of the most used CTAs and how they grab attention. But don’t worry, if you’re not a fan of the standard CTAs in the headings, we provide some robust alternatives in the sections below.

1. Get started

“Get started” is one of the most commonly used CTAs, especially by Saas organizations. And for a good reason. It’s an actionable phrase with clear intent for your audience.

If you’re struggling with a CTA for your homepage or pricing table, we’d recommend you go with this. It isn’t the most exciting option, but it is a safe play.

2. Sign up free

So you’re looking to get more users signed up and you need something to catch their eye. They’re going to be looking for a sign-up button of some sort, so don’t get so creative with the copy that risks leads mistaking it for something else.

Adding “free” to your sign up CTA is an extra incentive for leads to take action. It lets them know they can start testing your product without paying upfront. And that sort of good-faith agreement is a great way to build relationships with your potential customers.

If you’re not a fan of “Sign Up” you could always opt for “Create an Account” instead. It has the same intent as “Sign Up” and primes users to fill out their details.

Alternatively, you could describe what exactly will be free once they create an account. FreeOnlineSurveys does exactly this (“Create a free survey”) with their sign up form:

3. Get in touch

This is another example of a strong CTA with a clear directive. You’ll be using this on a contact page, your homepage or possibly in your website footer to encourage a point of contact with prospects.

Some do go for “Contact Us”, but we do think “Get in Touch” is a little more personable. And you do want to seem human to your audience.

If you have a targeted inbox for more specific inquiries, you can always customize your copy to indicate this. For example, “Get in Touch with our Sales Team”.

4. Learn more

If you need to explain how your product works for leads to make an informed purchase, you should use the “Learn more” CTA to do this.

Link it to a landing page or blog post with more descriptive content. You don’t need to get too creative with the CTA copy, but it should be placed near an image of the product or in the product page header.

This way it’ll be clear to leads what specifically they’ll be learning more about.

5. Add to cart

It’s best to be direct with product CTAs. If a lead is already on your product landing page, your next task is to get them to add it to their basket/ bag/ cart.

You’ve already piqued their interest with your content and product images, so you now need to encourage them to commit.

And a direct approach is the best way to do this. If you’re not seeing a great conversion rate on this CTA, you may need to consider tweaking your supporting content to focus on the benefits of your product. Or, you could even offer an extra incentive like a discount or deal.

6. Buy now

Just like “Add to Cart”, “Buy Now” is a little more direct, which can be risky when you’re asking customers to commit to you in this way. But it can definitely work to encourage leads to purchase a product.

And the other benefit is that their intent is clear when they click, which is a powerful indicator of your product’s appeal.

7. Subscribe

You’ve probably seen this CTA being used to get you to subscribe to an email newsletter or marketing chain. But it’s not very persuasive in and of itself.

So you’ll want to add some text in the area surrounding the CTA to explain the benefits of your email campaign. What problems are you solving? How does your content stand out from the competition?

Or even better, you can offer a lead magnet to get people to subscribe to your email list.

Once you’ve gotten people subscribed to your list, you’ll need to think about your email strategy, head over to our email marketing guide for a full walkthrough and some helpful tips. But if you want some help creating an engaging campaign from your very first email, take a look at this guide for writing a welcome email.

8. View demo/ Book a demo

Offering a demo often makes for an effective CTA, as leads can get a good overview of your product without any commitment.

But whilst “View Demo” and “Book a Demo” are actionable CTAs, they don’t carry much impact.

Salesforce does a great job of preserving actionable intent, whilst also spicing up the copy of their button with something for conversational.

“Watch SaleForce in Action”, there’s just something about that copy that makes you want to click. And there’s no reason you can’t replicate this for your own landing page.

Conclusion

Calls-to-action are some of the most important elements on a page, so writing great copy is essential when considering how to launch a new website.

For more of an idea of the what copy creates the best CTAs, take a look at this list of buzzwords for your call to action.

And we wanted to finish by rounding up all our points for creating a successful CTA:

• Standout design
• Compelling copy
• Actionable intent
• High visibility
• Solves a problem/ address a need
• Split test your call-to-action!
• CTAs shouldn’t compete with each other
• Written in the first person

It’s essential for leads to know what’s in it for them if they click your CTA. Ensure your content makes it clear what the benefits of clicking your CTA are.

And remember it’s not just about your button color or CTA text, the placement is super important.

Finally, you absolutely have to follow through on your promise. If a lead gets to your landing page after clicking your CTA and it isn’t what they expect, they’re certain to bounce.

For more information on increasing conversions, take a look at our article on lead form optimization.

The post Writing a Call-To-Action that Converts appeared first on Shout.com.