For many internet businesses it’s not all about users placing products in a shopping cart; it’s more about generating leads for your sales team and then nurturing those leads to turn them into new and repeat customers.

To get the best out of your web site, you should evaluate it from the standpoint of a visitor. The following steps will help you generate many qualified leads.

1. Establish Credibility

As soon as a visitor arrives at your site, you need to make them feel like they’ve come to exactly the right place. Doing so will encourage them to remain on your site and read some content or click on a link and allow you to work on gaining their trust and establishing your credibility.

The “halo effect” refers to a visitor’s initial impression and is known to have a lasting effect on their perception of your brand and your site.

Avoid such things as happy talk and jargon and the use of the word “we”. Make sure your copy presents a professional and appropriate voice and emphasises the benefits your solutions can bring, while being sure to answer the question “What’s in it for me?”.

2. Respond Quickly To Inquiries

Regardless of the method used to submit the inquiry, whether it’s by email or Twitter or the phone, responding quickly to the inquiry (preferably within 1 hour) will help build a visitor’s confidence and trust in you and help you possibly turn that person into a lead before they go off to find somebody else.

3. Facts Are Great But Benefits Are Even Better

You need to describe your web site’s offerings as briefly as possible, and provide an FAQ section with answers to commonly asked questions, but your main objective should be to connect emotionally with your prospects. This can be done by revealing the benefits of the solutions you offer to relieve whatever pain your prospects are suffering. Connect with them emotionally and they are more likely to want to continue to interact with you.

4. Give Them Information As They Move Through Each Phase Of The Buying Cycle

Prospects should be guided from one phase of the buying cycle to the next by relevant content. In the initial research phase be a resource for them by providing how-to videos or instructional guides. Give them the opportunity to sign up for a newsletter or a webinar and use that to capture their information. As they move on to the comparison phase, make your site stand out from the competition by providing case studies and testimonials and offering guides and checklists. Once they reach the decision phase, they will be looking for guarantees and value-added offers to give them reassurance and make them feel comfortable about their final decision.

5. Don’t Avoid The Issue Of Pricing

Pricing is often a very touchy subject for online businesses, so don’t give specific prices; instead provide a price range so prospects will know immediately whether or not your offerings are within their budget. This will save both parties a lot of time and energy.

6. Post Images Of Your Company Principals

If your company is service orientated, it’s especially important to put a human face on your business by posting photographs of your principal staff members on your “About Us” page. Be sure the photographs are professional and not straight from the school annual. You may want to consider posting a video of your CEO welcoming your visitors and inviting them to fully explore your site.

7. Post Contact Information Prominently

A link to your “Contact Us” page should appear on every page of your site along with the company’s main phone numbers, which visitors should not have to scroll to see. The footer of each page should also contain your contact information, and consider adding a contact form to important pages, not just your Contact Us” page.

8. Action Steps Should Be Obvious

The pages of your web site should be as clean and uncluttered as possible with your copy kept as brief and easy to scan as possible and with your visitor left in no doubt as to what the call to action is. Make your call to action stand out with its position  and the use of style and colour, leaving your visitors in no doubt as to where they should click.

Eliminate non-essential elements from the page and avoid anything that might distract the user from the action step.

9. Linking Your Visitors Actions To Benefits

It should be obvious to your visitors how they’ll benefit by clicking on your call to action. Spell it out for them in no uncertain terms – use explicit language, which basically says, “If you click here, here’s the benefit you can expect to receive”.

10. Forms Should Be Brief

Just ask your visitors for the bare minimum information you’ll need to get back to them – the less information your visitors have to supply, the more likely they are to complete the form. If you really must have additional information, consider supplying a two-part form. Ask whether they’d prefer you to contact them via email or telephone and be sure to occasionally test your forms to ensure they work correctly.

Tough economic times make it that much harder to generate sufficient leads for your internet business, so you need to make sure everything on your web site is working to maximum effect for you. Evaluate your website as to the content it delivers, whether or not it builds credibility and motivates your visitors to take the desired action. If you’ve got all those areas covered, and you followed the above steps, your web site may end up generating more leads than you can handle, which would be a wonderful dilemma to have.

Let a UK internet business coach bring their expertise to bear to turn your web site into a lead generation machine.

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