What Is a Lead Generation Website?

Businesses make websites for all sorts of different purposes.

Some exist to serve as a hub for information, while others serve as an online storefront for local businesses. And others still are made for something called lead generation.

So, what is a lead generation website? A lead generation website is a website made to capture the contact information of consumers interested in a product or service.

To learn more about lead generation websites ‒ and how you can build one yourself ‒ read on.

Lead generation explained

There are two main components to lead generation:

• Attracting consumers who are interested in your product or service
• Capturing the contact information of those consumers so you can move them into your sales funnel

Benefits of lead generation

Lead generation provides businesses with a few revenue-boosting benefits.

Easier conversions

Making a sale to a cold prospect who just learned about your product is a tall order.

No matter how good your product or exemplary your company, consumers will still need time to warm up to you. Asking them to buy as soon as they visit your website will seldom work. You need to move slowly and lead them toward converting.

The only way to lead someone toward conversion is by building a relationship and establishing trust with them. And you can't do that unless you turn them into a lead by capturing their contact information.

Cost-effective

Many lead generation strategies are pretty affordable to implement. If you don't have a large marketing budget to work with, employing lead generation to gain more customers can be quite useful.

Elements of a high-converting lead generation website

Useful content

You can't generate leads if people don't visit your website. And people won't visit your site if you don't have helpful content for them to consume.

Content helps bring people to your lead generation website in a few ways.

• Search engine traffic. By creating content that ranks high for specific keywords in the organic search results, you can get free traffic from consumers in your target market.
• Social media traffic. Social media platforms are another excellent way to bring in traffic. If your content is useful and unique, consumers will share it with their social networks and bring in potential leads.
• Email list traffic. After someone gives you their contact information and becomes a lead, you can nurture them by sending new content via email.

Sleek design

It used to be okay to have a clunky, pixelated website.

That's not the case anymore. Your website is an extension of your business, and it needs to look clean and professional.

If you don't have a website, or you have one that needs a significant visual upgrade, use a framework like WordPress or Squarespace. Their user-friendly interfaces and abundance of premium themes make it easy to create a professional web presence for your business.

Site speed

If your website doesn't load quickly enough, visitors are going to exit the page before they even see your lead signup form.

This isn't just an assumption ‒ check out these page load speed statistics from Unbounce.

• Sites that load in 5 seconds have 70% longer average sessions when compared to sites that load in 19 seconds.
• A 100-millisecond delay in page load speed can cause a 7% drop in conversion rate.
• Pages that load in two seconds have an average bounce rate of 9%, while pages that load in five seconds have an average bounce rate of 38%.

If you're concerned about your site loading slowly, you can test the load speed of each of your pages using the Google PageSpeed Insights tool. The tool will also give you tips on how to speed up your speed, so implement those tips if your site is loading slower than you'd like.

Lead magnets

Most people won't give away their contact information freely. They'll only do so if you give them something in return.

In the marketing world, that something is called a lead magnet. The type of lead magnet you offer will depend on your industry and the nature of your business.

Businesses that sell simpler products can make do with a simple discount or coupon, while businesses in a more sophisticated space will benefit from educational content. And if you have a software product, a free trial is an excellent lead generation product.

Educational content

The most common lead is one that provides information on a topic or product. While this can take any form you like, there are a few that most consumers are familiar with.

• People love videos. Shoot a decently long webinar that explains a topic that members of your target audience are confused about, and many will happily trade their contact information to access it.
• If you've got some writing chops ‒ or the funds to hire a ghostwriter ‒ you can write an eBook to generate leads. There's no need to publish it or anything ‒ just offer a PDF or .epub format.
• A whitepaper is ideal if you've got a particularly technical or scientific topic to cover. I recommend hiring a copywriter to create one of these. Consumers expect a higher level of quality from whitepapers than they do from other types of content.
• Ultimate guides. Writing a comprehensive guide on something your readers have trouble with can bring in a lot of qualified leads.

Discount/coupon

A discount or coupon is an excellent offer if you don't feel an educational lead magnet would be appropriate for your business. Don't give too much it a discount, though. Just make it enough to make consumers eager to trade an email address for it.

Free trial

If you run a SaaS business, offering a free trial of your software can bring in a lot of qualified leads.

Perhaps the best part about offering a free software trial is that consumers get to try your product firsthand. You don't need to convince them to try it through a lead nurturing campaign, as they'll already have access to it.

SEO optimization

If you want potential leads to find you when they type keywords into a search engine, you need to optimize your website for SEO. If you don't, other sites who have optimized for SEO will beat you out and take your traffic ‒ and your leads.

To optimize your site for SEO, use these quick and actionable tips.

• Publish a lot of high-quality content. Google uses many factors to decide where to rank your website. A few essential elements are overall traffic numbers, the time each visitor spends on your site, and the number of authoritative backlinks your content receives. By creating content your target audience finds engaging and useful, you can get more views, boost your SEO, and rank higher in the search results.

• Make your site faster. We already mentioned site speed in terms of usability but having a slow website will also drag you down in the search rankings.

• Link to internal pages on your site. If you've published a substantial amount of content, you've likely written about a wide variety of topics in your niche. So, when you're writing a new article, link to relevant posts already on your site. Internal linking will improve your SEO.

• Add an SSL certificate. Adding an SSL certificate to your site encrypts the data people send to you. While Google has not said outright that an SSL certificate affects your SEO, it almost certainly plays a role when other factors are relatively equal. Installing an SSL is easy and free with a tool like Let's Encrypt, so I recommend getting one if you don't have it yet.

Final thoughts

If you want to increase the revenue of your business, you need a lead generation strategy. And no modern lead generation strategy is complete without a lead generation website.

If you don't have a website optimized for lead generation yet, the following tips can help you build one.

• Add useful content.
• Create a lead magnet.
• Optimize for SEO.