Strategies For Improving Your Visitor to Lead Conversion Rate

If you build it, they will come! Well, that’s not necessarily true when it comes to websites. Businesses need to employ lead-generation strategies to improve their visitor to lead conversion rate. In other words, businesses should use strategies that will not only bring visitors to their website but make them click on it, too. 

Let’s explore some strategies aimed at improving visitor to lead conversions, also known as conversion rate optimization, that can help improve this metric so you can bring in more visitors who want to become your customers after landing on your site. 

What is the Lead Conversion Rate?

First, let’s define some of these terms. When thinking about your website, visitors, and the overall visitor to lead conversion rate, you have to understand just what a visitor-to-lead conversion rate is. The visitor to lead conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors who end up taking action. It’s a simple mathematical equation that lets you know how your website is performing. 

There are a number of other metrics that are related to the lead conversion rate (click rate, bounce rate, and more), but that’s the basic definition of lead conversion rate. Lead generation strategies aim to improve this percentage.

The Difference Between Visitors and Leads

Not everyone who happens upon your website becomes a lead. The person might have conducted a search, which brought them to your page. When that happens, they are a simple visitor. However, they might leave immediately, seeking a different website, which, in digital terminology, is considered a bounce. Simple visitors become leads when they take the desired action you have put in place. 

For some websites, that might mean the visitor becomes a lead when they fill out a form on your website. For other businesses, it may mean that they subscribe to a newsletter or service. Still, others may want visitors to take action by purchasing something. The bottom line is that a website visitor turns into a business lead when they take action. 

Keep in mind that you really want to have qualified leads versus just a simple lead. A qualified lead is a visitor who took action and who is very likely to convert into a genuine sale.

When thinking about driving traffic to your site, you’re basically looking at just pumping up your visitor numbers. In that case, you simply want people to be able to find your site. When considering lead generation strategies, you’re attempting to improve the lead conversion rate.

Why Lead Conversion Matters

You might be thinking, but I have a ton of traffic on my site! Isn’t that enough? While it is important to drive traffic to your website, if you aren’t capitalizing on those who visit, they may as well have never visited at all. The visitor-to-lead conversion rate is a metric that will tell you whether or not you are capturing the attention of your visitors and how many of them you’re turning into customers. 

Think about a brick-and-mortar store. You can bring people in the door, but your bottom line won’t be positively impacted unless that person looks at your products and buys something. Theoretically, websites operate in a similar manner: you can bring people to your site, but you won’t be able to capitalize on their visit unless they read the content and do what it is that you want them to do. The more people who take action, the likelihood that you will be able to profit off of their visit. 

What is a Good Visitor to Lead Conversion Rate?

Once you capture the data on how many visitors your website has and how many of those visitors have converted to leads, you should be able to determine your visitor-to-lead conversion rate. But what exactly is a good visitor-to-lead conversion rate? Hubspot says that you should be satisfied with a visitor-to-lead conversion rate somewhere between 2% and 5%. 

Aiming to have a conversion rate in that range should give you a solid amount of qualified leads that can impact your profitability. The good news is that if your website falls below this percentage, there are website conversion tactics you can employ to improve your visit-to-lead conversion rate. 

How to Improve Visitor-to-Lead Conversion Rate

If your website’s visitor to lead conversion rate is below the recommended threshold, you may want to consider using some website conversion tactics to improve your site’s performance. Improved performance can result in better metrics, and in turn, you can see more sales. 

Website conversion tactics are more commonly called conversion rate optimization in the industry. Conversion rate optimization is an umbrella term that refers to the strategies you can use to improve that visitor-to-lead conversion rate. Three simple things you can do for your site to improve visitor-to-lead conversion rate are to incorporate a solid SEO strategy into your website’s content, engage in CTA optimization, and optimize your conversion funnel.

Have a Solid SEO Strategy

By creating and implementing a solid SEO strategy, you will drive more traffic to your site. It’s important, however, to choose an SEO strategy that is purposeful and that focuses on search intent. You want people to find your site because it meets their needs, not because you tricked them by gaming an algorithm. 

A solid, well-intentioned, or white hat SEO strategy aimed at improving your website’s visitor-to-lead conversion rate should drive up qualified leads, which are the most likely to truly convert. For example, if someone visits your website and fills out your form but uses fake information, that person is not a qualified lead. Qualified leads are those who will actually become customers versus those who simply took the initial desired action on your website — which is what every business owner wants.

Optimize Your CTA 

In the digital world, your CTA is your call to action. This phrase refers to the words that compel your website visitor to take action. Call now! Act today! Download your e-book! Those are all calls to action. In order to get better lead conversion results, you’ll want to optimize your CTA. One of the best ways to optimize your CTA is to conduct A/B testing with differently worded calls to action. 

A/B Testing is simply testing two or more versions of a CTA (in this case, A/B testing can be used to test other parts of a website, such as PPC advertising) to see which performs better. The results of the test will tell you what language resonates with your audience the best and, ultimately, which one drives more people to action. 

For example, some people will use first-person CTAs, such as “Download My E-Book,” instead of the second-person “Get Your E-Book.” The subtle shift in language can make a huge difference, but you won’t know what works best for your audience until you test it out! Ultimately, CTA optimization is a great way to improve your lead conversion rate.

Utilize Conversion Funnel Optimization

Say what? The conversion funnel is the whole behind-the-scenes process that a customer goes through to go from lead to customer. While this happens after the visitor-to-lead conversion, the funnel conversion will ultimately have an impact on visitors converting to leads. Going back to a physical store analogy, a customer in a store won’t be interested in becoming a lead by examining a product on a shelf if there’s a bunch of junk in the aisle preventing them from actually picking it up. Conversion funnel optimization makes sure that the conditions are perfect for your customer to buy now. 

Ready to Improve Your Visitor to Lead Conversion Rate?

After reading our post, we hope that the visitor to lead conversion rate now makes a little bit more sense along with understanding how lead generation strategies and website conversion tactics can impact your website’s performance. 

If all of this is still over your head, we get it! Understanding the madness that is the ever-changing landscape of website optimization can be challenging, especially if you’re not immersed in it. Our team of digital marketing experts is always current with the evolving tech landscape and can help you get the results you want with improved visitor-to-lead conversion rates. Let us do the heavy lifting for you. Reach out to our digital marketers today to start getting better website results!