I’ve written a bit lately about optimizing your company website. That’s because it’s vitally important. Yet, most companies do a little search engine optimization and think that’s enough.
Here are practical steps for improving a website that is not generating enough leads. If you have HubSpot but haven’t optimized your website yet, you can optimize in just 2 hours per week!
Why Optimize Your Website?
Website optimization is an underrated way to get more leads from your website. By optimizing your website for conversion, you’re seeking to get more contacts in your database, more leads for your sales team, more subscribers for your newsletter from the same amount of website visitors.
Every company website can be optimized and improved.
Today’s article looks at a process for continual website improvement -- a weekly routine that you can do in just 2 hours per week.
5 Steps to Fix a Website That Doesn’t Generate Leads… In Just 2 Hours Per Week
1. Identify the “High Impact” Pages on Your Company Website
Your website probably is made up of hundreds of web pages. So where do you begin?
Start your website conversion optimization efforts by finding the pages on your website that will have the highest impact to your organization. If you’re just starting out and your website gets just a few leads or less each month, this is going to be the pages that get the most visits.
Since you’re probably new to this conversion optimization stuff, I’ll assume this is you. There are two ways you can find “high impact” web pages. The first is to use the GA4 Pages and screens report. In Google Analytics, go to Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens, then use the table to identify pages with the most views.
Use the Views metric to compare pages, then focus on the pages where an improvement would matter most.
If your site is tracked in HubSpot, use the web traffic analytics Pages report to review page-level traffic and submissions.
Choose the reporting system your team trusts and uses consistently; avoid mixing metrics from different platforms without documenting the definitions and date range.
Begin with a small, manageable set of high-impact pages -- five is a practical starting point -- and document why each one was selected.
If your site is already generating leads, add a clickthrough metric to the analysis. Review page views and submissions in HubSpot traffic analytics, and review CTA views, clicks, and click rate in HubSpot’s Call-to-action (CTA) analytics. Prioritize pages with substantial traffic and a clear opportunity to improve the next step for the visitor.
After identifying your high-impact pages, record baseline measures before making changes.
2. Measure Baseline KPIs
Since your company relies on your website for growth, you’re probably accountable for some metrics. These KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) should very quickly get at the heart of how your website is performing. You’re used to reporting numbers that matter to the organization.
When we work with clients, we establish a scorecard early in the relationship that defines the KPIs for each company. We update these scorecards every month so we can measure trends. But website scorecards are for aggregate data at a website level. When we think about website conversion optimization, though, it helps to break things down even further and get very specific. If your team needs help establishing reliable reporting, our HubSpot support and consulting services can help.
Because you’ve selected pages with potential impact, assess them at the page level. Start with the metric that best reflects the page’s next step, such as form submissions, CTA click rate, or an event configured for the intended action.
For each of the top 5 high-impact pages you identified in the last step, make note of the following things:
- The page name
- The page URL
- The baseline metric for the intended next step (for example, form submissions or CTA click rate)
- The date range and reporting platform used for that metric
- The date on which you made these observations
What you’re doing here is simply making note of the page metrics before you do optimization work. By doing this first, you can find out if the optimizations you’ll make later actually have a positive impact.
You may not have calls to action on every page when you start, and that is fine. Record the traffic baseline, the current next step (if any), and the date of the observation before moving forward.
For landing pages, use the metric that matches the page’s purpose, such as form submissions or a clearly defined submission rate.
3. Add Calls to Action to High Impact Pages
If you want to improve conversion rate on your website, you need to place calls to action on each page of your website. But first, let’s start with the high-impact pages you identified earlier. Again, we’re trying to do this in just 2 hours a week, so we’re going to take it 5 pages at a time.
HubSpot supports calls to action that can be analyzed for views, clicks, and click rate. Use a CTA when it gives the visitor a relevant next step and gives your team a defined interaction to measure. Make sure you keep this step simple. If you don’t already have calls to action on all of your high-impact pages, start by creating a simple button for the page. You don’t need a graphic designer or a developer to do this step.
One thing that marketers often overlook is turning buttons and clickable graphics on your website into calls to action. Sometimes, just setting up existing clickable banners or graphics as calls to action in HubSpot can help you measure the popularity of those graphics.
If you’re lost at this point and don’t have any ideas, think of it this way… When a visitor reads a web page, they probably have a question or two. If you can identify the questions that people are asking after they read a page on your website, you have ideas for your calls to action.
Here are some things you can link to in your page calls to action:
- Download a product brochure or sales sheet (you may want to link to a landing page here that requires name and email address rather than just linking to the actual brochure)
- An article or blog post on your website that shows a common application for a product
- A page of case studies or testimonials for a particular product or service
- Information on pricing, such as a rate card, line card, sales sheet, or a detailed article on pricing
- Information on what types of things/actions/inputs are required to produce a product or service for your customer
- Information on typical timelines for delivery of a product or service
- A video demonstration of a product or service
- A sign up form for a trial version of your software
- A recorded webinar or speaking engagement a company representative participated in
- An e-book
- A product or service comparison page showing your offering with competitors’ offerings
- A newsletter signup form
- A tip sheet download
- “Speak with an expert” landing page with a lead form
- An independent article related to the content of a page
The idea is to give a reader a useful next step -- something that gives them more insight into their buying decision. For help connecting website improvements to a broader follow-up process, see our lead generation and lead nurturing services.
Still searching for that perfect call to action? Because you’re only optimizing a few pages at a time, pick one and ask your business development person, customer service rep or sales rep what questions a customer commonly asks.
For example, if the page you’re optimizing is a blog comparing different types of products, ask a sales rep or customer service rep what questions they get about those products.
Resources for Creating Your Calls to Action
If you’re design savvy and want to try your hand at custom graphics but don’t have Photoshop, you might try Canva or downloading 50 call to action templates.
4. Measure Impact
Once you make an optimization, allow enough time and traffic to compare the same metric over a consistent date range. Continue improving the next group of pages while the first group accumulates data, then return to GA4, HubSpot traffic analytics, or CTA analytics to check progress.
Reference the baseline notes for each high-impact page. Compare the same next-step metric, date range, and measurement method before and after the change, and record the optimization you made. For example, you may note that you created a call to action button that says “download our product brochure” and placed it at the bottom of a particular page.
These notes will become your optimization log. I can’t tell you how much this has helped me personally with optimization efforts. When you have a log of changes you made and their impact, you can refer back to them later and get insights for optimizing new pages and blog posts as you publish them.
Here’s a recent example from an optimization that we did for a client. This one is in PowerPoint format so we can show it later and present it to the client for their records:
One thing before you move on… You should give your optimizations time to work. Don’t bother measuring impact a day after you made the optimization unless the page you changed gets hundreds of views per day. I like to give it a month or more to collect enough data.
5. Repeat
Now that you’ve gone through the optimization process once with the five pages with highest impact, it’s time to tackle the next 5. And the next 5 after that.
You see, optimization isn’t a process that should ever come to a complete halt. It’s something that you continually need to do. But at just 2 hours per week, it seems like something you can accomplish.
Also, you’ll be tempted to stop documenting your findings as you continue this process. Please don’t do that. As you optimize, you can prove your value as a marketer by referencing your baseline metrics and comparing them to current metrics. You’ll be keeping a record of your wins.
There you have it… an efficient, simpler-than-normal framework for optimizing your website and getting more leads from the website traffic you already have. What pages are first on your list?
