If you want sales leads, your site should include a "call to action" to persuade people to request more information. The way they submit a lead is to click on a link to a "lead capture form." You need a form that at a minimum sends you—or the appropriate sales staff—an email. Ideally, it also will create a lead for you in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system such as SalesForce or SugarCRM. Here is an example of landing page for website design, and the lead capture form for that service. Our lead capture form both sends an email to sales and creates a lead in SugarCRM. You can then, of course, call and email the prospect.
Whether you are selling directly from your website or capturing leads, your website should always have obvious ways to reach using whatever method with which the prospect feels most comfortable: a contact form, email, or telephone. Some company websites make it hard to figure out how to contact them for more information.
It is important to have a number of people – both inside and outside of your company – test your website for usability and ease of use. Prospects should never have to wonder how to buy from you or how to contact you to ask a question about your products or services.
In my
next column, I'll discuss some of the mechanisms to maximize sales on the Web. These include targeting your product or service, structuring advertisements, choosing keywords and other important topics.
