Too many leads to keep up with - not such a bad problem to have. There are people who would kill to have that problem. If you have too many leads to manage honor your good fortune by doing what it takes to follow up on all of them - until they buy.

Front End Lead Management

Managing your leads on the front end is not the hard part of lead management. It usually involves the initial contact, a discussion about a project or product, and maybe even a quote. Either way, the idea is to close the sale quickly and if the buyer is not ready now then you should get an idea of when to follow up - the hard part. Ok. It’s not actually hard but it takes time and some kind of organized system for lead management because after that initial contact, something has to be done with the contact information and all notes, dates, and ideas that have been added. It is valuable stuff worth keeping up with.

If you have so many leads you (or your salespeople) are having trouble on the front end then how much attention do you think the follow up is getting? The follow up is usually the first thing to suffer when things get busy. It is easy to get excited about new prospects and forget about existing leads.

Back End Lead Management (Sales Lead Follow Up)

Research suggests that effective follow up of qualified leads can increase sales by - get this - 100%. So, do the math. Following up on sales leads, and general lead management, is worth your time. Think of all those sales you might have let slip by because you were too busy keeping up with incoming calls or internet leads.

There are many sales lead management software packages out there such as those by salesforce.com, leads360, and Aprimo. You may find that you or your sales team can manage sales leads with a creative use of excel or Outlook. In Outlook, try flagging emails with various colors depending on the nature of a lead and use your Outlook calendar to remind you when to follow up on a lead. Remember you can drag emails directly into your calendar - you do not have to retype everything.

Start Now - Before Things Get Busy

I work with a company that has become overwhelmed during the past few months by sales leads (from their Lead Optimized websites) and it is dreadful to see the sales they are losing. They are doing all they can to keep up with the front end leads while trying to hire new salespeople but because they did not have an effective lead management system in place before their tremendous boost in sales leads the idea of following up has all but been dropped.

Keep up with your leads until they have purchased from you (preferably) or someone else by developing a simple and effective lead management system that you and your salespeople use and update consistently. A good lead management system will become part of your routine and a lifeline to increased sales - a paycheck pipeline for salespeople, which they will gladly keep filling.

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Offering a periodic newsletter is an excellent and inexpensive way to keep your clients updated on your offerings and to build brand identity. People are inundated with newsletter these days, though, so your newsletter has to be filled with well-written and valuable content just like your website. Take advantage of your newsletter opportunities. Send a newsletter each time you update your site, add a new product line, invest in new technologies that will help your customers, or if there is some big industry news on which you have “the scoop.”

Most importantly, remember that - just like your website - the goal of your newsletter is also to offer excellent content and enable quality leads from your readers and visitors. Your newsletter should always include:

• Required components of current CANSPAM laws (read on)
• Attention getting title
• “View this article online” link
• Logo (unless text only)
• Phone number (prominently displayed top, middle, and bottom)
• Home page link
• Contact page link (prominently displayed top, middle, and bottom)
• Promotional links

Quality newsletters are effective for increasing traffic and leads when used correctly, appropriately, and respectfully.

Formats If you are managing your newsletter in house, there are three basic format options for you. Each option has its pros and cons, depending on what you want to do with it, how much time you are willing to spend on it, and your level of savvy with html and software. The three main types are text only, html format, and PDF.

• Text Only – very easy to create but, as the name implies, the newsletter is text only. You cannot include graphics, pictures, or any special layout. You can include links, which will get readers to your site. For simplicity, text only newsletter are the way to go.
• HTML Email – looks like a webpage with graphics and a custom and is cheap if you know how to build an HTML email, which is very much like building an HTML webpage. To learn more for free, go to www.ducttapemarketing.com.
• PDF – Simple to build and can be any layout and size you desire but requires converting your document to a PDF. You can add the PDF to your website and send a text only email with a link to the PDF. Readers can then save the newsletter as a file or easily print it out for later. You will need Adobe or another PDF driver and your readers will need a PDF reader, to which you can offer a free link in your newsletter.

For simplicity, my favorite newsletter creating strategy is to send each new page of a website as the newsletter. That is, each time you add a new page to your site, send that content in text only or html format to your newsletter mailing list. This makes the creation of the newsletter simple and keeps readers up to date on your website. This has been my favorite method in the past. This method simultaneously motivates you to update your website with new pages and send a newsletter because you are killing two birds with one stone. You can also summarize the content of the page – providing the main points of your content along with your contact information and a direct link to the webpage where they can read the full page of information.

Opt-In Mailing Lists Opt-in mailing lists are lists built by means of offer and acceptance of being included in your mailing list. Readers must choose to be included by clicking on a radio button or check box on your website and submitting the information. Using only an opt-in list is the best way to maintain integrity in your newsletter, website, brand, and company.

Promote your mailing list in much the same way you promote the name. Mention it in many places. Your salespeople should mention it on the phone and add it to their email signatures. Make the newsletter sign-up prominent throughout your website. Give customers a reason to sign up for it such as promotional offers, event news, project leads, industry news, or how-to articles.

SPAM (not recommended) I never ever recommend SPAM but it is available to you if you choose to use it. You can purchase email lists or use email extracting software to mine email addresses from public web pages (why using email links on your website is not advised) and add those email addresses to your email list. Either way, you can expect angry replies to unsolicited newsletters (SPAM) and be honest with yourself about the fact that it is spam.

The Federal Trade Commission details the requirements of the CANSPAM laws at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.htm. The law’s provisions and requirements are as follows (from the FTC website):

• It bans false or misleading header information. Your email’s “From,” “To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person who initiated the email.

• It prohibits deceptive subject lines. The subject line cannot mislead the recipient about the contents or subject matter of the message.

• It requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method. You must provide a return email address or another Internet-based response mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future email messages to that email address, and you must honor the requests. You may create a “menu” of choices to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to end any commercial messages from the sender.
  

  Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your commercial email. When you receive an opt-out request, the law gives you 10 business days to stop sending email to the requestor’s email address. You cannot help another entity send email to that address, or have another entity send email on your behalf to that address. Finally, it’s illegal for you to sell or transfer the email addresses of people who choose not to receive your email, even in the form of a mailing list, unless you transfer the addresses so another entity can comply with the law.

• It requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender’s valid physical postal address. Your message must contain clear and conspicuous notice that the message is an advertisement or solicitation and that the recipient can opt out of receiving more commercial email from you. It also must include your valid physical postal address.

I do not condone SPAM. I only want to clarify what you must include in your email to stay within the guidelines of the CANSPAM law.

1. Clear and conspicuous notice that the message is an advertisement or solicitation – yes, a newsletter is an advertisement no matter how informative or well-written.

2. Valid physical postal address.

3. Opt-OUT mechanism for recipients that works for at least 30 days after the email/newsletter is sent. Once the request to be removed is submitted by the recipient, you are required to remove that person’s email address from the mailing within 10 days.

If used respectfully and carefully, this can be an effective means of increasing the traffic to your site but you are risking the integrity of your site and your brand. If you choose to use SPAM, use only highly targeted mailing lists, be honest about everything, offer exceptional content, and (most important) use the most polite, shortest, and simplest opt-out process possible. SPAM elicits a very nasty response in many people so if a recipient desires to opt-out, let them do so quickly without steaming in front of your logo with a frustrating multi-level password-protected opt-out process.

Subscribe to the Lead Optimize.com Newsletter and get two free e-books immediately. Learn more here. I will never sell or distribute your information.

Subscribe to the Lead Optimize.com Newsletter and get two free e-books immediately.  Learn more here.

Your website should be a valuable source of information for everyone in the company. 

Without putting confidential information on the site, you should strive to make your website useable by everyone in the company. By making the site a tool everyone can use you are increasing your return on investment in the site. There are small ways you will be able to save time for employees throughout your office staff from receptionists to purchasing agents to accounts receivable. 

 Examples of forms and information you can post on your site are: 

• Fax covers letters
• Holiday schedules (this might be helpful to customers, too)
• Sales tax credit forms
• Brochures
• Materials Safety Data Sheets (MSDS)
• Various Training Materials
• Product Specifications

There are many ways you can make the website work as an effective tool for employees throughout the company.  Solicit and listen to their ideas openly and carefully.  The possibilities for how your website can save time and money throughout your company are almost limitless. 

Systemic Support

Your new website will require systemic support to ensure you can fully capture the new benefits it will bring.  The systemic support required for your site will be directly related to the amount of traffic your site receives so if you do not expect much traffic, just make sure the basics are in place.  Simply turning on a new site will not create a sudden burst in traffic. The growth in traffic takes time to develop depending on your site-promotion and search engine optimization. 

However, if you already have a fairly high volume of traffic and currently receive leads from your site, then it is reasonable to expect that when your lead optimized site goes live the volume of leads (i.e., phone calls and contact form emails) could double, triple, quadruple, or even more from the same amount of site traffic. If you feel like the volume of leads will overwhelm your current system you should beef it up with new lines and maybe even a new person to answer phones or email.

Some companies integrate their website marketing into their existing marketing and some companies separate the website marketing as if it is another company altogether. The method you use depends completely on your needs, your traffic, company size, and the goals of your company.

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Search engine optimization is a giant subject so we are going to stick to the main rules and discuss some places where you can get additional information on the subject. Search engines use programs - robots and crawlers – to creep through the internet and catalog the pages that are currently out there. They inventory the domains they travel through so they can recall them and make them quickly available to you next time you search. They are complex and based on many factors too secretive and complex for us to cover. Below are the main rules you should follow to get a good placement in search engines.

The main rules of SEO:

• Content Quality
• Content Quantity
• Keywords
• Links
• Navigation

Content Quality

“Content is king” is a common phrase in the world of search engine optimization and website design. The pages of your website should contain useful and valuable information about your products and services as well as your industry and profession. The content should be about your subject matter as well as your products (e.g.; if you sell boats, include content about the best regional places to fish and water ski as well as information about boats) and answer questions customers might have about your products or services and offer descriptions, definitions, explanations, and lessons. Put your teacher hat on. Think of the questions your clients normally ask you the first and second times you speak with them on the phone. Go even further and include topics your clients tend to discuss casually when they talk to you (e.g.; boat buyers might talk about skiing and where to ski). Your sales force is an excellent resource to tap for this kind of information and getting them involved will make them feel like they helped create the website. Quality content about your subject matter and products will be picked up by search engines.

Stated in very simple terms: Search engines are built to help web users find information. When you add useful and relevant information to your site, you are helping search engines do their jobs and you will be rewarded with good placement in search engine listings. You will be rewarded for updating that information periodically as well – monthly would be great but every six months is acceptable. We will discuss writing copy to incite action that produces sales later in the book.

Content Quantity

Once you have written amazingly high-quality content, you will need to add more pages on a regular basis. Each of your new pages should maintain the same quality standards as the initial website. For the boat website example, you might add a page about a great place to fish or about how the Master Craft XXXX was crucial to winning the latest fishing tournament.

Adding new pages is like cast-fishing with a bigger net. Adding new pages gives you a bigger reach to catch the interest of search engines. New pages add breadth to your subject matter as well, providing opportunities for search engines (and visitors interested in your products) to find you and for other sites to link to your site, increasing your status in search engine rankings (read on about links). If I have a site or a blog about fishing I might not link to your site about boats because I can get boat stats anywhere but I might link to your new page with the article about how the Master Craft helped win the tournament.

Keywords

It is important to use keywords relevant to your products and general subject matter throughout your site. There are three main places where you will need to use keywords effectively:

• Menus
• Content
• Meta Description Tag

Menus are, almost by default, little lists of keywords. Use them where they are needed throughout the site. You do not need to four menus on each page of your site. One will do and maybe two IF that extra menu is in a convenient location that helps your visitors navigate your site.

Use relevant keywords carefully and thoroughly throughout your website’s content. Without overdoing it, try to replace a few references with the actual word. After you write your content for a given page, go through it one more time (hopefully you will edit anyway) and replace a “they” and a “them” with the actual keywords to which the “they” and the “them” are referring. Don’t overdo it or you will end up with unreadable text.

Don’t know what keywords to use in your marketing campaigns? Download the keywords your competitors use.

Finally, Meta description tags are html tags used near the top of the source code for your web page. The Meta description tag is used by most (not all) search engines to determine the content of your site and to create the description show in the search engine results page (SERP). You can, and probably should, use a slightly different description for each page of your site. For more information about meta tags, visit http://www.searchenginewatch.com/

Use the appropriate keywords on the appropriate pages, course. If your website is about species of wood in Texas, you do not need to list pine in the Meta description tag keyword on the live oak page.

Links

Links are like votes for your website. Each link from an outside source to your website is one more constituent for your content – at least by search engine logic. There are two kinds of links – natural and artificial. Natural links are links embedded in the body of the content of a page because they add value to the content and the site visitor.

Artificial links are links added to a site because they add value for the site owner and a third party and typically NOT for the site visitor. The most common examples of artificial links are those on “links pages” that are there as reciprocal links to other pages. The owners of the reciprocating sites benefit because they have more lengths and greater reach where search engines are concerned. Artificial links are not usually simple to find – and might even be hidden - on a site as they tend to draw traffic away from a site which is the opposite of what you, as a site owner, are trying to achieve.

You want natural links to your site because search engines look upon them more favorably than artificial links. You should welcome all links to your site, though. Remember, each link is like a vote for the content on your site.

Navigation

Visitors to your site should be able to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. They should also be able to find their way back to where they started. Sean Timberlake put it very simply in his article “The Basics of Navigation” on http://www.efuse.com/. He said site visitors want to know three things:

• Where they are
• Where they can go
• How to get back to where they were

The genius of that is that it is simple, clear, and all-encompassing. You need to decide upon a site architecture – a map of your website – that will make moving throughout your site simple and effective. I personally do not like to create more than four levels of pages, and usually only three, including the home page (level 1). A great way to get started is to base your navigation plan on that of another website you find very simple to navigate. Choose a site that is in your industry or sells a product in a similar way to how you sell yours.

Another great way to get a clear idea of what you want is to draw the plan. Use a clear sheet of paper and draw a box for each page of your site as they relate to one another. Label each page box with a general name. Expect to repeat this exercise at least 5 times. Your finished drawing will also be great for communicating your vision to your designer(s) and for keeping yourself on track through the design process – check off each completed page as you progress.

Navigation should be consistent throughout your site. You want visitors to always feel comfortable on your site and know where they are, where they can go next, and how to get back to where they came from. The most common style options for site navigation are:

• Navigation bars (side and top)
• Tab Navigation
• Site Maps
• Embedded Links
• Bread Crumb Trails

Navigation Bars The most common method of maintaining consistency throughout the pages of a site is to use a navigation bar. Navigation bars are the lists of links that are usually on the left margin of a website and sometimes at the top.

Tab Navigation Sites with few pages often use tabs at the top of the page. Tabs are great because they leave space in the body of your site for content and images and are easy to understand because they intuitively function like a hardcopy filing system most people are accustomed to using.

Site Maps Site maps are preferred by some people because they are a simple outline of the link structure of the site. Site maps are also useful for search engine optimization but not necessary.

Embedded Links Embedded links are links inserted throughout the copy and content of the site that lead to other areas of the site that are related to the current subject. They are used very commonly and are highly recommended. Embedded links are excellent for “upselling” and for generating leads from your website. To repeat: Embedded links are very useful for generating leads from your website.

Breadcrumb Links Finally, breadcrumb trails are very useful for visitors to a site. Most sites do not use them but they are useful when available. he most common placement of breadcrumb trails is just below the title of the page. The link trail represents the path you took to get to the page you are on and you can click on any piece of that trail to get back to the corresponding page of the site. For example, the breadcrumb trail for the page I am on might be “Home/North Pole/Santa Claus/Toy Shop”, meaning I am on the “Toy Shop” page and if I want to get back to the North Pole page, I need only click on that portion of the breadcrumb trail. Breadcrumb trails are very useful and you should consider using one, especially if you are designing a very deep and broad site.

Another aspect of navigation that is very important is how you name your links. Name your links very clearly so people will understand where they have the option of going. Designers often get too cute with naming and use words that are confusing and even misleading. For example, if your site is about cars, you might be tempted to name the home page link (which should be on every page) “the Garage.” There is no logical reason for it. It is irrelevant to practicality. Even your biggest fans are only looking for information and do not care about your subtle ways of maintaining the car theme. You will not win extra brownie points from search engines or your visitors for cute names so stick with the simple and clearly understood “Home.”

Other SEO Factors

These are some other factors worth mentioning but don’t get a headache over them. Most are easy to take care of or there is little you can do about them. Do what you can because every little bit helps.

Age of Your Domain How long your domain has been around will play a role in how it is seen by search engines. This is kind of related to the next topic, Domain Permanence and is also related to the fact that when a domain has been around, it usually develops some traffic, links, and a bit of a presence overall.

Obviously, there is nothing you can do about the age of your domain (except wait) so don’t worry about it. If your website has been up for a while, even if it is very simple and has no links, well then at least you have age on your side. If you have not even purchased your domain yet, then get to it! Register it and put something on it, even if you just post contact information and a list of your products until you get your full site designed.

Domain Permanence The length of time your domain is registered for might affect your domain’s search engine rank. Spammers often register domain names for one year then use that domain as the address from which they send thousands, if not millions, of spam emails. Therefore, search engines sometimes use the expiration date of a website’s domain name as a factor in determining its legitimacy.

Google stated in their March 2005 patent filing release that they consider websites with one year registrations to be related to spam websites meaning they will certainly not give them much consideration, if any, for ranking. This is obviously not true across the board as I have seen brand new websites with one year registrations that were ranked within one month of going online. Those sites were very niche-oriented, though, and typically the only searches that brought up the site were near replicas of the domain name itself. For example, typing in “gluhwein” and getting http://www.gluhwein.net/ in the search rankings.

While registration expiration is not the largest factor in your search engine optimization it is a simple and inexpensive factor to control so go ahead and keep your domain registered at least five years out. The maximum number of years you can register a domain name for is ten.

Submit Your Domain If your domain name is brand new - and even if it is not – submit it to the major search engines, especially Google and Yahoo. It is free and literally takes about three minutes. For Google, go to www.google.com/addurl and for Yahoo, go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit. Many SEO professionals will tell you this is a waste of time but it does not hurt anything and ensures you are listed. You do not need to submit more than once. Once you are in the catalog, you are in. Go ahead and submit to any others such as Teoma and Lycos also. MSN is beginning to grow in the search engine market as well.

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“The Close” is a very common (and commonly overlooked) sales tactic. Probably every sales book you will ever read has an entire section about “closing.” This is the “ask for the sale” part of sales. Ask your customer to contact you about their order or with questions about your product.

Ask a time or two in the body of the content. The general rule I use when writing a full page of copy is that the contact opportunity should be given at least two times within that copy – once near the top and once about two thirds of the way down. I often add one last “Call us at (XXX) XXX-XXXX or contact us online for more information” at the bottom of the copy as well. Notice I give two methods of contact. Sometimes, I recommend three, depending on the nature of your customers and your systemic and technical capabilities. Give your visitors options and ask often without being annoying.

You might ask why you should ask them to contact you in the body of the copy when you already have your phone number posted at the top right or along the left side of every page on your website. The reason is that you are talking to your visitor in the copy and asking for the lead while talking to them is more effective than simply having your number posted beside your information. Every salesperson knows this whether he acts on it or not.

Article published in May 2007 Building Products Digest

You can get more qualified sales leads from your website’s current traffic than you are getting right now and it will cost you no more than whatever you pay your designer (who might be you) to make the changes.

Generating Leads from Your Website

Lead optimize your website to maximize the number of leads it generates from your current traffic. Doing so will make all of your future efforts to increase site traffic much more effective and decrease your cost per lead. Measure the lead generation rate of your current site by dividing the total number of leads you receive from the site (add phone, fax, email, contact forms, etc) by the total number of unique visitors. At a 5% lead generation rate from your website 1,000 unique visitors per day will produce 50 leads. Lead optimize to increase your site’s lead generation rate to 10% and then your 1,000 unique visitors will become 100 leads. Your site is now twice as effective and each incremental increase in traffic volume will be twice as effective as well.

Lead Optimize – Top Three Required Components

For the purpose of this article we are going to cover the top three components needed by every page on a website to maximize the number of sales leads it generates. Three components you need on every page to begin your lead optimization are:

1. Valuable Content
2. Benefits to the Reader
3. Contact Opportunities

Valuable Content

Content is king. This has become a search engine optimization (SEO) mantra but it applies to lead optimization as well. The fact is without quality content on each page of your website, your site visitors will leave before they even look for your contact information and even if they do reach it, who wants to call someone with nothing to say?

The content on your site should be:

• Valuable (saves or makes them money)
• Professional (but not robotic or scholastic)
• Concise (informative but to the point)
• Up-to-date (use dates (i.e., 2005) instead of periods (i.e., 2 years ago))
• Correct (check spelling, typos, grammar, and facts)

You are the expert in the products you sell and your site should reflect that fact. Define and understand your target customers and write your content to serve their needs. Do they need technical specifications, how-to knowledge, or safety regulations? The content of your website should supply your customers with information that is pertinent to what they are doing. Content is king!

Benefits to the Reader

Your page copy should display the benefits of your products or services. Copy too often lists only features. For instance, American Pole And Timber offers poles and timbers coated with 21 POLY, a protective polymer coating. That is a great feature but it is not very interesting and does not speak to the needs of most contractors or users. However, when site visitors read that pilings coated with 21 POLY come with a 25 year warranty against rot and decay from fungus and marine borers (benefit) they become more interested and start calling.

Always be mindful of why your visitors come to your website. Put yourself in their shoes. Understand what they want, what they are doing with your products or services, and how they feel about them (e.g., I see piers all the time whose pilings look like they are about to collapse from rot and barnacles). Identify with your visitors by displaying the benefits your products offer them. Display the benefits clearly and simply. Only get as technical as your target visitors need and don’t be too “salesy”. Speak to them about their needs and offer solutions for their problems. Once you have clearly displayed your benefits, make sure the opportunity to contact you is close at hand.

Contact Opportunity (a.k.a., Contact Information)

This seems obvious but every time I mention the importance of contact information to a site owner, I hear “But my phone number is on the pages and I have a “contact us” page.” A great exercise is to count how many times your contact information is displayed on each page of your site. It might be a real eye-opener (maybe not). Now, refine your attitude about contact information. Begin thinking in terms of contact opportunities. Give your visitors opportunities to contact you in at least 3 places on each page of your website. In each place, give two or more methods by which visitors can contact you such as your phone number and a link to your contact us page because some customers prefer to pick up the phone and call and others prefer the flexibility of email or contact forms.

American Pole and Timber does this effectively by displaying the “Project Information and Assistance” button on the left side of every page of www.AmericanPoleAndTimber.com in addition to lines such as “Contact us online (a link to the contact form page) or call us at (866) 397-3038 to discuss…” sprinkled throughout the pages and each there are almost always two contact methods given for every contact opportunity their carefully-designed online contact form. Efforts to lead optimize www.PoleAndTimber.com have resulted in a lead generation rate of about 10% and that is expected to increase with further lead optimize efforts.

Your site visitors are looking for information and solutions so give them what they are looking for offline and plenty of opportunities to contact you and the leads will start coming in. The rest is up to you and your sales people.

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“You can create an effective online form that yields a high response rate and provides you with enough information to qualify your leads.”

Contact forms generate excellent sales leads from customers who are interested enough to fill out a form. You will sometimes be able to close a sale without ever speaking to the customer until it is time for payment and you might even be able to get around talking to them even then if you want (although, hopefully you want to talk to your customers).  

Possibly the best advantage you have with leads from an online contact form is that you have a better chance to manage the timing and arrangement of the sell.  With an effective form, you will have information about the customer that will allow you to qualify, prioritize, and plan your replies (always reply to 100% of your web leads even if you sell Portuguese chickens and the lead is requesting wedding china).  

In other words, you get more control with contact form leads. 

If you make the commitment to reply to inquiries from contact forms quickly – say, within 24 hours, you will already be ahead of most sites on the web in terms of service.  When was the last time you submitted a web form and received a timely response from a real person?  Maybe never?  I get responses daily thanking me for my fast response.  I always make the commitment to respond to contact form leads within 24 hours and suggest all my clients do the same as well.  If you are at your desk when a lead arrives to your email, answer it then! You will blow that customer away.  

I have made sales to customers from internet leads within 10 minutes of their initial inquiry just because (according to them) they were amazed at the fast response. Your product or service might be complex but a fast response can make your process seem to the customer much more like a “click-and-buy” transaction. 

Getting great response rates from online contact forms can be difficult because many - perhaps most - people are still somewhat weary (and rightfully so) of providing information online.  You can create an effective online form that generates numerous leads rate and provides you with enough information to qualify them.  Here are my guidelines for an effective contact form: 

• Know your customers
• Promise not to resell or redistribute any information – and stand by it
• Know how you want to use the contact information
• Clearly state the purpose of the form
• Give the steps (e.g., fill out form, submit, get email response)
• Clearly label your fields – and explain if needed
• Comment/Question box goes FIRST (1^st)
• Only require the fields you absolutely need
• Keep it as short as possible

How you design your form will depend upon what you consider to be a successful lead.  Some companies want any lead information that will put them in contact even the most remotely possible customer.  Other companies want only highly qualified leads with more detailed information.  Carefully consider what kind of leads you want.  Typically, there is an inverse relationship between the amount of information you require and the number of leads you receive.  That is, the more information you request, the fewer contact form leads you will receive - generally.  There is a balance you will have to find through some experimentation.  If your company is acutely focused on a specific niche or product you might find that requesting more detailed information brings you more qualified leads that will help you use your sales time more effectively. 

Maximize the effectiveness of your form leads by beginning with the basic information you need to decide how well you can help your customer.  If someone called you, what are the questions you would ask to make sure you can help them and should continue talking to them?  Imagine that you sell custom drains for swimming pools and a visitor finds you by searching for “drains” but this visitor needs a drain for an oil field application and contacts you through your online form.  You do not have a product for him. 

By asking the visitor to describe his project in your comments box, you will be able to quickly and politely respond with an email that will help you and him move forward onto qualified sales leads and finding the right product, respectively.  If there was no description box, you would respond with questions, wait for a response, and respond again with the reply that you cannot help him (hopefully it would go that fast). 

An well-designed contact form will allow you to save time and qualify leads effectively while still welcoming visitors within your niche to contact you.

–Chris Denny

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