The Sales Leads are in the Details
April 12th, 2007 by 
Chris
Let me know if this has happened to you.
Your site redesign is beautiful. It is an achievement of modern styling and layout design and uses the latest in SEO methodologies. You may have even seen an increase in traffic since you went live with the new design. You gave a congratulations and pat on the back to everyone involved in the work.
The problems are that you are getting few page views relative to your number of unique visitors and almost no sales leads. At this rate, your targeted ROI is way out of reach. This happens more than you might think but don’t fret. The leads are in the details.
True Story
I recently worked on redesign for a site that initially suffered from low sales leads. The site is for a small niche-focused company and only draws about 5,000 unique visitors per month, or roughly 165 per day, which is excellent for the size of the niche the company serves. It is probably the most beautiful redesign I have ever worked on but was getting almost no leads after two months. It averaged about 1 sales lead per day from its contact form (just over half of 1% of page views) and incoming calls from the site were weak. I poured over the pages of the site from the first to the last word and looked at every picture, line, and angle. I tried a few small changes but nothing improved the leads.
The Turnaround
During the third month of the new site’s life I sat back for a wider view and had an epiphany. The color scheme of the site is based on beautiful earth tones because the site needs a warm but strong eco-friendly “green” feel about it. My hunch was that the links were not acting effectively as calls to action because they did not stand out from the overall layout and design. The links were a light olive green to match the warm greens and browns in the rest of the site and did not attract attention and incite action from the site’s visitors. The links matched the site too well.
During the middle of that month we changed the links to a warm but bold red/maroon hue. The site is still beautiful and the effectiveness shot through the roof. During the last half of that month, with no change in traffic volumes, the daily leads from the site’s contact form nearly tripled to almost 2% of unique visitors and incoming calls increased greatly as well. That level has sustained since the change. The site went from being somewhat disappointing to a huge success.
The Sales Leads are in the Details
Do the basic math. This tiny detail (and free change) increased the number of sales leads that company receives from its contact forms from about 30 per month to about 80 per month. That makes a giant difference not only in the ROI of the redesign but in the company’s sales and profits, which was the goal of the redesign.
If you feel like your site is missing something or like visitors are leaving when they should have contacted you, take another look at it. Your site should be a lead generating machine.
If you like assistance lead optimizing your site send me an email at chris@leadoptimize.com. I am happy to help.
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Posted in Lead Optimize, Marketing | 
April 22nd, 2007 at 5:05 pm
[…] Chris, at Lead Optimize, tells us how tweaking the color of the links on a site more than quadrupled the number of leads a site he had been working on could generate: The sales lead are in the details. […]
April 24th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
[…] How does changing the color of your links help in generating revenue? Plenty, if you ask Chris Denny of Lead Optimize.com. The Sales Leads are in the Details is an interesting, err … detail … on website design and optimization. “Pay attention to the details. They can often make all the difference in the world.” […]
April 26th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Thanks fo rthe post. I’m going to try it out on my site and see how it works.
Sunny
April 27th, 2007 at 4:58 am
[…] Lead Optimize presents The Sales Leads are in the Details posted at Lead Optimize.com, saying, “To generate sales leads from your site, pay attention to the details.” […]
May 2nd, 2007 at 9:05 pm
The color details noted in this experience are just part of the spectrum of things that can lead to making a difference to consumers on the web — and judging by the effectiveness of this change it can be a big deal! Do not be afraid to make changes on a small scale like this, as even a seemingly small element can prove to be insurance down the road for greater profitability from your web presence! This seems to be interesting and solid advice.
Jerry
May 3rd, 2007 at 4:45 am
Try try try try try. Some things will work and others will not work but it is always important to continue experimenting with what works best for your site. Thank you for the excellent addition.
May 4th, 2007 at 7:27 am
[…] Lead Optimize presents The Sales Leads are in the Details posted at Lead Optimize.com, saying, “Changes to the smallest details of your site can bring about huge returns.” […]
May 14th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Chris:
Yeah… rare is the site that is perfect and has NOTHING that can be improved, right? This general willingness to tinker with things can lead to great improvements. And, if not, the beauty of the internet is that the change isn’t etched in stone. I think you try to find what works, what gives you your base insurance for/of success, and then go from there.
Jerry
May 18th, 2007 at 1:26 am
Blog Carnival May 2007…
Welcome to the May 2007 edition of what it takes to be successful online. Brandon Peele presents Landmark Advanced Course posted at GT. Vadim presents How To Find A Certain Group Of NON-english Speaking People And How To Sell Them…
June 5th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
[…] The Sales Leads are in the Details […]
June 28th, 2007 at 6:49 am
[…] Lead Optimize presents The Sales Leads are in the Details posted at Lead Optimize.com, saying, “Small details (the easiest to overlook) are sometimes to difference in making your numbers and not.” […]