Are you struggling to optimise your site to generate leads? Here are seven high-converting email list building strategies I use that YOU can implement today.

The average website conversion rate for small businesses is 8% (according to Hubspot).

In reality your website conversion rate is likely to be anywhere from 4-12% depending on whether you run a b2b or b2c business, the industries you work in and how well you’ve optimised your website.

We’ll get in to that in a minute, but first let’s be clear on what constitutes a conversion.  A conversion is any action a website visitor takes on your site that you consider valuable. This could include an enquiry via an online form, newsletter signup or online purchase.

For most soloprenuers however, a conversion will likely be any visitor who submits an online enquiry form.

Converting website visitors into leads is important because it’s your first step in creating more opportunities and potential customers for your business.

So the question is, how do you optimise your site to generate leads and maximise the number of visitors you can convert on your website? Here are my seven favourite ways:

1. The feature box

The most valuable space on your website is ‘above the fold’ on your home page.

A feature box makes the most of that valuable real estate by using it to capture user interest/leads.

I like to look at a feature box like a mini landing page. Typically it will include your business name, the title of your offer or ‘lead magnet’, an image or video to increase the perceived value of your offer, a list of benefit oriented bullet points and of course your opt-in form.

Adding a feature box to your website could be one of the most effective ways to increase your opt-ins.

In case you’re thinking, ‘well that’s great, but how do I go about adding a feature box to my site’ don’t, there a number of very effective, easy-to-use and implement tools to make adding a feature box to you home page super easy (especially if your website is a WordPress site). Your web developer should be able to find and install one for you quickly and easily.

Note: If you want to see one in action, check out Marie Forleo’s and Amy Porterfield’s home pages.

2. Landing page

I’ve talked about landing pages before.

Simply put, a landing page is any web page that drives a website visitor towards one course of action (opting into to your list).

A landing page is like a digital version of a direct mail letter.  And much like a good piece of direct mail your landing page shouldn’t have anything else on the page that distracts your visitor away from taking action.

If you want to get serious about generating leads, you need to create landing pages that offer valuable incentives for people to subscribe.

Landing pages are great because you can drive traffic to them via social media posts, email, online ads and even direct mail and because you are sending people to that one page they are more likely to convert (as opposed to directing them to any other page on your website which is full of other tempting distractions).

3. Your ‘About’ page

Perhaps the second most visited page after your home page is your about page.

Online marketing leaders such as Derek Halpern and Pat Flynn suggest adding up to three opt-in forms to your about page.

One after your introduction, one after some form of social proof and one after your personal story.

4. After blog post opt-in

If you have a blog on your website, and if you are managing to get people to read your content, you are missing a massive opportunity to convert those readers into subscribers by not adding an opt-in form to the bottom of your blog posts.

So instead of offering (for example) a bunch of related posts at the bottom of every blog post, why not add an opt-in form there?

5. Sidebar

This is one you’re probably more familiar with; opt-in boxes in website sidebars have become commonplace now.

For that reason I want you to think about taking yours to the next level.  Sidebars on all websites have become prime real estate for all kinds of opt-ins, calls-to-action and affiliate ads. Which means readers are generally switched off to the point where they’re no longer seeing those calls-to-action anymore.

So what can you do?

Well there are a couple of options:

1. Minimise your sidebar altogether – Bryan Harris over at Video Fruit does this brilliantly. He has one call-to-action on his sidebar which moves down the page with you (real easy to do with a plugin).
2. Add a ‘slide-in’ opt-in form to your sidebar (that slides into to your sidebar as your reader scrolls down the page, with a call-to-action that’s specific to the article.)

6. Your 404 error page

Yep that’s right your 404 page can be used to generate leads.

Most 404 pages are a generic version of your website’s default page or theme with an ‘error 404, page not found’ sprinkled in there somewhere.

But you might be surprised that your website visitors land on your 404 page more often than you think. It could be because a link is broken, a page no longer exists or the URL was mistyped.

Typically what happens when someone arrives at your 404 page is they leave, never to return.

Instead of losing this visitor for good, why not set up your 404 page as an opt-in page?

7. Pop-ups

Ok, so I know a bunch of you probably hate the idea of using a pop-up on your website, but here’s the thing, used effectively, pop-ups can convert like crazy.

I know they can seem a little annoying – you’ve just landed on a website or blog and you start to read an article then that annoying little box pops up out of nowhere, so you scramble to find the little cross to turn the damn thing off.

But there’s no denying they’re great at converting visitors into leads and over the last couple of years there have been a range of slightly less annoying popups come onto the marketing.

• Timed popups display to your visitors after a set period of time and can be set to be shown one time only.
• Exit intent popups that only popup when your website visitor looks as though you’re going to leave your site.
• And then there are slide in pops that only ‘slide-in’ to your sidebar once a visitor has scrolled down and begun reading your content.

So there you go. Those are the seven strategies I use to get a conversion rate of 18% on my website (that’s 10% above the average!). And these strategies to optimise your site to generate leads are all simple enough to be implemented on your website too.

Confused about anything I’ve mentioned above? Sing out in the comments below!