How to Build a Lead Generating Website

Most business websites function as digital brochures - polished, informative, but passive. They lack the conversion architecture that separates a static presence from a lead generation system: strategic CTAs, dedicated landing pages, properly configured forms, and the tracking infrastructure to measure what's working.

Retrofitting these elements rarely produces the same results as building them in from the start. The difference isn't cosmetic or traffic-related - it's structural. A lead-generating website treats conversion as the primary function, not an optional add-on.

This guide walks through the technical setup required to transform a website into lead generation machinery: front-end conversion elements, back-end integration, and the tracking systems that tell you whether it's all performing.

Conversion-focused architecture vs brochure sites

Many teams place lead generation forms on their brochure site thinking that they will get better conversion rates. But conversion rates often remain low because the architecture of the brochure site and the lead generation forms are just opposing each other.

Website architecture can be split into conversion-focused and brochure-like types. A lead generating website (the conversion-focused type of architecture) builds in specific entry points to the website for different types of visitors. That is to say that each visitor to a lead generating website is routed to where they are in their process to buy. For example, the pricing page is typically a page of a lead generating website that has been set up as an entry point for high intent buyers researching the cost to buy a solution. A use case page could be used to attract teams researching whether a solution will solve their problems. An ROI calculator could be created for finance stakeholders calculating out a business case to try and get budget approved.

Building a lead generating website is solving a routing problem.

Visitors arriving at a website from LinkedIn ads are generally further along in the buying process and are looking for proof of value. Therefore, sending cold traffic arriving at the Pricing page is likely to get the worst results. Retargeting visitors who visited Pricing pages to comparison pages (i.e. pages that outline the key objections that most customers with similar requirements would have to purchasing - price, time to implement, feature gaps etc) is likely to get the best results. Referrals on the other hand should be sent straight to the Pricing page or for a calendar link as they already trust the brand.

Organizing primary navigation on a lead generating website by intent is the exact opposite of organizing a brochure site by the organization's structure. The main navigation of a lead generating website should be Use Cases, Pricing, and Book a Demo. The top level category for buyers is the problems that they are trying to solve with the products and services being offered. Therefore, they think about the specific problems that they are trying to solve first, and then how those problems can be solved with the features and functions of the products. So, buyers think "Can this solve my specific problem?". The Pricing page should be in the primary navigation because if pricing is hidden behind a contact form to set up a demo, then significant friction is added for people trying to self-qualify to buy.

As an additional point, segmented URLs are also very important. So if there is organic traffic coming in to request a demo then the URL should be /demo-request. For paid social traffic on the other hand then /demo-linkedin would be a good URL to use. Then for referral traffic from a partner such as Acme then /demo-partner-acme would be the correct way to track conversions from referral traffic. In summary, by using segmented URLs from the start of a lead generating website, reporting will clearly show which channels are driving the correct conversions for the business as opposed to just seeing visits.

Page speed impact on conversion rates

Slow page loading is a major reason that visitors abandon a site before completing a goal. The typical SMB owner tests their site on their office WiFi connection (where everything appears to work just fine) and then opens up Google Analytics to find out that mobile traffic is converting at a lower rate than desktop traffic.

The site loads slowly. Visitors left.

Slow loading images that have not been properly compressed (a 4MB PNG is still being used as a hero image on this site instead of a 200KB WebP image). Render-blocking JavaScript files. No lazy loading of images, so the page loads all images at first. Clunky CMS themes that have many extra features that are not being used. External font files being loaded from a slow CDN.

The three core web vitals that people refer to when talking about how slow a given page is to load, and how slow that page will respond to given user input, are Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Together, these give a solid picture of how a given page will perform for given users. Google has made it easy to measure just how given users will react to a given page. As such, these three metrics are also used as ranking factors for search results. But their greatest cost to given web sites is in terms of conversion rates: sites with slow performance tend to lose far more leads than they gain.

Slow WordPress sites cannot be fixed with caching plugins. Teams building lead-generating websites need to first learn about platforms. Many businesses choose to build on platforms like React/Next.js on AWS because those platforms are fast by default. On such platforms, there is code-splitting, server-side rendering, edge caching, and image-optimization out of the box. Starting with a fast site is the goal, not fighting the framework to get there.

Teams commonly start trying to optimize a website for lead generation after it has already launched. Often, by this time, a lot of traffic will have been sent to the slow website, and by the time teams realize what is going on, all of the lost conversions are gone and can never be retrieved. Therefore, fast must be a key criterion for serious website lead generation from the very first day that the website goes live.

Form strategy for lead capture

Form fields on forms for whitepapers that are equivalent in number to form fields on case study forms, landing pages, or contact pages kill lead generation quickly. Whitepaper forms, case study forms, landing page forms and about us pages all should have form fields of the appropriate length to match the buyer's intent on the page.

Match form length to buying intent:

• Top-of-the-funnel content (whitepaper download): Email only (1 field). A whitepaper download isn't a demo request.

• Mid-funnel offers: 2-3 fields such as Email, Company name and Job function. The goal here is to start qualifying the lead however the offer is still selling to a research buyer.

• High-intent pages (demo requests, pricing inquiries, /contact): With high intent form leads 4-6 fields of information can be collected. This could include company size, their current tools and technology stack, and information that specifically relates to their pain points. Someone who is asking for a demo of a particular software typically expects to be asked a number of questions in order to best show them how the software can meet their needs. Someone grabbing a one-pager on the website to read on the go typically does not expect to be asked a number of questions.

Progressive disclosure on forms is commonly discussed as a best practice. What many fail to realize is that exposing more fields to fill out on a form is against users' best interest. It's frustrating enough that they have to fill out a form in the first place, and three times as frustrating to have to come back to the page to fill out more fields each time. Far better to reveal all the fields on the form in white space, and let the user decide if it's worth their while to fill out the form. (As with everything in marketing and sales - test it, but don't assume that it is better than white space).

Form placement matters more than most teams realize.

Paid traffic could be wasted if it's sending users to a Pricing page with form fields that are below the fold of the page. Make the form fields for high-intent pages like the Pricing page visible to users on that page immediately.

There's a huge difference between having a form to subscribe to a newsletter and having a form to download an offer of value that the reader is currently viewing. If there is a form inline in the body of lower-intent blog posts, then that's perfectly fine. Also, an offer of value in the form of a popup (such as an offer of a demo or a free trial) that appears when the user is about to exit the page (exit intent) is also perfectly fine.

Sticky footer forms are fine for lower intent landing pages that match the value proposition promoted on the page. For example: a pricing comparison post has a "Get a Custom Quote" form in the sticky footer of the page. A thought leadership page with a post about industry trends does not.

Automating CRM integration and lead routing

Lacking a proper CRM integration, a lead generation site is similar to having an empty contact list. When someone fills out a lead form on the site their information is stored as a lead on the site and saved to a CSV file on the server. The information then has to be manually downloaded from the site and imported into a CRM or sales database (e.g. Salesforce or HubSpot) by a member of the team before it goes stale.

The simplest thing to do with a lead gen site is to POST the form submission to the CRM via API. Thus, the form submission creates a new record in the CRM as soon as the user clicks 'submit' on the form. That new record kicks off any workflows that have been defined for leads, and that automatically assigns the lead to the correct sales rep for follow-up.

And routing logic?

One other common mistake with lead gen sites is that leads are not routed to the correct Rep or Sales Team based on lead routing rules. For example, a 500 person company based in the UK that fills out a form on an /enterprise page should automatically be assigned to an EMEA based Enterprise Rep and put through the correct follow up sequence of emails etc. whilst a 10 person startup from the US that fills out a form on a /free_trial page should be assigned to a Rep and put through a follow up sequence of emails etc. that is relevant to a free trial requesting 10 person startup from the US. This can be achieved with "auto-assign" rules that auto assign the lead to the correct Rep or Sales Team based on the page they filled out the form on and other rules etc. The key word here is "auto-assign". Most lead gen sites fail at this. They create the form, wire up the form to the CRM and then all leads are dumped into a generic "lead queue" where Reps then manually sort through the leads and assign them to themselves.

The scoring of leads should start before a lead fills out a form. For example, a person who visits a /pricing page, then browses to a /case-studies page and then off to an /integrations page within the same session is a hot lead. The lead's behavior within the session should be logged in the CRM and the lead record should be flagged accordingly. This type of data is surfaced in most analytics packages and can be passed to the CRM when the form is submitted (i.e. company name, email address etc. plus the behavioral data from the session in which they submitted the form).

What breaks this setup? Three things, usually.

First, there is the issue of field mapping. This can be a huge problem where the field on a lead gen form is labeled something like "Company Size" but in the CRM the field is actually expected to be filled in with "Employees." As a result, the data is just never populated in the CRM. Then there is the issue of no deduplication. This is the worst. A person fills out a form and for some reason two records get created in the CRM instead of one. All of the subsequent activity by that person then gets logged in both of the separate records. This is just a terrible headache for sales people to have to sort through. Finally, there is the issue of lack of attribution. This is a huge problem for businesses when they have leads coming from all different traffic sources (paid search, organic search, social media, etc.) and they have no idea which traffic source actually generated the lead.

The form on a lead gen site is the least important part of lead gen. Most companies spend way too much time on getting the form right and the back end of generating leads into pipeline barely gets a second of thought.

Tracking traffic sources and attribution

Once a lead generating website is built, tracking the leads back to their origin is key to optimizing the website for better conversions. Simple tracking of leads such as where they originated from (i.e. Google, LinkedIn, email newsletter) can be the difference between throwing money at campaigns with the hope that some will convert better than others, and actually optimizing for better conversions.

To help better optimize a lead generating website it is very important to track where leads are coming from. To begin to better track leads generated from a website using UTM parameters (tracking parameters) on URLs for the following:

• utm_source: Where did the traffic come from? Google, LinkedIn, Newsletter etc.
• utm_medium: the channel in which the visitor found the page in the first place.
• utm_campaign: which specific campaign: q1-webinar, product-launch

Use a consistent naming convention for links - such as lowercase letters with hyphens between words. For instance, q1-webinar-launch or product-launch. This will ensure that analytics reports accurately attribute traffic to the correct campaign, as utm_source=LinkedIn and utm_source=linkedin will be tracked as two separate sources.

Most of the problems that users encounter with tracking the source of leads come from the fact that the UTM parameters get lost on subsequent pages that the lead visits on the website. This means that when a user clicks on a LinkedIn ad for a website for example, and then goes to the homepage and then fills in the form for a demo on the demo request page, by the time the form is submitted, all the tracking of the UTM parameters from the LinkedIn ad has been lost and there is no way to know where the lead came from. There are a few ways to work around this such as storing the UTM parameters in session storage or using cookies or by adding hidden form fields to webforms that track the UTM parameters through to the CRM.

For attribution, there are three main models.

First-touch: This will attribute conversions to the first touch point. This can help to determine which marketing channels are best for driving first time visits to a lead generating website.

Last-touch: This will attribute conversions to the last touch point prior to conversion. This will help to identify which channels are driving conversions at the end of the buying process. This is a good place to start when building out tracking and reporting as it can give the most value.

Multi-touch: This will attempt to attribute conversions to a number of touch points in the user's journey prior to conversion. This is more complex to track, but provides more value as it can help to identify patterns of behavior that lead to conversions. B2B sales cycles are generally long, and a person may visit a site from a Google search, return via LinkedIn, attend a webinar and book a demo two months later. If relying solely on single-touch models to attribute conversions, key patterns will be missed.

It is easy to overcomplicate the attribution model that best suits a business's tracking. Start with last-touch attribution and then move on to a more complex attribution model once a good amount of quality data has been collected.

Building content and conversion paths

Content on a website should be relevant to the different states website visitors could be in. Some will be looking to find out more about the company, others may be looking for information to aid their purchasing decision and others could be ready to purchase. All of this content should lead visitors down a conversion funnel on the website with the most obvious next step at the end of each path through the website.

Most businesses treat every page on their site as if they all serve the same purpose. But websites are increasingly set up to generate leads. Most sites have a homepage, blog, pricing page, etc. But most of those pages serve only as top-of-funnel (education) content or bottom-of-funnel (close) content.

Most websites get this backwards.

Top-of-funnel content is generally very educational in nature. This type of content educates people with information about a topic and establishes credibility with them. This could be someone searching for information on how to integrate Salesforce with HubSpot. They don't even know if they have a problem that needs to be solved yet. But credibility can be established by writing a solid piece of content. Even better, an email address can be captured by offering up downloadable templates or guides such as a guide on how to integrate Salesforce with HubSpot. Bottom-of-funnel content on the other hand is generally used to close deals. This could be the pricing page, a form to sign up for a demo, a "How We Work" page, etc. This content is written for people who already know what they need and are looking to compare options with the two biggest competitors.

Typical websites have home pages with general information about the company, which has no relation to contact forms or next steps. Visitors browse around for more information about 90 seconds. They don't find the right information. They leave the website. There is no clear call to action for the visitor.

A content offer, more commonly referred to as a lead magnet, is a piece of content provided to website visitors in exchange for their email address. It could be a free guide, calculator, template, checklist etc. For example, in a post titled "10 Things to Look for in Your CRM," a case study on the challenges of a CRM migration could be referenced in the middle of the post. After reading the blog post the reader could then download a free CRM migration checklist. This allows staying top of mind while the reader is completing their research on CRM migration and is providing them with a lot of value while doing so.

In order to generate leads from a website, the conversion flow is a vital factor that has to be mapped out when designing the website. The typical conversion flow for cold traffic might begin when a visitor comes to the website through search for how-to information and reads through a blog post to download a case study and whitepaper in order to request a demo. Another alternative is for a visitor to click through from the homepage to "How It Works" where they can then start a pricing estimator and book a consultation with a sales person. Every page on the website should have the next step clearly outlined in order to continue down the site's conversion flow.

Most sites assume that visitors will figure out what to do next on their web site. They won't.

But by failing to design conversion paths for a website, "accidental paths" will leak revenue. Conversion flow needs to be designed into the website from the beginning.

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes a website good for lead generation?

Three simple things to get right for a website to convert well for lead generation: 1) The website must load quickly. 2) The value proposition of the website must be immediately obvious upon loading the page. 3) Online forms must be easy to fill out and don't require too much work from potential leads. If a website doesn't meet these three simple rules, then the website is likely losing a lot of leads.

How do I integrate my website with my CRM for lead capture?

Integrating a website with a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software is typically done by having the website directly connect to the CRM or having CRM forms embedded in the website. Most modern CRM software such as HubSpot and Salesforce have integrated APIs that can also trigger webhooks and automatically add new leads to the CRM. Using third-party form tools such as Calendly or Paperform for lead capture is acceptable if there is no need to add conditional logic to form fields that the CRM cannot create.

Does page speed really affect lead generation?

Yes, and the drop-off is brutal. To get an idea of where a website currently stands and what improvements are necessary, free tools such as Lighthouse can test site performance and identify the biggest performance hindrances.

Can AI tools like ChatGPT be used for lead generation on a website?

There are AI powered chatbots that can be used to automatically qualify leads on a website and then book a meeting with sales people or pass them off to be followed up by sales people. The key is to correctly train up the chatbot on the services offered and then correctly connect it up to the CRM so that all of the conversations with leads are tracked as leads. A caution: if not set up correctly the Chatbot is likely to have a negative effect on conversion rate, whereas not having a chatbot at all would have no negative effect.

What is the value of rapid lead follow-up and how does a website affect it?

A useful rule of thumb is that leads should be contacted quickly after they submit a form on a website - ideally within a few minutes - to thank them for applying and begin the sales process. If the form is sent to an email inbox for a human to forward to the sales team then hitting this metric will be difficult. Automate the handoff to Sales by having the form submit trigger a Slack message, CRM task or auto-response email.

Should WordPress or a custom-built site be used for lead generation?

Depends on the goals. There are a number of themes and templates available for simple WordPress sites with basic content. But for lead generation, a simple site with a contact form does not typically translate into a simple architecture. For that reason, for lead generation, a custom built site typically makes more sense.

Gable Innovation is a technology consultancy that helps growing businesses build high-performance websites, integrate CRM and AI tools, and automate workflows that drive revenue. If you're wondering whether you should rebuild your site, or simply need to turn existing traffic into qualified leads, a 30 minute free discovery call will run through your specific situation with no strings attached. Find out what makes sense for your business at gableinnovation.com.