Author: Menachem Ani
Not all online conversions are equal.
While most sales are relatively straightforward (like in eCommerce), lead generation is just a stop on the way to the final sale of your service or product, such as:
Software and other digital products
Service-based businesses (e.g., law firms, marketing agencies, home repairs)
Specialized services (e.g., personal shoppers and B2B services)
On-page optimization is critical to both paid and organic lead generation efforts on search engines and social media—for boosting the scale of distribution as well as improving the quality of leads that come through.
In advertising, it’s one of the biggest levers we have for growth—most accounts typically can’t recreate the lift that comes from optimizing a page simply by operating in the account.
This guide will show you some of the philosophy behind the on-page work my agency does for our lead generation clients. I’ll cover:
Pre-optimization checklist: Mapping out your buyer’s journey
Marketers often debate about which is more important to a web page: copy or design. But before you get started with either, you have to understand your audience and how you fit into their journey—otherwise known as ‘product-market fit.’
Here are the most important questions to ask before you start creating or changing your pages:
Who is the ideal customer for this page?
Where in the journey will you meet them?
What problem are you solving?
What are your customers’ priorities?
Which channels will users come to your page from?
Once customers come to the page, what do you want them to do?
If they convert, what should happen next?
How will you qualify and nurture leads?
Who is the ideal customer for this page?
Knowing who you’re speaking to is fundamental to converting those people into high-quality leads. Selling your product or service won’t go well if you don’t know:
Who your ideal customers are
What they’re searching for
What’s leading them to seek out a solution
What they wished their lives looked like
To answer these questions and create useful reference personas, use both online tools as well as user-first research methods.
Where in the journey will you meet them?
Not every customer is ready to buy today—someone searching for [home remodeling ideas] is not as warm a lead as the person searching for [kitchen remodeling contractor].
So while making your product or service the star of your campaign might work for queries further down the funnel, targeting someone in the research or evaluation stage requires a gentler hand and lighter offer.
What problem are you solving?
Your customers may face tons of challenges, and most businesses really just solve a handful of them. You have to know what those opportunities are for your business and tailor the page’s content accordingly, accounting for nuances and implicit search intent along the way.
“Implicit search intent refers to the underlying reason behind a user’s search query that may not be explicitly stated in the search query itself. It involves understanding the user’s search behavior, context, and preferences to infer their true intent. It also involves empathy.”— Veruska Anconitano, International and Multilingual SEO Consultant
A person searching for [rodent control], for example, won’t necessarily be interested in roach control services just because they’re both pests.
What are your customers’ priorities?
Somewhat counterintuitively, searching for a solution doesn’t mean the person wants it today. Even if they do, that might not be a realistic outcome.
A common example is B2B software, like cybersecurity, where the person using a tool might not be the same person who decides whether to buy it. Knowing what’s blocking your customers’ way and addressing those objections up front can speed up the sales process.
Which channels will users come to your page from?
Not all your content will appear in the same places, so revisit how you expect people to find or encounter your business:
Is this an informational, blog-style page that will attract potential customers through organic search?
Will you show it to homepage visitors using a pop-up?
Will it be the destination of a paid media or ad campaign?
Each of these content distribution channels and formats should influence your copy and design choices.
Once customers come to the page, what do you want them to do?
eCommerce websites are straightforward in this regard: you have a product and you want website visitors to buy that product. With lead generation, there are usually more layers and steps before a purchase.
The most common trade in lead generation is your offer (e.g., a free consultation, downloadable resource) for their contact info, so be clear about how you want that transaction to happen.
Desired user action | What you need to know |
Form submissions | One of the most common lead generation conversions is the form submission, where a prospect gives you specific information in exchange for a resource, free trial, signup, callback, etc. These leads need to be nurtured and qualified. |
Call conversions | Call conversions involve the visitor phoning your sales team from a web page, allowing for immediate engagement and data collection. These can be good if you have a trained sales team ready to take over. |
Chat conversions | More businesses are using chat to capture immediate interest, particularly upper-funnel opportunities they would otherwise neglect. Usually, the tools you use to build chatbots allow those interactions to be tracked as a conversion in ads. |
App downloads | You can also send people from mobile devices to a marketplace where they can download your app. These are great if your product or service ecosystem is centered around an app. |
If they convert, what should happen next?
Your page looks and sounds good, traffic is pouring in, and you’re getting conversions. What now? Perhaps users should look for an email follow-up or expect a phone call in the next 24 hours. Whatever it is, communicate it on-page immediately after the conversion. The more specific you are with these expectations, the more receptive many prospects will be when you engage them.
How will you qualify and nurture leads?
Because there is no exchange of money, lead generation is prone to spam and low-quality conversions. Once you have someone’s information and interest, you must determine if that interest is genuine. Your marketing and sales teams should have a plan to separate real opportunities from dead ends.
Critical on-page optimizations for every lead generation campaign
Because you can use lead generation pages to sell anything from information to advice to digital products, they can (and do) look very different. These are the elements that every optimized page should have, as well as their purpose and relevance.
Headline
Page copy
Visuals
Responsive design
Calls-to-action
Social proof
Confirmation confirmation
Remember: If your discovery plan is through organic search, don’t forget to optimize page titles and meta descriptions.
Headline
An optimized H1 header should connect with what potential customers are looking for.
Be clear and descriptive rather than clever, and quickly explain the solution you offer. Writing headlines can be challenging, so at my agency, we like to use generative AI tools to kick-start the thought process.
Page copy
Depending on what you offer and where you’re meeting potential leads, your page might have a couple hundred words of copy or several thousand. There’s really no right answer to how much copy is “enough,” but as a rule of thumb, I like to present the critical information up-front above the fold, with more supportive and exploratory content further down the page.
If you structure your page content this way, you can even track scroll depth in Google Analytics 4 or Microsoft Clarity to gauge your visitors’ level of intent.
Visuals
While the copy is what ‘sells’ the conversion, an expressive diagram or clear photo can help pique your customers’ interest and encourage them to seek out more information from you.
Set yourself apart by avoiding stock photography. And if you choose to employ generative AI, review all output for issues that might cause people to lose trust in your brand.
Responsive design
The share of web traffic coming from mobile devices in the US reached an all-time high of 52.5% in 2022. This means your page designs should be responsive across devices, with particular emphasis on mobile:
Ensure that elements load quickly and appear where you originally placed them.
Everything should render and function correctly, with enough space between clickable elements.
Your page or content’s flow should feel natural to a smartphone’s shape and form.
Place critical information and a call-to-action above the fold.
Simplify navigation. A logo linking to the homepage is okay, but provide no other external links or complicated menus.
Calls-to-action
I spoke earlier about clearly telling visitors what to do once they land on your page, but the actual call-to-action (CTA) matters just as much as the conversion type. A button that says “Submit” might be descriptive, but it’s also not compelling. You can be clear while still making the CTA feel personal and actionable:
“Schedule Call” vs. “Call Me Back”
“Register” vs. “Sign Me Up”
“Request Quote” vs. “Send Me a Quote”
Social proof
No lead generation page is complete without proof that your offer does what it says. These could be quotes from happy customers, feedback from review sites, video testimonials, screenshots of SMS and email feedback, achievements like number of services completed, or anything else that proves that you can get repeat results.
Conversion confirmation
A lot of teams neglect the confirmation that should follow a lead-based conversion, but it’s a wonderful place to set expectations for the rest of your customer experience and process. What happens immediately after a visitor converts can have a strong influence on critical business metrics like conversion rate, sales cycle, and customer lifetime value.
When I speak to prospective customers for my agency, I always follow up with an email that establishes next steps. A lead conversion is not that different from them having a mini-meeting with your brand. So, make sure that your customers’ conversion action is reinforced by a confirmation message—whether that’s a standalone page, a pop-up, email, SMS, or anything else—that tells them what to expect next.
Conversion-oriented copy optimizations
Once the page is live, you can start experimenting and iterating on those on-page elements. Here are a few advanced tactics to level things up.
Use high-performing page titles and ad text
Organic and paid campaigns can be quite different, but they still operate on the same platform: search engines. Most users don’t distinguish between organic and paid results; they just click on the message that gets their attention.
![The Google search results for [enterprise seo tools].](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a484d4_98a67118a8f7475da41db1a8fba0c214~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_630,h_667,al_c,q_90,enc_auto/a484d4_98a67118a8f7475da41db1a8fba0c214~mv2.png)
If you’re running a paid lead generation campaign, consider using high-performing organic page titles or H1s as inspiration for your ad text or page. For an organic effort, borrow copy from high-converting ads and pages to do the same.
Apply psychology and cognitive biases
Nearly all successful marketers and sales reps are good at using behavioral psychology, even if they don’t recognize it as such. Some of the models that work most often include:
Confirmation bias: It’s far easier to show people that their beliefs are correct than to convince them that they’re wrong. Many SaaS products use this in their messaging by positioning the user as the hero and an external force as the cause of their problems.
Survivorship bias: Seeing that someone has achieved an outlying degree of success is usually paired with ignoring the vastly higher number of people who failed. Apply this model carefully as it tends to be misused by famous ‘course sellers.’
Fear of missing out: Also known as FOMO, this is when people are worried that they might pass up a valuable opportunity. Examples include limited-time offers and pre-launch discounts.
Framing effect: This model is built on the idea that how you portray something is as important as the information itself. It’s the difference between “98% success rate” and “2% failure rate.”
Sunken cost fallacy: Many people will continue to spend money and resources on something that isn’t working in the hope of recovering some of their investment. This can be useful if your offer is built on fixing something that’s broken or flawed.
Remember to act responsibly when using any psychological or bias-based messaging models—if you ever question whether your usage is ethical, it’s best to scale it back and get some outside opinions before releasing it to the masses.
Don’t edit social proof
People have a way of spotting inauthenticity when a brand makes a claim. Even something that appears ‘wrong’ to professionals (like a typo or grammar mistake) can make a glowing review feel ‘real.’ For email and SMS proof, screenshots also work better than trying to recreate the UI with design tools.
Provide as much information as the prospect needs
Many lead generation offers can work with strong above-the-fold content, plus a little extra to support it. But sometimes, people want to know more than the basics. A general rule is the bigger the value of the contract or service, the more information people want before making a decision.
This doesn’t mean you need to write a book. But if you’re selling a $10,000 kitchen upgrade, you’ll probably need more than 50 words to persuade someone that your offer is the best one for them.
Design optimizations for lead generation
Ready to pour some more time, attention, and love into the design of your lead generation pages? Try these approaches:
Pair social proof with photos
Use multiple calls-to-action on longer pages
Preview your product/service
Create custom illustrations
Showcase video testimonials
Pair social proof with photos
Social proof is a great example of a page element that is functional with copy, but made truly effective through design. One example is putting a photo next to customer quotes or reviews, which can lend additional credibility for your brand.
Use multiple CTAs on longer pages
Overly diversifying your CTA messaging confuses potential leads as it increases the cognitive load and burden of decision making. Using repeat instances of the same CTA can actually be beneficial, especially if you have a longer page with plenty of content and multiple sections.
Preview your service or product
With visuals, the right option is almost always showing people what your product or service looks like—or capturing the sentiment of how it feels once they start to reap its benefits.
This could be a render of software UI, the cover of a white paper or guide, or before-and-after photos of your service.
Create custom illustrations
If you’re going down the illustrative path—think diagrams or charts—make something from scratch if you have the time and budget. Using publicly available graphics and stock photography might be quicker and easier, but these feel generic and make it tougher to differentiate (or identify) your brand.
Showcase video testimonials
Video testimonials can be very persuasive and rapidly increase trust when executed well. People will sniff out a fake review, so it’s best to keep things authentic. In the eCommerce space, many brands partner with creators and customers to amplify user-generated content. For lead-gen and B2B, you might consider a similar approach with clients and influencers.
UX optimizations for frictionless conversions
As great as a lead generation page looks and sounds, it should also feel right and allow people to proceed seamlessly to the next stage of the process. To provide that experience, prioritize:
Accessibility
Consumer data management
Page intent
Lead incentives
Page experience (Core Web Vitals)
Accessibility
Your page visitors expect a quick, intuitive experience. This is especially important if you operate in the health and wellness industry or sell specifically to people living with disabilities.
At a basic level you should try to keep text clear, legible, and compatible with screen readers. For more in-depth guidance, refer to this guide on website accessibility and SEO.
Consumer data management
People are generally happy to give out their information online, but that doesn’t mean the fear of a data breach isn’t always in the back of their minds. Be clear about how you will use and store their details so they can make an informed decision whether to share it.
Page intent
Your page has one purpose: to generate leads for a single, specific offer. If you allow visitors a free hand to explore beyond it, your conversion rate may stay sub-optimal.
Limit alternate actions and instead focus on one next-step per page. You should also close off exit points to all but the most critical information, such as your privacy and refund policies.
Lead incentives
We’ve already discussed that confirmation pages are important, but how do you make the most of them?
One example I see frequently is bonus content or freebies—someone requests a callback or quote for a home theater, and you send them a guide on audio gear or soundproofing while they wait, for example. Be careful; giving away too much may diminish their interest between the online conversion and the final sale.
Page experience (Core Web Vitals)
Core Web Vitals are the metrics that Google uses to gauge how quickly a page loads, whether the elements are in proper alignment, and the latency between user input and page output.
When optimized, they produce a page experience that decreases the likelihood of page visitors abandoning the process if they have real interest in what you’re offering.
Testing frameworks
When you’ve run ads for lead gen campaigns across so many types of businesses, you learn the value of testing. More importantly, you learn what to do and what not to do as you test.
These are some of the lessons that have stuck with me:
Expand your reach with ads
Test changes in aggregate
Tailor your offer to real-life conditions
Expand your reach with ads
One of the biggest advantages of digital ads is they can quickly reach bigger audiences to test messaging and other elements. They can quickly scale growth for a product or service that has the fundamentals in place.
Shaping your targeting requires knowledge and data, though. So use a limited budget to test and validate messaging via search and social ads before making larger investments in areas like link building. One approach is using page title variations as ad headlines to see what gets people to click, and page variations to see what gets the conversion.
Test changes in aggregate
Many digital marketers prefer to test singular changes to accurately attribute any incrementality. But when using ads to test on-page elements, unless you have the traffic and impression share to achieve statistical significance quickly (and the budget to afford it), you should consider testing multiple changes together as variants. This might mean a new offer with a specific headline or changing the types of social proof you show, for example.
Address audience concerns proactively
A creative way to test on-page elements is crafting an offer or messaging to match what’s happening in the real world or your industry. My agency works primarily with Google Ads, so any messaging that addresses my concerns with the Google Search API leak earlier this year, for example, is more likely to capture my attention.
For you, this might mean offering payment plans, amending your refund clauses, providing referral bonuses, supporting new audiences, or anything else that reflects people’s real-world concerns.
Dedicated page vs. homepage: What’s the best option?
A page specifically built for your lead generation campaign is ideal, but it’s not always feasible. Here are situations where you might send people to a homepage (or another existing page) instead of a standalone lead generation page.
Budget limitations: If you don’t have the funds to publish a separate page, you can always modify your homepage periodically to align with testing and demand.
Time limitations: Sometimes you have to get something out the door with little room to negotiate timelines. In these cases, a strong homepage can suffice until you have time to create a more robust page.
Simple, singular offers: If you have one offer with a singular or narrow audience, there’s really not much need (or use) for a dedicated page.
Limited targeting by stage of awareness: Similarly, only selling to people at one stage of the funnel means you don’t need to address different concerns or priorities (e.g., people researching different types of pest control for rats vs. people who want a same-day exterminator).
Pair on-page optimization with offline conversion data for even better ad campaigns
One of the toughest parts about lead generation—especially if you’re an agency or third-party service provider—is how critical data is for success, yet how difficult it is to get businesses to share enough of it.
While on-page optimizations are important and certainly give you a great place to generate lift, the real magic is in connecting customer data with your ad platforms. By showing Google and Meta which leads became sales, the platforms can drastically improve the quality of future online conversions by finding more like them.
Working some magic on-page is a great way to establish the validity of your efforts, gain trust, and persuade clients to share data from CRMs and other customer databases!
Menachem Ani, founder of JXT Group, is a digital marketing veteran with 20+ years of experience. He's a leading expert in Google Ads and uses a forward-thinking approach to help businesses grow.Twitter | Linkedin