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Even a website can benefit from a buyer persona, especially if it's in need of a redesign. Before you start implementing new design and capturing even more leads from your website, you need to understand who is coming to your website and what exactly they are looking for and in order to do that, you need to be able to create a buyer persona for each of the biggest segments of your customer base.

Website redesign projects start at the buyer persona, this has been established, but how exactly can you create a persona and capture those most wanted leads?

Well, there are seven key questions to answer and some research that's first and foremost.

7 Buyer Persona Questions
In order to kick-start your persona prospects research, you will need to ask yourself (and your staff working on the website redesign) some questions that must be answered as if you're the lead landing on your website. Try to get in their head to answer these crucial questions: 

• Demographic information? 
  What exactly is the key information of the demographic you're going after? Before anything, create profiles that provide deep research on their personalities such as likes, dislikes, income levels, and much more.
   
• What does your customer do everyday? 
  How do they go about their day? What are their daily goals?
   
• What is their title at their job and level of seniority? 
  This is also as important! Are you trying to target a Marketing Director or someone else as part of the staff on the executive level?
   
• Pain points? Pleasure points? 
  Find out what problem you can fix for them and market it extensively on your website! While most marketers like to highlight pleasure points, don't forget about those pain points, too (which can see a higher ROI).
   
• What is the customer's goals and objectives? 
  Figure out why they landed on their website by understanding what they are trying to achieve.
   
• How can your services help them? 
  Remember, you're here to help with your services and you need to focus on that, too!
   
• Where is their go-to information found? 
  Where are they getting their information about services and figure out which one will work for them (beside your website)? Figure out your competition and where customers are going for their information.

Once you have created an extensive profile from these questions, you can now start implementing solutions which focus on points that you want to highlight in your website redesign. Ideally, you should create at least five different personality profiles which can all find what they're looking for on your brand new website.

However, it is more than just creating a persona and calling it a day. You need to be able tweak and change profiles to continue to enrich your customer's experience and provide the best leads for your website. One way to do this is through an extra question not normally part of the seven questions above, but is still very important: what experience is your customer seeking?

You need to able to provide a memorable experience through your services, and a customer will be seeking out that type of commitment whether they know it or not. Be able to go above and beyond by implementing it as part of your persona strategy and you will continually see success with your website redesign!

When redesigning your website, you should be consciously aware of Google and other search engines in the website's content. Search Engine Optimization, making popular keywords appear throughout your text and perhaps a blog that explains more about your business in periodic updates, is all important in a strong website redesign. Here are some tips to help make your business' website gain the attention it needs.

Build Up Strong Keywords
When writing content for a webpage, certain keywords (popular search terms likely to be entered into a search engine) should be implemented throughout the text. Make sure these keywords are relevant to your business. Target keywords should be included a certain number of times in a webpage or blog post as the more instances of it blended into the text naturally, the more likely your page is to show up first in the rankings when the keyword is searched.

Short tail keywords can be used, which are much more general when describing your product or service. These typically include 1-3 words that are general search terms. Long tail keywords, using 3-6 words, can also be used to be more specific about what your business does. Any keyword including model numbers, specific brand names or other details pertaining to the business exclusively, can be used effectively as well.

Focusing on a single keyword per page or blog post is ideal, making your website appear natural and not like you're shoving keyword after keyword into your post. Your marketing techniques should be invisible to the customer, whose focus should really lie on the company itself.

A digital marketing agency will most likely recommend a 1% maximum keyword density per blog post, which means that a 400 words blog post should contain no more than 4 times the same keyword. Beyond that, it will look weird, will most likely sound weird and may even be flagged by Google as "keyword stuffer" which is a big no-no in search optimization.

Can you tell which keyword this blog post is focusing on? If it jumps at you, then it's too much or will occur as un-natural, but if you have to kind of guess, then we did our job well.

Have a Blogging Strategy
A solid blogging strategy can offer a lot of information to customers while keeping your website from becoming a mess of information. Blogs can be updated daily to weekly and keep customers updated on what it is your business does. Each blog post can also allow a specific keyword, with hundreds of long tail and short term keywords being added to your blog, and therefore making your site more likely to appear at the top of search results.

A successfully-run blog can feature updates on new company information as well as general information that lets customers know more about what it is exactly that your business does and has to provide them. Offers and eBooks can be distributed via blog post or on websites, integrating keyword usage within the text and furthering your website redesign optimization.

Here is an interesting fact about blogs: "Companies that blog 15 or more times per month get 5 times more traffic than companies that don't blog"
(source: Hubspot - Marketing Benchmarks from 7000 businesses)

Optimize Images and Hyperlinks
Adding tags to every image can assure that when people search for a picture online, ones appearing on your blog or website can be found more easily. Images can also be navigated more easily within the blog with effective tagging.

Including relevant hyperlinks, either to other blogs/pages on your own website or to outside webpages, will not only make your website even simpler to navigate for information, but will also allow for a good inbound marketing strategy. The more links to other relevant sites, the more your webpage connects to the rest of the Internet instead of sitting stagnant in isolation.

Pay-Per-Click
Using pay-per-click means that advertisers pay the website owner whenever an ad is clicked on by visitors. Advertisers can bid on how much they are willing to spend on certain ads either in your blog, on your website, or both. As a result, you can pull in more revenue through the shared revenue of the ads.

Optimization should be top priority for your website redesign. If you feel neither you nor anybody you know can design your website to be at its best for drawing in prospective customers, a redesign team who knows what to do can be both affordable and cater to your company's needs.

Thinking or planning to redesign your website and make it more user friendly? Building up a website that attracts every visitor while establishing your brand name is nothing to take lightly.

When a website is published it could mean the difference between the blossoming or death of your business.

Here are some suggestions on what to do and what to avoid when putting a website redesign into action:

What You Should Do

1. Hiring a professional web designer is a great decision. If you want anybody who visits your website to think, "This looks credible", getting somebody on the team who knows what they're doing can make your website, and your business, look reliable. A professional designer can pick out color schemes that are easy on the eyes and reflect your business' logo or theme, as well as making links visible and easily locatable.
    
2. Making your website mobile ready means more business, and today is considered a necessary move. If someone hears about or locates your business on the go via a personal smartphone they'll be able to view your website in the format it was meant to be shown. More and more people are taking advantage of mobile technology, so not only does it make your business more accessible but also like it's keeping up with the times.
    
3. Keep optimization in mind in your website redesign and make sure people can find you. Unless you're starting a company providing services never heard of, you can be guaranteed you'll find a mountain of competition to contend with. Making sure your website's text contains popular keywords most likely to be typed into search engines means your site will rise in the rankings, more likely to appear first in the search results on websites like Google. This can be accomplished with a well-put-together blog discussing your business, providing extensive information for prospective customers while assisting in search engine rankings.
    
4. Websites can have a tendency to be overly flashy. While your website shouldn't burn to look at, it shouldn't suggest you're spending more money on advertising to compensate for other areas lacking integrity. Keeping a simple format that's easily navigated and helpful in providing information in a presentable fashion will work in a solid website redesign.

What You Should Avoid

1. Do it yourself design
   Instead of hiring a professional to take on your website redesign, letting a close buddy with no web design experience or yourself take over the task can be a detrimental mistake. With a reputable web designer you can expect that your money will be well-spent.
    
2. Less is more
   Try not to be too bulky in your text. Short, concise lines of text on a page are much easier to read than thick word blocks. Break up your text or learn to cut down on the wordiness, or you'll lose readers quickly.
    
3. Poorly designed Calls-to-Action...or none at all
   Nothing says you're begging for business like calls-to-action that request a response. If somebody wants your services or products, they'll find you and learn about what you have to offer, and eventually decide for themselves whether or not you're worth investing in.
    
4. Not including Social Media
   The false belief that social media is something to avoid can hurt your opportunities. Taking advantage of sites like Facebook can make your business even more interactive and customer-friendly, and again make you appear in-touch with technology.

An effective website redesign plan can come together well if you use your resources, and there is only an increasing number of them available at your disposal. By forming a website that lets people know unobtrusively that your business is dependable and standing strong is a huge factor in efficient marketing. Putting your site in the hands of a design team who knows what to do is an investment worth making.

A website redesign project should include ways to not only make it more appealing, but foremost, how to attract more qualified visitors which may turn into leads and eventually into clients. In my humble opinion, people will spend too much time on the "pretty" side of thing and miss the point. Redesigning your website should include most, if not all these great "lead generation" tips, and generate more paying customers out of your website.

First, you need to understand the mechanics of generating leads on your website. This is the infrastucture that an Inbound Marketing Agency would build a campaign on:

1. The Offer
   This is the hook, the high perceived value content, such as an eBook, Free Trial, Coupons or Special Offfers
   
   
2. Call-To-Action
   A call-to-action (CTA) can be text or a button that will take someone to a landing page. The CTA should be stratigically placed on the website.
   
   
3. Landing Page
   A landing page is very specific to a product or an offer. It only contains information relating to the offer and all other distraction has been removed.
   
   
4. Form
   This is how you capture leads. Now the trick is to ask for the basics: name, email & phone. Stay away from too many fields asking too many questions.

Download: Free Website Self Assessment Guide>>

Now that you have the structure of a proper internet marketing campaign, let's look at the lead generation tips:

1. Avoid Corporate Marketing Speak (aka BS)
   Using corporate jargon or overly marketing speak is a big turn off for most people. Also referred as "gobbledygook", those catchy terms are a recipe to get your website visitors to pull a muscle while rolling their eyes. Avoid these following terms/words like the plague:
• next generation
• cutting edge
• flexible
• ground breaking
• robust
• best of breed
• scalable
• mission critical
• easy to use
• Read "Tips on Writing from David Ogilvy" (opens in a new page)
  
  
2. Use High Perceived Value Offers
   Have you ever noticed that your "Contact Us" form is getting less and less traffic nowadays. Well, it's not very enticing....not really. What is interesting to your ideal prospect is content perceived as "high value" such as:
• eBooks & Guides
• Templates & Presentations
• Research & Reports
• Whitepapers
• Kits
• Live Webinars
• On-demand videos
• Blogs
• Demo request, RFP, etc
• Read "8 trends to consider before redesigning your website" (opens in a new page)
  
  
3. Effective Calls-to-Actions (CTA)
   If you don't have any CTA's or if they are not effective at capturing your visitor's attention, then it makes the offer useless. Here are the few rules about CTA's:
• Place them where people can see them, which is above the fold, no scrolling required.
• Make the button specific & compelling. For ex "Download eBook" is much more compelling than "Click Here"
• The CTA should be in a color that contrast from the rest of the page. Make it stand out.
• The CTA should lead to the actual landing page, not your home page or a generic page.
• Have CTA's as "text only", small buttons, large buttons and banners. People will respond differently to various format.
• Read "Why are Calls-to-Action so important" (opens in a new page)
  
  
4. Create Landing Pages that Convert
   Landing pages are probably the most important element of lead generation. A landing page's job is to direct a visitor to one particular offer or service without all the distractions of everything else you have to offer. We refer to it as the "Bull's eye" technique vs. "Buck Shot". Here are the few elements of an effective landing page:
• The Headline should be consistent with the Offer. If its about "Widgits", then the Page Title should be "Widgit Special Offer". There is nothing more confusing than landing on a pge that has a different title than the CTA was promoting.
• A brief description of the offer. Resist the temptation of jargon here, re-read bullet #1, write the way you speak. 200 words or less would be ideal here.
• Include one (yes only one) compelling image supporting the offer. If it's a landing page about a special offer on a Book, then the book cover is the image you should use. Avoid using multiple images, it will only add distraction.
• You may use an embedded video instead of a picture, this may be very effective too.
• Include a small form to capture the information
• Remove the main navigation. No distractions here, it's only about the offer on the landing page.
• Less is more. Resist the temptation of adding too much stuff on a landing page. The ideal format is half a page.
• Emphazise the benefits with few bullets. "Here is what you are going to receive....bullet, bullet, bullet"
• Include Social Media sharing with "quick share" links.
• Optimize your landing page with your target keywords
• Click here to view a great landing page sample (opens in a new page)
  
  
5. Multiple-Channel Approach
   Your website isn't a silo. You need to use multiple channels to bring people to your website. Here are the few channels that will help you generate more leads:
• A blog will generate leads. Companies that blog (relevant & optimized content) 6-8 times a month will double their lead volume. This makes blogging a no-brainer.
• Email Marketing isn't dead, far from it. But the days of email blasting to 1000's of un-qualified email addresses are over. Email your current client & active prospect database access to valuable & informative content (ebooks, guides, reports, etc)
• Social Media isn't just for young people. It's a channel to increase your exposure to people you wouldn't normally have access to with traditional marketing. It may only be 5% of your lead generation, but its still a great source to engage in a dialogue with your audience.
• Organic Search is how people find you naturally using a search engine like Google, Bing, Yahoo. If your website is not optimized organically, then people have no chance of finding you. You are, in essence, one out of billions of other websites. Organic optimization will help you generate "qualified" traffic to your site.

Generating leads should be the main focus of your website redesign project. Remember than your internet marketing strategy will never be whole & complete, it will be a work in progress for the rest of the years to come.

Redesigning your website is not like creating a brochure, a website should always continue to expand & grow. If you don't, your competition will eventually do it and take business away from you. Use those few tips and see the leads starting to pour in.

It’s about time! You have finally decided to get your website redesign project started.  Where should you start?  In a word, SEO.  Ok, so that’s not a word but its still where you should start.  Search Engine Optimization will make or break your success. 

A website that is optimized sends a very clear and confident message to the all powerful search engine gods: “I know who I am and I know who wants me.” 

Here are 7 keys to getting your website redesign started off on the right foot: 

1. Define your target market
   To hit the bullseye you have to see the target.  The internet is all about information and the foundation of your website redesign rests on understanding who needs the information that you have.  For example, if your business is a personal training studio your target market is going to be in the health and fitness sector.
    
2. Define your target persona
   Delve in to the actual people that make up your target market.  Understanding the people that make up your demographic is vital. How they talk and how much money they make are just a couple of the things that will determine what information they are looking for as well as how they look for that information.  For a personal training studio targeting the entire health and fitness sector is too broad. The last thing you want to do is build a site that is drawing people who are looking for group training sessions and only willing to pay $10 per month to go to a gym.
     
3. Define your value proposition (what makes you unique)
   Here is the fun part.  This is where you get to break out in a brag session.  Go ahead, it’s okay.  What makes you unique?  What are the reasons that you are awesome and the other guy is not? 
    
4. Define your keywords - long tail & short tail (better leverage with long tail)
   Now take that brag session list and start to mine it.  Look for keywords and phrases that encompass who you are.  General keywords are good but more importantly you should use your distinctive traits to hammer out some long tail keywords.  Long tail keywords are not searched as often but they are the keywords that most fit your target demographic. 
   Example: 
• short tail keyword: "personal training". 
• long tail keyword: "personal fitness training austin tx"
   
5. Not all keywords created equal - select lower competition but still high searches
   There is an art to selecting good keywords for your website redesign.  Once you have begun to zero in on your keywords they should be further refined based on how often they are actually searched.  Use a "keyword tool" to determine which of yours are in a happy medium between high searches and low competition.  
    
6. Have a strategy for content creation (blogs & pages) - minimum 2-3 weeks
   Killer content is king.  Once you have your keywords they have to be couched in meaningful information.  Search engine bots are very good at what they do and they avoid slop.  Create useful content and do so on a schedule.
    
7. Hire a digital marketer with a good writing team
   Search engine optimization is an ever evolving science and art.  Hiring a digital marketing company with an SEO-wise writing team is the final step in taking your website redesign to stratospheric levels and beyond.  Look for a company that has a record of results that can be verified.  One thing you can do is use a “page rank checker” to test the potential companies website.  If they rank highly for themselves, chances are they can get you up there as well.