5 Tips to Generate More Web Leads for Bi-Fold Doors

1. Create great content

Does your content address your customers’ problems? If you can create content that both addresses and solves your customers’ problems, you will see your web leads increase. For example, your customers might be confused about whether to choose aluminium bi-folds or composite bi-fold doors: by writing a post that compares the two (highlighting the pros and cons of each and linking to useful web pages), you’ll be informing the reader, helping them to reach a decision about which bi-fold doors are right for them. Doing research into the questions your customers are asking can be as simple as asking your customer service team. And, the easier you make your content to access and read, the better.

Once you establish what your customers want to read, you can create a content calendar. Making a realistic timeline for what, when, where and how will become your strategy for talking to your customers through your website. In this plan, you can even include title tags, links and keywords for each topic to ensure your content is SEO-friendly. For example, your keywords might be ‘aluminium bi-fold doors’, ‘bi-fold door handles’, ‘contemporary bi-fold door’ or ‘small bi-fold doors’. Adding relevant internal links to your content also makes it easier for your visitors to navigate around your website.

2. Engage on social media

Social media is really all about showing personality and building relationships with leads, influencers and partners. Therefore, sharing posts that focus on sharing helpful and informative content may receive more engagement than content that’s too sales-heavy. This will help you position yourself as a trusted voiced in the industry. For example, on the Origin Facebook and Origin Twitter profiles, we share Advice Centre articles and case studies; provide company updates; retweet our trade customers; share relevant world news; encourage our audience to engage in competitions (Where in the World, Best View, Installation of the Month etc.); and post live from events. We have direct conversations with our followers and provide clear CTAs that link back to our website, generating (and nurturing existing) leads.

Staying active is key, so it’s recommended to post at least once a week on Facebook and several times a day on Twitter. Free tools like Hootsuite or Buffer are useful for scheduling posts ahead of time (meaning you don’t have to physically post every day) and provide analytics (so you can understand how your content is performing). Facebook advertising is also a sophisticated tool for those with the budget, allowing you to target potential customers both geographically and demographically.

(If you are an Origin Accredited Partner and would like assistance with your social media then please get in touch with andy.walker@origin-global.com who will be happy to help you.)

3. Make your website easy to use

It’s a competitive world and the internet is currently storing more than 1.2 million terabytes of data… So, how can you make sure people stay on your website? One way is to make your website as easy-to-use as possible. For example, Origin’s aim has been to make it as easy for visitors to navigate through the website as possible so they can quickly find the product they’re looking for, whether it’s bi-fold doors, residential doors, french doors or windows. We’ve avoided overcrowding our website with images and we’ve made our contact details clear in the footer so visitors can easily get in touch. We’ve also made sure our website is mobile-friendly.

Your homepage is a great place to start when reviewing your website performance. The homepage is valuable space and offers a first impression. It can be tempting to plaster lots of information and CTAs on this page in hope that your visitor will find what they’re looking for. However, prioritising your key CTAs, making sure your navigation is clear and making more use of white space will give your visitors an easier and more pleasant journey to conversion.

4. Use a mobile-friendly design

More and more people are using the internet on their mobile devices - whether that’s a smartphone or a tablet. Because mobile devices vary in screen sizes, responsive designs came into play, which would allow webpages to adjust accordingly. You can normally tell when a website isn’t responsive because it’ll look exactly the same on desktop as it does on mobile. It will be much harder to use and therefore visitors will likely drop off and look for another site that is mobile-friendly.

Google noticed this trend and began penalising businesses that didn’t adapt this responsive design, putting them lower down the rankings. As such, most websites these days are mobile-friendly. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, this could be limiting the number of web leads you generate. The best way to find out if your website is mobile friendly is to use the Google Mobile-Friendly Test.

5. Optimise your forms

So, your visitor has successfully navigated through your website, like what they see, and have decided to get in contact with you - whether it’s requesting a call back, a brochure or a showroom visit. The last thing you want to do at this stage is make it difficult for your visitor to convert. One of the quickest ways to infuriate a visitor enough to leave your website is to overcomplicate your ‘contact us’ form.

A contact form should only have compulsory fields for necessary information, such as name, email address/telephone and nature of their contact (e.g. requesting a bi-fold door brochure or which showroom they’d like to visit). Their title, birthday, address, and budget aren’t necessary at this stage and could even cause your customer to feel suspicious. Keep the form simple and then follow up with your lead via phone or email. Once your lead has provided their email address, there are clever ways to nurture your lead in other ways, for example through remarketing on social media.