How To Improve Conversion For A Lead Generation Website… With Limited Resources

Jeremiah Desmarais,
ProspectZone

Generating quality insurance and mortgage leads online is no simple task. People don’t trust just any site to share their personal financial or medical information with.

ProspectZone has been in the lead generation arena for years. But with conversion rates still in the teens we knew we were only raking in the low hanging fruit.

In early 2006 it was our task to increase conversion of our Pay Per Click campaigns by creating a new and improved website to drive traffic to. Our marketing and website development teams are best practices fanatics, but don’t usually have the time or resources to try out every new idea. This new website project — dubbed QuoteFinancial.com — gave us another crack at perfecting the formula.

Naturally there were some challenges.

QuoteFinancial Who?

The mortgage and insurance lead generation space has its fair share of marketing heavyweights. With competition keeping our PPC team on their toes to win over prospects, our main challenge was the “Who are you and why should I trust you?” problem.

We also had a limited budget. Our teams couldn’t devote their full resources to the project… meaning that the final site could only have limited content.

The final challenge was the actual actions we wanted visitors to take were a little lightweight. Between our insurance and mortgage verticals, there were only 6 types of quotes available for visitors to actually request. How to create a robust site out of what is essentially a fancy landing page?

What We Did

We battled the “curse of the unknown brand” and attempted to build trust in several key areas.

  • Images

We chose exclusively light, bright images. Our subjects were contemporary, friendly, average people. We thought visitors could better relate to these over the stale, overused and outdated images found on many insurance lead generation websites (yes, that also includes sites we had designed ourselves.)

  • Design

Our prior sites weren’t aging too well. They had sharp, square corners, and our forms, copy and images all floated on a white background. By looking at the bounce rates we suspected they had begun screaming “this was just slapped together” to visitors.

This time around we experimented with rounded corners, a colored background and a drop shadow to focus the eye and give the site a more “permanent” feel.

We also made our copy more readable by choosing a screen-friendly sans serif font that more people are accustomed to.

  • Content

We didn’t have the luxury of developing a wealth of content, so we highlighted what we did have. We started with an attractive, professionally-designed logo. If we wanted visitors to immediately place us in the same league as our toughest competitors (and we did), a clean, unique logo was essential.

We also rounded up all our third party placements and placed their logos in an above the fold “As seen in” section. Respected household names like USA Today, New York Times and the Wall Street Journal added instant credibility.

Visitors like to see examples of people like them who’ve used the service. Testimonials also help them understand what to expect. We added scrolling testimonials to catch the eye. 

One way we immediately built trust — and stood apart from many competitors — was by adding our 1-800 number to the top right corner. The phone number and an accompanying image of a friendly call center representative increased confidence by expressing, yes, we are a real live company, and we’re really available to take your call.

  • Layout

Since the content-light QuoteFinancial.com is essentially a landing page, we disguised the fact with a multi-dimensional layout. We took the six basic actions (which all boil down to “Request A Quote”) and split them in four different ways. Visitors can click on a link for the specific mortgage or insurance product they’re searching for, use a drop down box to begin a mortgage quote request or click on a separate “Get Quotes” button to land on a health insurance form.

Depending on the vertical or stage of the lead generation process they clicked on from the homepage, the visitor is directed to one of our 10 one-page forms. The result is a robust-looking site that doesn’t betray its true landing page function.

 

Our Results

Once our site went live we began to see results immediately.

  • Improved conversion.

Our trust-building techniques paid off. The pre-QuoteFinancial format converted at 17%. After we began directing traffic to the more credible QuoteFinancial.com, conversion jumped to 21% to 21.5%, depending on the advertising avenue.

  • Higher quality affiliates.

The new design immediately began impressing and attracting higher quality affiliate partners who were eager to link to our site as an “exclusive offer” — despite the saturated insurance space. Conversion-driven affiliates love the new legitimate-looking design, and our B2B partnerships have grown substantially now that we can offer a more robust, higher converting website.

  • Two awards in 2006.

Our efforts were recognized within the website development community as well. QuoteFinancial.com picked up an “Outstanding Achievement in Website Development” in the Interactive Media Awards for the financial information category. The site also received a Standard of Excellence” award by the Web Marketing Association.

The QuoteFinancial.com project was a great chance to flex our “best practices” muscle, and the results continue to shape our current website development.

Jeremiah Desmarais is the Vice President of Marketing and oversees the educational and marketing efforts at ProspectZone. ProspectZone is a leading provider of internet leads to the mortgage industry, and the creators of Smart LeadsTM. Mr. Desmarais is the recipient of 3 awards in 2006 from the Web Marketing Association, Marketing Sherpa and the Interactive Marketing Association for his marketing and design initiatives online. He is author of several white papers and has been a contributor to national trade publications as well as a guest speaker at various national events and workshops. He is a member of the Society of Industry Leaders. Reach him at jdesmarais@prospectzone.com or 1-800-980-0902.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

bullet Award Update
bullet Featured Article
bullet Featured Site
bullet Special Offers
bullet Feedback

bullet Advertising
bullet Books
bullet Conferences
bullet Direct Mail
bullet Email
bullet PR
bullet Trade Press
bullet Contact us
bullet Become a sponsor
bullet Contribute an article

bullet BURST! Media
bullet Venture Direct
bullet Small Army
bullet Line56 Media
bullet Perseus Software
bullet Velocity Micro

 

bullet Microsoft Office Live Meeting
bullet Vertical Response
bullet NewsUSA
bullet O’Dwyer’s PR Daily
bullet Burrelle’s/Luce
bullet OddCast
bullet The Wall Street Journal Online
bullet Barron’s Online