This is Step #14 for 30 Days to Starting a Niche Business.  Each of the steps to creating a niche business will be documented in more detail.  

There is just one purpose you should have for your website . . .

Your Website Should Generate New Leads

It’s not about having a contact us, about us, service page, etc.  The most effective websites have just 1 goal, and it has nothing to do with being a digital brochure. 

Provide Information in Exchange for Contact Information

One of the most effective ways to do this is by providing information on your website in exchange for the visitors’ contact information (ie: e-mail address, phone number, name, etc.).  How much information you collect is based off of how much information you need to market to them in the sales funnel. 

There are many ways to do this and different products and industries require different methods.  Here are just a few examples of the “goals” you could establish on your website in order to capture visitor information to market to them:

• Collect names and e-mail addresses for a newsletter and have that form on the side and bottom of every page.  It’s tougher to market to these people but the list can be valuable when you want to generate buzz for your new product.
• Provide helpful content on your topic of expertise that people will find through search engines.  At the bottom of each page, put a form that they can sign up for more information about your product.
• Create one main page on your site that has a few paragraphs of copy specifically aimed as being the entrance to a video or more web pages with information about the product.  It’s basically a teaser, or a “squeeze page’, in web parlance. 
• Create a video demo (there’s some great software called Camtasia for web videos) that web visitors have to sign up to see.  A great way to do this is use some offline marketing efforts to drive people to your website to watch the video.
• Write a special report, or white paper, and provide that to visitors who sign up on your white paper.  It should be informative and useful and not directly about what you’re selling, as that would just be an overt sales pitch.

Get Visitors to “Raise their Hand” on Your Lead Generating Web Site

All of the above ideas for a lead generating web site are just different ways to get potential clients to “raise their hand” and let you know that they might be interested.  A large majority of these “hand raisers” will not end up purchasing your product.  But what you’re doing is acquiring a significantly more targeted audience that you can market and sell to more cost effectively.