A Website That Generates Inquiries: A Checklist for Your Digital Salesperson

Why does your website bring visitors but no inquiries?

The website is well maintained, the logo sits right, the visitor numbers are decent. Still, new customers come almost exclusively through referrals. The contact form delivers one job application a month and two pieces of spam. If that sounds familiar, your website is a business card.

A business card confirms that your company exists. That is useful for people who already know you. Someone who does not know you and wants to solve a problem right now needs something else: an answer, proof and an easy way to a conversation. That is exactly what a good salesperson delivers in a first contact, and exactly what you should measure your website against. Put simply, the question is: what does a website have to do for visitors to turn into inquiries? To answer it, we first use the three-question test on the first screen, then go through calls to action, proof, and the contact form, and finish with technology, service pages, and the numbers you should measure.

Your website is the only salesperson still holding first conversations at eleven at night. Treat it that way.

The three-question test: what does the first screen have to answer?

Anyone landing on your website wants to know three things. I call this the three-question test because you can run it on any page in one minute. The first screen is the part a visitor sees without scrolling. If it does not answer the three questions, no text further down will help.

1. What do you offer?

   In one sentence, in the customer’s words. Your in-house technical terms belong in the second row.

2. Is this for someone like me?

   Name the target group explicitly: industry, company size, region or situation. People who recognize themselves keep reading.

3. What should I do now?

   A visible button with a concrete next step, for example booking an initial call or requesting a quote.

The most important building block is the headline. It names the result for the customer and not the company name, because the visitor sees the name in the logo anyway. The following table shows the difference using invented examples.

How many calls to action does a page need?

Exactly one. A call to action is the spot where you tell the visitor what to do next. Many websites offer five options at once at this point: call, newsletter, brochure, callback, contact form. People who have to choose between five paths often take none.

Decide on one main step that fits your sales process. For services that need explaining, that is usually an initial call; for standardized services, a quote request. This step sits in the same place on every page and always carries the same text.

• Be concrete. “Book an initial call” says more than “Contact” or “Learn more”.
• Set expectations. Write directly below what happens next: duration, process, cost.
• Repeat. At the top, after the strongest argument and at the end of the page.
• Offer a small second path. Phone number and email address stay visible but take a visual back seat.

Proof instead of claims: how does a website build trust?

Every provider writes that it is reliable, experienced and customer-oriented. Visitors skip such words because they cost nothing. Trust comes from statements that can be checked. The bigger the order, the more of them a visitor needs before getting in touch.

Only use proof that is true and that you are allowed to show. Get permission for testimonials and logos. Three real references with names carry more weight than twenty anonymous quotes. Place the proof where doubt arises, which means right next to the offer and next to the form.

What does a contact form look like that people actually fill in?

The form is the place where a visitor becomes a prospect. Every additional field is a question they have to answer before they are allowed to talk to you. My rule of thumb is: five fields at most, with as few required fields as possible.

• Name, email address or phone number, and the request are almost always enough.
• One or two fields may serve as a pre-check, for example postal code or company size.
• You clarify everything else in the conversation.
• After submitting, the page says who will get back to them and by when.

You only see whether the form is slowing things down when you break the path to it into stages. The following worked example shows a website with 2,000 visitors a month.

In the example, 120 visitors open the contact page, but only 24 submit an inquiry. Here, working on the form pays off. If, on the other hand, almost everyone had already disappeared between the service page and the contact page, the problem would lie with the offer or the missing next step.

Load time, smartphone, privacy: which technical basics are mandatory?

Technology does not win customers, but it can drive them away. Three things have to be right before work on copy is worth it.

Smartphone first

Check your website on the phone first and at the desk afterwards. Many visitors arrive on the go, from a search or from a message. The type has to be readable without zooming, the button reachable with a thumb, the phone number tappable.

Load time

As a benchmark I set: the visible part of the page is there on a smartphone in under three seconds. The most common brakes are oversized images, embedded videos and third-party scripts. Images in the right size and in a modern format usually bring the biggest gain.

Privacy

Host fonts and images locally, meaning on your own server, instead of loading them from external services on every visit. Obtain consent before analytics or advertising services start, and offer a way to decline that is just as easy to find as the way to accept. This reflects the European setting in which German companies operate and is not legal advice. Have the details checked by your data protection officer or a specialized law firm.

As a side effect, this also helps with speed. Every service you do not load makes the page faster.

Why does every service need its own page?

On many websites, all services appear as a bulleted list on a single page. That saves work and costs inquiries. A visitor looking for a specific service wants a page that is only about that. A search engine wants the same, because it can only show a page for the topic it clearly covers.

A good service page is a complete sales conversation in short form. It answers the questions in the order in which a customer asks them.

1. Who is the service for, and which problem does it solve?
2. What exactly does the customer get, and what not?
3. How does working together unfold, step by step?
4. What does it cost, or what does the price depend on?
5. What proof is there: references, examples, numbers?
6. Which questions come up again and again, and what are the answers?
7. What is the next step?

Ask your sales team which five questions come up in every first conversation. The answers belong on the service page. Then the conversation starts where it gets interesting, and not with the basics.

What should you measure on your website?

Visitor numbers say little. More telling is how many visitors submit an inquiry and where those visitors came from. The metric for this is the inquiry rate, also called conversion rate in marketing: inquiries divided by visitors. In the worked example above, that is 24 inquiries from 2,000 visitors, or 1.2 percent.

The last tile is the reason why working on the website pays off. Doubling the inquiry rate brings as many additional inquiries as doubling the visitors, but costs no additional advertising. Which rate is good for you depends on industry and offer. So compare yourself with your own previous month.

The second evaluation is by source. For every inquiry, record where the visitor came from. Even a simple monthly overview shows where effort pays off.

Pass the source on to sales. Only when you know which inquiries turned into orders can you judge which source earns money.

What you can do this week: the checklist

Take one hour, your phone and this list. Go through the homepage, your most important service page and the contact page. Every item you cannot tick off is a task for you or your agency.

• The headline names the result for the customer, not the company name.
• The first screen passes the three-question test.
• Every page shows a visible next step, always with the same wording.
• Proof sits next to the offer: references, numbers, named testimonials.
• The contact form has five fields at most and states what happens after submitting.
• The visible part loads on a smartphone in under three seconds.
• Fonts and images are hosted locally; tracking starts only after consent.
• Every service has its own page.
• There is a monthly overview of inquiries per source.

Start with the item that sits highest in the funnel. A better headline affects every visitor; a better form only affects those who make it that far.

A website brings inquiries when it works like a good salesperson in a first contact. On the first screen it says what result the customer gets, backs it up with proof, and shows an easy next step on every page. Whether this works is shown by the number of inquiries per source, not by the number of visitors.