Having a beautiful, functional website for your agricultural equipment dealership is great, but it doesn’t have much real-world value if it doesn’t generate qualified sales leads. Learn how to design your dealership’s website for lead generation here.
As a quick reference, here’s what you’ll find in this blog:
Part 1: What to Build covers the importance of a well-functioning website.
Part 2: What to Write describes how to speak to your customer while they’re on your site.
Part 3: What to Create explains ways to keep visitors coming back for more.
Part 1: What to Build
How can the function of your website help capture the most qualified leads? A well-designed website will keep visitors from bouncing back to the search results page and choosing one of your competitors.
In Part 1, you’ll learn:
- How to keep leads from leaving your website out of frustration
- The best places to put your dealership’s contact information
- The power of landing pages, including when and why to build them
A Smooth Experience
If a prospect has a good experience on your website, they’re much more likely to stick around (or even come by the dealership!). If someone is frustrated or confused when browsing your site, on the other hand, do you think they’ll bother calling you? Chances are, they’ll head to another dealership’s website instead.
The simpler and quicker your agricultural equipment dealership’s website is to browse and navigate, the more effective it will be. Your site needs to have…
- A clear layout with straightforward navigation
- Functionality and responsiveness on all browsing devices
- A clean, modern design without bloat that can slow down loading times
All of these are essential elements of a well-functioning website that’s designed with ease of use in mind.
Your Contact Info—Everywhere
This one feels like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised by how many small businesses forget about it or take it for granted!
Make sure there are at least two ways for prospects to contact you on every single page of your agricultural equipment dealership’s website. The best way to achieve this is by putting your phone number and/or email in a fixed header (so people can see it constantly as they scroll). Then, display all of your dealership’s contact info, including your location(s), in the footer of each page.
Contact forms are another way for website visitors to get in touch with you. These are best placed on a “Contact Us” page or on inventory pages so prospects can fill them out immediately when they see something they like.
Want more leads to fill out your contact forms? Don’t make every field required. If they’re anything less than positive they want to buy, visitors will see this as a chore and move on. Instead, just require a name and email address and have the rest of the fields be optional. You can always get that info later—for now, all you need are the basics.
Specific Landing Pages
Adpearance calls landing pages “a pathway to a desired conversion.” Landing pages are necessary for your agricultural dealership’s digital advertising campaigns and social media promotions. They’re where prospects end up after they click on your ad or link.
Landing pages take the hassle out of customers trying to find what they’re looking for on your site. For example, if you’re running a campaign for Kubota package deals, it would be incredibly frustrating to click on the ad and be taken to your website’s homepage instead of a page with those packages! When you have a specific promotion, you should create a dedicated landing page to make things as easy as possible on your prospects.
The content of your landing pages should drive visitors to take action. This means specific headlines, copy, images, and calls to action (CTAs) that relate to the page’s promotion—and to the customer. Then, you can use the results of your promotions to discover what messaging drives the most leads.
Part 2: What to Write
Part 2 is all about the copy on your ag dealership’s website: the words that will make leads stick around and browse. It’s a vital component of website design that’s often overlooked.
In Part 2, you’ll learn:
- How to get leads to stay on your website
- The simple secret to a great user experience
- Which factors make calls to action (CTAs) effective
Show, Don’t Tell
One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is building a website that serves them, not the customer. If the first thing a user sees when they visit your website isn’t something about how you can help them, you’re already one step further from conversion!
Here’s an example: writing about how great your customer service is isn’t going to convince anyone that it’s true. The fact is that pretty much every business website—whether it relates to the ag industry or not—is going to have some form of this language. Customers simply have no reason to believe it because they can find that anywhere.
The secret? Follow the rule of “show, don’t tell” and create a website that is designed to help the customer instead of writing about yourself.
Shoppers aren’t interested in your history, and they only care about your sales pitch of the month if it directly applies to them and their needs. All customers want to know is whether you can help them and how you’ll do it. Don’t make them dig for the answers to these questions! Just make it easy for visitors to get where they want to go: your inventory.
Now, are there places on your website where you can brag about yourself? Absolutely! Just put that content on its own page—don’t make them scroll through it to get to the good stuff. Make it as straightforward as possible to shop with you and you’re a lot more likely to see results.
Effective Calls to Action
Calls to action, or CTAs, are links or buttons that a user clicks in order to take a certain action (for example, contacting your dealership or browsing a specific set of products). When you decide on the CTAs that will be on your website, you’re creating a guide of where you want your customers to go and what you want them to do.
There are a lot of things that make CTAs more effective, such as:
- Colors that stand out on the page (DesignAdvisor recommends red, orange, or green)
- Compelling, personalized messaging (nothing bland and generic—”Browse” is fine, but “Browse Our Used Inventory Here” is stronger)
- Sending users exactly where they expect to go (i.e., matching headlines and title tags)
- Keeping them to a minimum (so prospects don’t get overwhelmed with too many choices)
Your CTAs will differ depending on the pages of your website, your promotions, and your products, but as long as you follow these guidelines and keep the customer in mind, they’ll work to keep leads interested.
Part 3: What to Create
Part 3 is all about creating content for your ag dealership’s website that helps customers and gives you an edge over your competition.
In Part 3, you’ll learn:
- How to keep leads coming back to your site again and again
- Why some of your website’s content should be gated
- The power video has on conversions
Lead Magnets & Gated Content
To effectively generate leads on your agricultural equipment dealership’s website, one strategy is to provide something of value in exchange for visitors’ contact info—in other words, creating content that’s accessible behind the “gate” of filling out a form.
Basic contact forms—those that don’t provide access to any gated content—assume that the person visiting the website already wants to get in touch. Those who are on the fence, however, will need a little more incentive to give you their information. Motivate these visitors with content like ebooks, infographics, and videos that are helpful, informative, and unavailable anywhere else.
You’ve learned a lot in your years in the business. Make that expertise work for you by sharing helpful tips with your website visitors for the low, low price of their name and email address. These lead magnets will help you snag qualified leads who are interested in what you have to say about your equipment.
“Providing useful content to your clients help transform your reputation from a typical business into a reliable expert,” says Equipment Trader content marketer Ethan Smith. “Content development portrays you as the quality dealership that you are, attracting serious prospects who are interested in the industry and keeping them engaged until they are ready to make a purchase.”
A Variety of Videos
Video is one of the most compelling media you can have on your websites. And for your agricultural equipment dealerships, there are so many purposes video can fill that will help lead to conversions.
For example, we’ve seen a lot of success with walkaround videos. They’re a huge hit for anyone on your website who’s interested in learning more about a specific piece of equipment. A video demonstrating the highlights of your products not only saves the customer a trip to the dealership, but also showcases your expertise.
Video also adds a personalized touch to your dealership that’s much harder to achieve via text. Plus, consumers tend to prefer watching video to reading text, and rich media like video can even benefit your site’s search engine rankings.
Your dealership’s videos can be used outside of your website, too: share them on social media, send them in email campaigns, and more! Repurposing content is a cost-efficient way to share what makes your dealership unique with as many people as possible.
Design Your Ag Dealership’s Website for Lead Generation
At Kirkpatrick Creative, we take an engineered approach to website design. For each and every one of our clients, our goal is to discover exactly which design strategies generate leads—and which ones inhibit performance.
Our team is ready to bring an analytical approach to your ag dealership’s website design. It’s all part of our philosophy of advertising that’s engineered to work.
Ready to get started? Contact Kirkpatrick Creative today to start designing a website that will get your agricultural equipment dealership more leads.