Landing pages with forms can be considered the first step to generating leads and boosting conversion from your website. You could spend a lot of time and money designing a feedback form, donation form or landing page form, yet only a handful of your website visitors fill it out. Is this because the form is poorly designed? Are there too many form fields or is there something crucial your forms need to convert?
You can generate leads by adding a high-converting lead generation form in a landing page. This can be nurtured through the sales funnels to boost conversion. 61% of B2B marketers find it difficult generating high quality leads that convert. Without leads, there would be nothing to nurture and your beautiful website wouldn’t be able to convert customers or record sales. You can read more about boosting website conversion here.
With the growing number of Internet users and web traffic, focus on these few ways to increase your form field conversion:
1. Place Your Form Above the Fold
The purpose of a landing page is to build trust with your target audience and increase engagement. Place essential elements such as CTA and forms above the fold, because this is where engaged time peaks. This prized real estate helps you capture leads by maximising exposure to potential customers.
By placing the sidebar above the fold, Ben Hunt got 876 clicks. If your offering is a downloadable content such as an app or software, use a persuasive headline with a preview, demonstrating how to use the software and ensure the copy is persuasive, yet minimal. Before scrolling down, a visitor sees your CTA above the fold, which influences their experience on your site. Other examples of top brands who use this method include CrazyEgg and KISSmetrics.
2. Reduce the Number of Form Fields
It might seem obvious, but this is a method that has worked for Neil Patel and Hubspot - some of the most popular names in digital advertising. For example, Dan Zarrella at Hubspot found that there was a drop in conversion rates when text areas increased. When he removed one text area, conversion rate increased by 10%. Neil Patel improved Quick Sprout’s conversion by 26% when he removed one field on a lead capture form.
3. Don’t Just Remove Any Feld, Make Sure It’s the Right One
When you take a long, hard look at your web forms, you’ll realize that you don’t need most of the fields to generate leads. Giving your users an easier form to fill is more important than any ‘must-have fields’. People are wary when they see form fields asking them to enter personal data such as age, date of birth, house address and phone number. It looks more like a social media type registration form than one designed to help the potential customer.
Remove any confusing fields or non-required fields, such as those marked with asterisks or required fields. Only list essential fields and delineate the rest. Expedia recorded a $12 million annual profit by removing the ‘company’ field from their form, because people thought it meant the name of their bank instead of the name of their actual company.
4. Design Your Form to Stand Out
If your form doesn’t capture the reader’s attention at first glance, it has failed. Online readers visit millions of websites every week and are hit with web forms upon entry. Most of them click the ‘close’ button without reading the content, but they might hover over that dreaded button if you use a clean form design that captivates the user’s attention and guides them to the ‘submit’ button. Don’t create several columns in the form and ensure the design is uniform alongside your brand.
5. Don’t Forget to Test Your Forms
You’ll probably read other articles about improving form field conversion, but the truth is, what works for Mr A might not work for Ms B. You need to constantly run tests, because there is no absolute truth or one size fit for web design or creating a form field that converts. Analyze each form to determine points of friction and remove them. Which fields do your visitors skim over and which ones do they interact with the most? Run an A/B test and use the one with the best results (a good place to start is https://www.optimizely.com):
6. The Multi-step Alternative
Venture Harbour helped a client increase conversion rate by 53% when they formatted over 30 questions into a four-step form. Multi-step forms allow brands to increase fields without any negative impact on user experience. Even though it requires more from the users, it’s less daunting and intimidating, because it psychologically reduces friction in users who don’t know how many questions they’ll be asked.
7. Lead Users to the ‘Submit’ Button
The data you collect from your form fields is crucial for your business. You must articulate your needs and the accompanying reasons in a way that leads the potential client through each field or they will abandon the form altogether.
You can use ghost texts to give your users a hint of the format you expect. Alternatively, use help texts, field variation or inline erroring. Rolls advises that the web form should be easy to understand and fill out. In the case where users make mistakes, ensure this is flagged up immediately after they’ve finished filling that particular field.
8. Use a Strong Call-To-Action
Your CTA must be catchy and strong. For instance, domain name providers use ’domain name search here’ to convince visitors to look and know if a name they like is taken. Such CTAs set the tone for bounce rate or conversions. Your CTA will either send your visitors running for the hills or convert them into buying customers.
Many marketers who struggle to gain high quality leads fail to optimize their CTA. According to Neil Patel, having a solid CTA leaves a pleasant memory of the user’s browsing experience on your site and convinces them to take your desired Call to Action. Factors that affect your CTA include the shape of the CTA button, its color and placement on the website.
Conclusion
When designing your contact form, reduce as much friction as possible, because it drives conversion rate. Design for mobile first, as this improves user-experience and makes it easier to use. It also helps you remove non-essential fields from your form. The goal of your contact form should be to give your users the best experience possible and make it easier to click the desired CTA. A highly converting form field is crucial to building trust and engagement with your visitors, generating leads for your site and turning visitors into buying customers.
