I’m doing a joint lead generation project with a major magazine which has got me thinking again about website form conversion. The mock-up of the landing page form had 9 fields. A lot of friction. Lead generation means getting an email, phone number and a name. You are better off with as few fields as possible.
Lead Generation
I once did a proposal for a large company in healthcare. They’d updated the website, losing leads. I ‘walked in the customer’s shoes,’ noticed they’d made address line 2 mandatory (with a tiny asterisk), plus the colours were not high contrasting, tricky for an older demographic using a mobile (their market). I didn’t hear back!
Contact Forms
Do you need them? Have you tried just a mailto: option with your email address? Or live chat? Have a chat with Karen Levett, Live Chat Factory. Well worth testing that option.
Newsletter Signup
What do you need? Well, you have to tell a visitor ‘what’s in it for them’ and all you need is the email address, a name is good as you can personalise emails. I would also say ‘double opt-in’ is vital.
The Turnstile
Come across this? It’s the embedding of an email field in a video. Wistia and Vimeo both offer this. You can set it anywhere in a video, even email address needed to play. I’d rather use it near the end, then you have a committed subscriber.
Building a responsive email list plus organic traffic is the hub of online marketing success.
Also Consider:
- Stating the number of subscribers on your list, offers proof of worthwhile joining.
- Don’t use ‘submit’ not a positive word is it eh? Use something like ‘Join’ or ‘I’m in’
- Error capture, invest in this, why is the form not working?
- You can use an animation here like a green ‘tick’ for success field fill-in
- Clear success message.
Plus:
- CAPTCHAS are bad news.
- Make the form engaging, use something like Typeform for fab’ animation.
- Avoid massive drop down lists like all the countries in the world, use autofill
- Use a single column for the form
- Make the form beautiful, yes people like interacting with pretty things
Final Websites Forms Conversion Tip
It’s not the colour of the button that makes a conversion. It’s more likely to be winning ‘micro copy’ eg ‘Free delivery over £25’. Sell the signup BIG TIME!
If you have a tricky, non-performing form give me a shout.
About Conversion Detectives
Conversion Detectives is a full service digital marketing agency in Hertfordshire.
We find the best quality traffic for your website and convert more of that traffic into sales or sales leads.
Services
Digital Marketing Strategy | Creative Content Marketing | Email Marketing |
Lead Generation | Content Strategy | Social Media Marketing |
Video Marketing | SEO (Basics) | SEM |