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For your business to gain traction, it needs the information of its customers. Whether it’s a contact form or a customer satisfaction form, you need to make sure that any lead capture form you create converts.
Around 81 percent of users have abandoned a form after beginning to fill it out, which means that not enough websites prioritize their lead generation forms. If people are turning away and refusing to give their information, then it’s time to make changes and do something about it.
A lead capture form is a form on your website that asks for users’ information in the hopes that they turn into a paying customer. When optimized for visitors, it’s a lead-generation tool that boosts conversions and moves users through the sales funnel.
The Importance of a High-Converting Form
Business websites rely on optimized lead capture forms for many reasons.
Collect User Data and Feedback
With direct participation from your site visitors, forms make it easy to collect their information. It’s important to know as much about your target market as possible so you can create products and experiences they want to have. If you don’t know much about them, you can’t cater to their needs and convince them to return.
Generate Leads
It’s called a lead generation form for a reason. Online forms are the last thing people engage with before they convert, so they need to convince users to follow through to the end. Without them, people have no way to opt into your offer and become a customer.
Create Social Proof
Social proof is the social influence that consumers have on each other. Seeing people enjoying products and talking about them online encourages others to do the same. Social proof is crucial to build brand credibility and create strong relationships with customers. You can use the feedback you receive from your forms to display as ratings or reviews. After all, 72 percent of customers won’t take action until they read reviews.
Build an Email List
To create loyal customer relationships, you need to have access to them after they leave your website. Lead capture forms make it possible to collect users’ email addresses do just that. Building an email list of subscribers allows you to secure that connection, market new products, and increase sales, among other things. Email marketing is 40 times more effective at producing conversions than social media and is essential for a thriving business.
Let’s dive into a few tips on how you can increase your form’s conversion rate.
Reduce Form Fields
Customers want a painless user experience while they browse your website. To convince them that your brand is worth handing over their information, it’s important to make the process as simple as possible.
If they see that your lead capture form has twelve fields of information they need to fill out, then they aren’t likely to complete it. For new visitors especially, it’s challenging to convince them to spend a lot of time on your contact form.
When creating a contact form, only ask for the most necessary information. There’s no reason you need their home address, date of birth, and phone number right away. If anything, that happens later in the sales funnel. For now, the main goal is to retrieve their email addresses and names.
A study by HubSpot found that minimizing the number of form fields from four to three increases conversions by 50 percent. The less effort it takes for users, the higher your form’s completion rate will be.
Lyft’s lead capture form requires only one piece of information from visitors, making it easy to complete.
Optimize Your Call to Action
Your call-to-action is the final step users have to take before they convert on your site. You may not know it, but your call-to-action has a huge impact on whether or not users act on your site. You need to convince them that they want to convert without saying it outright, and CTAs are a great way to do so.
You’ve come across plenty of CTA buttons with “Submit” on them, but the truth is that this doesn’t help your conversion rate. Vague words fail to tell people what they get after they click through and leaves them wondering what’s in store. Users won’t continue unless they know what’s ahead of them, so being specific in your copy is essential.
When creating CTA copy, consider what you’re offering to your target audience. Perhaps it’s a resource guide or a link to join a membership. Whatever it is, use it to finalize the offer and seal the deal.
Which option do you think entices users more?
- Click Here
- Get My Free Ebook
The first one is generic and puts no effort into making the offer exciting. The second option highlights what the user will receive when they convert and makes them feel more comfortable following through.
Your CTA button color matters too. In one study, blue improved users’ creativity while red increased their attention to detail. Regardless of your specific goal, it’s crucial to consider the role that colors play in your CRO.
Use contrasting colors that make it easy to read text and ensure they don’t clash. If it’s difficult on the eyes, users will run away.
In this example, the CTA button stands out with navy blue in contrast to its grey background. The two colors work well together and make it easy to understand the value they’re getting.
Secure Your Form
One thing that stops many people from filling out online forms is fearing for their personal information. They’re afraid that someone might get ahold of it and use it to cause harm, and these concerns are valid. Security breaches aren’t unheard of, but with proper practices in place, they have a higher chance of being avoided.
Every aspect of your website needs protection and that includes your lead generation forms. Around 29 percent of users won’t fill out an online form because they’re worried about its security. No one will send you their information if your website doesn’t prove it’s safe to engage with.
When you first start your website, it’s in HTTP, but you want HTTPS. HTTPS, or Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure, encrypts communication through various networks. To make the switch, you’ll first need an SSL certificate.
To know if a website you’re visiting is secure, click the lock next to its URL.
Split Test Your Form
With any aspect of your business, it’s important to monitor its progress so you know what works and what doesn’t. It’s great to run a high-converting campaign, but if you don’t track what made it successful, then you don’t have the tools to repeat it.
Around 58 percent of marketers use A/B testing as part of their conversion rate optimization strategy. It’s crucial to understand how your visitors work and where they receive value from your site. If your lead generation forms don’t cater to their needs or address their interests, they won’t turn into paying customers.
A/B testing lets you build a sturdy online form that works for your audience and makes it easy for them to comply. But first, you need to decide which elements you’re going to test first. You can’t test multiple factors at once because then you won’t know what caused an increase or decrease in conversions.
Some of the things you could split test are:
- CTA copy
- CTA button color
- Number of form fields
- Required fields
- Form copy
Depending on how much traffic you get, it may take a while to gather enough data to analyze. But once you do, take your time looking over the results and deciding what your users respond to the most.
Your Turn
Creating a high-converting lead generation form doesn’t have to be challenging. If you know what users expect, it becomes easier to create online forms with higher completion rates. The more information you collect on your target audience, the more you’ll be able to provide for them. In turn, you’ll boost your conversion rate and expand your business. How will you improve your lead capture forms?
