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You’re not collecting leads because your form sucks

by | Jan 25, 2021

You’re not collecting leads because your form sucks

One of the most common questions we get is “how do we drive more leads?” (demand/sales, whatever). Brands spend months and thousands of dollars creating downloads, webinars,  and sales to drive new leads. But we find much less thought is put into the biggest point of friction: the actual form. Here are three of the biggest reasons a form will fail to convert:


1. You are asking for too much.

  • Avoid optional fields. Stick with the fields you need (and only the fields you need) in order to simply meet your goal.
  • Limit required fields. Visitors can (and will) make up information for fields that are required and may be uncomfortable filling out. Or worse, just leave.
  • Do not ask for billing information (especially for a free trial) or equally invasive information.
  • Do not be too picky about the format of the submitted content (for example, May 22, 2018 is the same as 05/22/18 or 5.22.18, etc.).
 

2. Your form is not worth filling out.

  • Is there a clear value proposition/motivating reason for user to fill out the form?
  • Add a thank-you page or pop-up message upon completion of the form.
  • Reassure users that you will not spam them or disclose their personal information.
  • Make your call to action text clear when they send you their info (not just a submit button, but something like “sign me up”, “download”, “start”, “register”). Studies show that using SUBMIT reduces conversion by 3% (Source: Unbounce).
 

3. Your form is not user-friendly

  • Add real-time validation to the form. If there is an error in a form field, have the form alert the user as they’re filling it out, not after they’ve hit the ‘submit’ button.
  • Make it mobile-friendly. For example, leave enough room between fields so that someone using a touchscreen can easily select one field without accidentally activating another.
  • Use social media lead forms that pre-populate info when a user is logged into the platform.
 

Other resources we dig: