
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:
- UX Planet: Designing More Efficient Forms
- Venture Harbor: Forms that Convert
- FormAssembly: Best Practices for User-Friendly Forms