It’s done, you’ve put everything in place to attract people to your website: keyword campaigns, social media, buying advertising, etc. Now you need to consider converting new visitors into prospects. An important step: attract their attention so that they provide you with their contact information and start a business relationship with you.
The ideal tool to get there? The acquisition forms of course… It’s written in the title!
Here are a few useful tips to optimize the conversion rate of your forms and increase your contact list. You’re welcome!
1. Highlight your call to action
Make sure that all the pages of your website have a zone to invite the Internet user to continue on his or her purchase path towards an informative page or a sales page. In fact, each page should be designed to move your visitor along the buying path. Therefore, each page should have its purpose and should contain at least one call to action that guides the visitor to that same purpose.
2. Limit the number of requested fields
The number of fields requested in a form is a fairly tricky thing to determine. The more fields you fill out in your form, the more likely it is that your visitors will become discouraged and give up before the end. On the other hand, and this is where it gets trickier, is that the visitors who make it to the end have a much better chance to be qualified (even if you may have very few).
On the contrary, if you make the form very short and easy to fill out, you will probably get more prospects, but they may be more qualified. It depends very much on the benefit that comes after filling out the form, your promise. So you have to find your middle ground and the formula that works for you may not necessarily work for everyone. Just test it!
3. Court before you engage
Just like in a romantic relationship, take the time to get to know each other. Don’t try to know everything from the beginning. Minimize the information requested, keep only what is necessary for the client’s current cycle. Moreover, only ask for general information, you will have more results because your Internet users will not be afraid.
Also, it is possible to do progressive profiling. This consists of asking the strict minimum at the very beginning and each time the contact interacts with your company, you ask him for some additional information to complete his profile, asking for new (sometimes more personal) information. The most important thing to remember is to start slowly because rushing your visitors can only scare them away.
4. Take advantage of every opportunity
A form can adapt to many different circumstances. Use strategies to offer options depending on your visitor’s buying cycle such as contact us, request a demo, download a document, make an appointment, subscribe to our newsletter, etc.
Every time you have the opportunity to request information from your visitors in exchange for something from you, put in a form. This way, you won’t miss any contact, because everyone comes to your site for a different reason, so it’s important to exploit all of them.
5. Avoid all distractions
Preserve the interest of the Internet user by eliminating any other call to action. Limit the navigation elements surrounding your form, such as sidebars. These only serve to distract your visitor from their objective. Above all, do not put any link directly in the form that leads to another page. You could lose a prospect by doing so.
It’s a bit like a landing page, build your page in such a way that the user has only one choice but to leave and that is to scroll down to your form and then fill it in.
6. Use a simple and attractive design
Your main objective is to collect information. That’s why choosing a clean design will benefit you. Put yourself in their shoes: you arrive at a website that seems to offer solutions that meet your needs. Then you come to a form that you were ready to fill out to get more information, but you don’t know where to start because there are so many text and graphic elements and… it’s too much for you, you decide to leave and look for another company that will be able to answer your questions more easily.
It must happen a lot more often than we think. So simplify your form by using a single column, a white background, and as little superfluous text as possible and you will certainly get better results.
7. Make it easier for them
Look at and analyze your form by taking the position of the Internet user. Use a title that leaves no room for confusion about the purpose of the form. Also, choose clear subheadings to divide your form and help with navigation. Make sure all labels are understandable and provide drop-down lists if necessary. Consider including questions if possible.
Also, if applicable, explain the benefits to your visitor of filling the form. Remember that your prospect needs to feel that he is the one who needs you, not the other way around. You could also explain the steps that will follow completion of the form so that your contact knows what to expect and what the next steps are.
8. Optimize your buttons
First of all, your buttons should be a good size so that they are easy to spot. They should be the elements that attract the most attention. That’s why using graphic buttons with contrasting colors is a very good idea.
Also change the terms of your buttons so that they directly reflect the benefit: Ask for a demo, Contact me, Subscribe me to the newsletter, etc. Because from now on, Click here is no longer enough. It’s the most used call to action by businesses and it just makes it go unseen… It would be a shame to pass up an opportunity because of that!
9. Specify any errors
In the event of an error on the form, align the error text. Don’t force your user to look for where an error occurred, just point them to him. There is nothing more frustrating than wanting to register but not being able to because of an error you can’t find.
Bonus: Don’t forget the reCAPTCHA
A CAPTCHA is a program from Google that you can put in your forms to filter robots from humans with tests that only humans can answer. It can sometimes be a simple checkbox, but it can also be images to select or text to write…
With this in your forms, you make sure that you only collect reliable email addresses and not spam. You should, therefore, put one in all your forms, it costs nothing and it’s very efficient!
Conclusion
With these tips, you can finally maximize the results of your forms! Also, if you want to learn more after your first contact to move the customer through his cycle. We suggest that you adopt scenarios via the welcome message, the confirmation page after completing the form, and all your other communications. You can then use creative strategies to retrieve data from other web forms and visitor behavior. But that’s another subject!
