7 Website Form Best Practices to Generate More Leads & Enquiries

Comsys Web design offers unsurpassed quality websites in any niche.

Are you looking for ways to generate more leads and enquiries from your website? Want to learn the best practices to follow to optimise your website forms?

Lessiter Media shares its website form tips in this infographic.

They break things down as follows:

• Understand page friction
• Form length
• List all the information you can ask for
• Decide what’s nice to have vs must have
• Talk to both marketing and sales
• Use smart forms and progressive profiling
• Test to optimise for conversions

Check out the infographic for more.

 

In the digital age, websites play a pivotal role in attracting potential customers and generating leads for businesses. One of the most crucial elements in this process is the website form. Whether it’s a contact form, a lead generation form, or a signup form, optimizing these forms can significantly impact your conversion rates.

This blog post will delve into seven essential website form best practices that will help you reduce friction, improve user experience, and ultimately generate more leads and enquiries for your business.

 

Understand Page Friction

Friction refers to any element on a website that hinders the visitor from completing a desired action, such as filling out a form. Understanding and minimizing page friction is essential to increase form submissions.

Here are some tips to reduce friction:

• Simplify the design: Keep the form layout clean and straightforward. Avoid clutter and distractions that may draw users away from the form.
• Limit form fields: Only ask for essential information initially to reduce the user’s effort in filling out the form. Extra fields can always be included in the later stages of the customer journey.
• Use inline validation: Implement real-time validation for form fields to provide instant feedback, guiding users toward accurate inputs and preventing errors.
• Optimize for mobile: Ensure your forms are mobile-friendly and easy to use on various devices. Mobile users form a significant portion of website traffic, and a bad mobile experience can result in lost leads.

 

Form Length

The length of your website form directly impacts conversion rates. Balancing the amount of information you collect with the user’s willingness to share it is vital. A shorter form tends to attract more submissions, while a longer form can provide richer data. Finding the right balance is crucial.

Here are some considerations:

• Goal-oriented forms: Clearly define the purpose of each form and the specific information needed to achieve that goal. Avoid adding unnecessary fields that do not contribute to the primary objective.
• Progressive profiling: Implement progressive profiling, a technique where returning users are asked for different information each time they fill out a form. This helps to gradually gather more details without overwhelming users with a lengthy form.
• Multi-step forms: Consider breaking longer forms into multiple steps or sections. This can make the process feel less daunting and improve completion rates.
• A/B testing: Experiment with different form lengths to identify the sweet spot for your audience. A/B testing will help you determine which form length drives the most conversions.

 

List All the Information You Can Ask For

When designing your website form, it’s essential to have a clear understanding of the type of information you need from prospects. However, it’s equally important to understand what you can ask for ethically and legally.

• Be transparent: Inform users about why you are collecting their information and how it will be used. Transparency builds trust and encourages users to provide accurate details.
• GDPR compliance: If you are collecting data from users in the European Union, ensure your form is GDPR-compliant. Follow the necessary guidelines regarding data storage, consent, and rights of the data subjects.
• Data relevance: Collect only the information that is directly related to your business needs. Avoid asking for sensitive or irrelevant data, as this might deter potential leads from completing the form.
• Provide options: Wherever possible, offer options for data input. For example, use dropdown lists for certain fields to ensure consistency and accuracy.

 

Decide What’s Nice to Have vs Must Have

Not all information on your form is equally crucial. To increase form completion rates, differentiate between “must-have” and “nice-to-have” fields.

• Must-have fields: These are essential details you absolutely need to gather, such as the user’s name, email address, and primary contact number.
• Nice-to-have fields: These are additional pieces of information that could provide valuable insights but are not essential for initial lead capture. Examples include job title, company size, or specific interests.
• Use conditional logic: Implement conditional logic in your forms to show or hide certain fields based on the user’s previous responses. This way, you can tailor the form to the user’s needs, making it more user-friendly and relevant.
• Prioritize lead generation: For lead generation forms, focus on the critical contact details first. Follow up with nurturing campaigns to collect additional information over time.

 

Talk to Both Marketing and Sales

The marketing and sales teams are essential stakeholders when it comes to website forms. Aligning their objectives and collaborating on the form strategy can significantly impact lead generation efforts.

• Define goals together: Have open discussions with both teams to identify common goals and the specific information required to qualify leads effectively.
• Implement lead scoring: Integrate the form data with your customer relationship management (CRM) system to enable lead scoring. This ensures that sales teams receive high-quality, well-qualified leads for follow-up.
• Provide feedback loops: Establish a feedback mechanism to inform the marketing team about lead quality. This will help them optimize the form and overall lead generation process continually.
• Leverage marketing automation: Integrate marketing automation tools with your forms to streamline lead nurturing and follow-up processes. Automated responses and personalized content can enhance the user experience and increase conversion rates.

 

Use Smart Forms and Progressive Profiling

Smart forms and progressive profiling techniques are powerful tools to gather more information from leads without overwhelming them. These strategies can significantly impact the quality and quantity of leads.

• Smart forms: Implement smart forms that adapt to users based on their previous interactions with your website or marketing campaigns. Tailor the form fields dynamically to suit the user’s profile and behavior.
• Progressive profiling: As mentioned earlier, progressive profiling involves collecting additional information from returning users over time. Gradually build a comprehensive lead profile without burdening the user with lengthy forms.
• Personalization: Use data from previous form submissions to personalize the user’s experience. Address the user by name, show relevant content, and pre-fill known information in subsequent forms.
• Analytics integration: Integrate your forms with analytics tools to track user behavior, drop-off points, and conversion rates. This data will help you optimize your smart forms and progressive profiling strategies continuously.

 

Test to Optimize for Conversions

Website form optimization is an ongoing process. Regularly testing and analyzing the performance of your forms will help you identify areas for improvement and maximize conversions.

• A/B testing: Conduct A/B tests with different form variations to determine which design, layout, or content resonates best with your audience. Use metrics like conversion rate, bounce rate, and time on page to measure performance.
• Heatmaps and click tracking: Utilize heatmaps and click tracking tools to understand user behavior on your forms. Identify areas where users spend more time or abandon the form altogether.
• User feedback: Gather user feedback through surveys or direct communication to understand pain points and usability issues with your forms.
• Continuous refinement: Based on the insights gathered from testing and feedback, continually refine and optimize your forms to improve lead generation results.

 

Conclusion

A well-optimized website form is an invaluable asset for lead generation and customer acquisition. By understanding page friction, striking the right form length balance, collecting relevant information, and implementing smart forms and progressive profiling, you can enhance the user experience and drive more leads and enquiries.

Collaboration between marketing and sales teams, adherence to ethical data collection practices, and continuous testing and refinement will ensure your forms consistently generate the desired results. Remember, small improvements in

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