Obviously, you want to do whatever you can to get the lead.
Not everyone who lands on your sales page is going to be ready to buy or fill out a form for more information or a free download. A 100 percent conversion rate is an unattainable number. But you do want to get it as high as you possibly can.
A lot of that relies on your lead generation form.
It’s essential to create a high-converting lead generation form on your website and each of your landing pages to maximize leads from page visitors. Here are a few tips on what can make or break your lead gen form.
1. Keep Your Lead Generation Form Short and Sweet
Asking for too much information upfront deters a potential lead from filling out your form, so if you have six different fields you require before sending a potential customer an ebook, you’re going to lose a lot of potential form submissions. If someone really wants your ebook, or is really interested in your business, or is really ready to buy, you might be able to rely on them to fill out six fields in your form.
However, for a brand new person who has just been introduced to your business, they’re going to see that form and shy away.
Base your number of fields on how far down someone is in the sales funnel. The farther down, the more fields and data you can collect.
2. Place Your Lead Generation Form Strategically
In most cases, we say to place your form above the fold. This means that it’s in the top section of your landing page and is visible without having to scroll down.
We say this because everything that lives above the fold on a webpage gets the most eyeballs. If someone lands on your page and doesn’t immediately see a way to get what they came there for, they might exit out and never come back.
However, there are some cases where including all relevant information at the top of the page and moving the form lower down the page can result in even more conversions. The best way to know what is going to work best for your business is to create both versions and A/B test them to see which performs better.
If you don’t have the time or resources for a test like that, it’s a good idea to just keep your form above the fold and on the right side of the page.
3. Use Drop-down Fields
Yes, we said to limit the number of fields included within your forms. But if there’s a field that you simply can’t do without, see if you can switch it to a dropdown field instead of a text field that needs to be filled out. This makes it much easier for a potential lead to select an option from a prefixed list and move on.
This also makes it easy for you to segment your list down the line.
4. Customize the Button
Instead of using a generic button title like “Submit” or “Sign up,” customize your button with something that sounds both actionable and personable. Use text like “Get my free download” that sounds softer and includes first-person language.
Maximizing conversions within your online lead generation forms is a great way to increase the leads coming down the pipeline through your lead nurturing efforts and other sales strategies. To learn more about high-converting lead generation forms, contact us for a free demo.
The original version of this article was first published on ReachForce.