9 Ways to Boost Your Form Conversions

You’ve just spent tons of time and money on creating the perfect asset. Now you must exert just as much energy to get visitors to submit your form. It’s not enough to just pop a form on a website, cross your fingers, and hope your visitor will take the time to fill out your form. You must take steps to ensure your lead generation form will engage and convert your visitors.

Below are 9 ways you can start to boost your form conversions.

1. Keep it Simple and Short (K.I.S.S)

“Keep it simple, stupid” (or in this case short) is a design principle which states that designs and/or systems should be as simple as possible. The same concept holds true for form design. People are bombarded by tons of information all the time. They are accustomed to getting what they want, when they want, as fast as possible. That is why it is imperative to keep your forms as short as possible. The fewer form fields to fill out, the higher the conversion rate­­­­­­. If your form is too long and complicated, you will risk form abandonment. Always consider why you are requesting certain information from the user and how you will use it.

One field you may consider removing is phone number. It is best practice to ask for email address, as users are more likely to provide one rather than a personal phone number.

2. Order Form Fields from Easiest to Hardest

It is also important to order the form fields from easiest to the most time-consuming to fill out. If a user has already filled in the easy fields (name and email), they are much more likely to fill in the fields that require more information (like credit card numbers). They have invested their time and want to finish what they started.

Ask for information logically, from the user’s perspective, not from the application’s perspective. Look to other forms as examples of the typical sequence (email address, name, street address, city, country, etc.). Put required fields first, and if you must include fields that are not required, limit the number you use and put them towards the end.

3. Clearly Title Your Form and Fields

When you develop a title for your form, make sure it clearly lets your visitors know what they will get once they submit the form. It is also just as important to give your form fields clear labels that tell the user exactly what data they are expected to enter, along with serving specific error messages if they do not enter the correctly formatted information.

4. Use One Column

Single column forms are the fastest to fill out, the easiest to follow, and the most likely to be submitted by your visitors. Users want to get through a form as quickly as possible with the fewest steps. Forms with multiple columns add more complication to the experience.

If a form has horizontally adjacent fields, then the user must scan in a Z pattern, slowing the speed of comprehension—wasting time. But if a form is in a single column, the path to completion is a straight line down to the finish line.

5. Offer Radio Buttons Instead of Drop-Down Boxes

Although radio buttons may take up more space on your form, they are faster to select. Forms with drop-down menus tend to get abandoned more often than forms with radio button selections. Opening a drop-down menu and looking through options takes more time and effort to complete than seeing everything displayed at the same time.

6. Have a Clear Call-to-Action (CTA)

A call-to-action (CTA) is typically a button or link placed on a website or form to drive prospective customers to convert to leads. The more clicks you get on your CTA button/form submits, the more likely you are to convert visitors into new leads or customers. A CTA should be easy to find on your form, grab your visitor’s attention, and contain clear, action-oriented copy that lets visitors know what they are getting by submitting your form.

7. Design for the Right Device

More and more people are visiting websites and filling out forms on mobile devices. Be sure to simplify their sign-up, registration, or purchase processes by implementing mobile-friendly form design. Mobile form design should be user-friendly and responsive (written and visual content on a form must fit every device’s screen).

Mobile forms must be legible on small screens, so consider using a minimalist design with large action buttons and fields that can easily be selected and submitted while on-the-go.

Screen resolutions can vary a lot, so design for the devices most people are actually using, not the latest and greatest you think they should be using.

8. Say Thank You

After a visitor submits your form, sending them to a separate thank you page can create new post-conversion opportunities. First and foremost, it lets them know their form has been submitted, and then it provides them with the asset, registration, or sign up they requested.

Other than the obvious message, a thank you page also tells your customers what they should expect from you next. It should present them with what else you have to offer. The thank you page provides you with opportunities to reengage and build an even stronger relationship with your customers. You can offer a newsletter signup, a chance to visit another part of your website, or a registration to an event or webinar.

9. Test, Test, Test

You can follow best practices and make guesses about what you think will have the best conversion on your form, but A/B testing is the only way to determine what is working using factual data. Test your headline, test form length, test CTA position. There are endless opportunities to test before you commit.

User testing can assess how easily your target audience can interact with your design while helping to identify typical problems that may cause friction. Is your form too long? Is your form too complicated? Is your CTA clear and easy to find? You will be able to answer these questions and more through testing.

If you need assistance boosting your form conversion rates, building and testing your forms, or even putting together an entire lead generation strategy, Relationship One is always here to help!

Also, check out the R1 Form Submitter Campaign Enhancer App for FREE! This app allows Oracle Eloqua users to generate a form submission on behalf of a Contact record with hard-coded values, or data pulled from their Contact record and their linked Account record. If you are storing form data within a Custom Object, this Cloud Action uniquely lets you append a submission ID to create a new Custom Object record with each form submission.