10 Ways to Build a Form that Creates High Conversion
Forms are the start of your marketing campaign’s journey, and this is practically the first time you interact with your potential customers in your digital marketing journey. And as they say, ‘the first impression is the last impression,’ and you really don’t want all your marketing strategies to collapse just because you couldn’t get that first impression right.
The make or break of a successful conversion rate as a result of your marketing campaign depends on the quality of your forms and how you strategically use it. With the growing competition and your target market getting several options to switch between brands, they just need one reason to make your brand look less legitimate before moving to another website.
The most initial and important stage of marketing is to collect contact data, especially email addresses, of your potential customers to open a channel for communication and conversion for the target contact. This helps you grow your email list and create a form that asks for such contact details of your target market, in return for something that would entice customer interest, it makes the process easier.
Since you don’t get a second chance to make that first impression for a specific marketing campaign, you need to do it right by creating flawless, frictionless, and impactful marketing customer sign up forms.
Reasons Why Signup Forms May Fail to Generate Desireable Leads
Converting leads can mean anything from product purchase, content download, page visit and click, and email opening, and depending on your objective, you need to make the right decisions while building the form. But you cannot afford to make these generic mistakes, made by many marketers:
- Not using the right CTA to attract customer attention
- Complicated page layout that makes it difficult for your potential customers to find what they were looking for
- Too many questions in the form that bores the user or makes them feel uncomfortable sharing too much personal information
- Cluttered form design and use of unflattering color that can make a page look unappealing or bland
- Forgetting to optimize for mobile users
- Not using smart CAPTCHA to weed out unqualified responses
- Not enabling auto-filling options
- Forgetting to assure the authenticity of your signup form
10 Ways to Improve Your Form Conversions
Poorly designed forms can become an obstacle between your organization and its lead generation if it fails to serve the purpose. Form content, copy, colors, and design play a huge role in the success of form signups. Though creating a perfect form that would help in growing ROMI can be tricky, but with the given guidelines, you can create a marking difference:
- Use the Right Layout: A compact, yet appealing form, with the right layout, can make it look easier and less time-consuming to fill. Thus it may encourage potential customers to fill it. Keep the form’s input field limited to only as much as needed and don’t forget to label each field. Also, make sure that the labels are placed above the corresponding input fields for quick reference. Avoid creating several columns within a form and stick to one question per row to establish a sense of comfort with the user and avoid unnecessary confusion. You can also hide completed fields to reduce too many words on a page.
- Position the Form Properly: Placing the signup form in a noticeable place and mostly above the fold on the landing page makes it stand out amongst the other elements on the web page. If you want your forms to get filled, make it visible, and do not make visitors scroll down to find the form.
- Don’t use too many fields: Three is the average number of questions to which your target can answer patiently. Anything above that can make your form look lengthy and time-consuming to fill, and your potential customers will ignore it.
- Use the Right CTA: The CTA that takes your potential clients to the form page should be eye-catching and informative. Use the color for your CTA button that fits your website’s current design and layout, but is contrasting enough to make it stand out.
- Use simple CAPTCHA: There are several CAPTCHA options to select from these days, and you don’t have to stick to the old and lengthy process of calculating a problem or selecting images. Time-consuming CAPTCHA is often neglected by users these days, which can lead to incomplete form filling. Rather, you can use reCAPTCHA or best, use honeypot technology to filter out unauthentic form fill-ups.
- Show social proof: There are several tools available in the market today, which can help you collect form related metrics and highlight it as well. Displaying real-time information such as form usage numbers and customer benefits, by using the form, can help you build more trust within your target market. Thus try leveraging the benefits of modern technology and show the social proof of your form on the same page to create a positive influence and generate more leads.
- Mention user benefit: In this super busy world, no one has time to share their personal details just like that. A signup form that promises to offer something beneficial in return is taken seriously, and those that clarify them in the form are more efficient. You can state the purpose of the form in a catchy copy with the ‘submit’ CTA or just as a subheading. You can also use this opportunity to engage the potential customers by briefing them about the next step of their journey towards becoming a buyer.
- Ensure your visitors’ privacy: Customer data is one of the most hacked data, and it is your responsibility to protect the data you are collecting via signup forms. These days, customers are aware of the risk of their personal data breach and will not share their information if your platform does not offer the needed security. As proof of the privacy policy, you have adopted to secure their data, place the link to your privacy policy next to the form submit button. HubSpot’s privacy policy gives you a complete list of what should go on your privacy page.
- Optimize the form for mobile: Not optimizing your signup form for mobile users automatically eliminates many of your potential customers who use smartphones. These days, most internet users are utilizing smartphones! Moreover, optimizing the form for mobile display helps you to eliminate unnecessary fields, resulting in a cleaner design.
- Make errors visible: It is normal for customers to make small mistakes while typing their personal details. If you don’t help them recognize and rectify them, you will end up getting the wrong information, which is of no value. You can use tools that help detect error patterns and highlight them before they are submitted.
An impactful signup form is a great way to capture high-quality leads from your website and is yet overlooked by most marketers. A poorly designed contact form can affect your conversion rate, leading to the failure of the entire digital marketing campaign. To make your marketing game strong, right from the start by implementing some of these industry best practices in your future signup forms.