10 Things You Can Do Right Now to Create Better Lead Forms

What if you were actively sabotaging your best lead conversion strategy?

Lead forms are a great way to gather leads and increase conversions. But a bad form can turn customers away and actually prevent your business from growing.

The solution is simple: you need better lead forms. We know—that's easier said than done and most businesses don't know what they need to do to improve their lead forms.

That's where we come in. With these key strategies, you can improve your lead forms today and immediately reap the benefits of qualified leads. 

1. The Right Information

On the most basic level, a lead form is designed to gather information about your customers. That means you need to start by figuring out what information your team is seeking to gain.

For example, your B2B company would need to gather the business name from a prospective customer. If you operate as a B2C business, it's not really important to know where a customer works.

If you offer a variety of services, your form should ask which service(s) that customers are most interested in. However, if you offer a single primary service, then you can ditch that question entirely.

It's almost always worth it to ask customers about their projected budget. This helps both of you set certain expectations and forecast exactly what you can do with the money available.

Some information is always required, including things like phone number and email address. Otherwise, you might not be able to reach out to the customer, defeating the entire purpose of the lead form.

2. Aim High

Now you have a better idea of what information to include (or not include) on a lead form. Here's another essential question that you may not be asking: where, exactly, should a lead form be located on your website?

Even though newspapers are largely-forgotten in our digital world, they offer a valuable lesson about information placement. Generally speaking, customers pay more attention to info that is "above the fold." That's why the most important newspaper headline is always the first thing you see.

What does this mean for your website? Generally speaking, important elements such as lead forms should be one of the first things your customers encounter. This lets you take advantage of their initial interest in your site, business, and services.

It's a rookie mistake to think your form should be near the bottom of your page. You might think this is giving your site more time to win them over. In reality, you're just giving them more time to get bored and bounce before they ever fill out the form.

3. Memorable and Direct CTA

If we're being honest, most businesses take the call to action for granted. After all, simply asking a customer to do something seems easy enough. In reality, creating a memorable and direct call to action is one of the most difficult things you must do as a business.

The CTA must be memorable and catchy because it is where you will win over the customers who are on the fence. A portion of your visitors will bounce no matter what, and a portion of them will fill out the form no matter what. Your job, then, is to persuade the visitors who could go either way.

One of the best ways to enhance a CTA is to add specific numbers to it. For example, customers may dismiss vague promises that you'll increase their web traffic. But if you promise to bring them an additional 20,000 visitors, the lightbulb goes off.

You can also have your cake and eat it, too. For example, you can have a really short and simple CTA in the form of a button that says something like "Get Started Now," and you can put that button at the end of very specific research and social proof (more on this in a bit) that helps win customers over.

4. Don't Ask For the Same Info

We've talked a bit about what information to ask for on your lead forms. But here's a simple bit of advice: never ask the customer for the same info twice.

Some forms ask users to enter in a password twice. This sounds like a good way to enhance security, but the annoyance of having to retype that information again may be enough to turn someone away.

You can also use advanced techniques such as progressive profiling to remember information that customers have entered before. For example, maybe someone previously filled out one of your forms. With progressive profiling, your site will remember most of their info if they come back and fill out another form.

Your guiding design philosophy needs to be simplicity. If you want customers to fill out the form, you need to make the form easy to fill out!

5. Offer a (Simplified) Privacy Policy

One reason that a customer may not want to fill out your forms is that they are wary of giving out their personal information. They don't want to fill out a form today and then spend the next month being bombarded by telemarketers and spam emails.

To put their minds at ease, you can share your privacy policy upfront. However, instead of making customers read a giant collection of legal knowledge, you can simplify the privacy policy.

For example, a policy below the CTA that says something like "no cost, unsubscribe whenever you want" tells the customer all they need to know. When they realize there are no hidden fees or annoying commitments, they will be likelier to complete the form.

6. Add Social Proof

Customers often rely on feedback from others before making a decision. In fact, nearly 70% of consumers now read product reviews before they make their purchase.

What's the lesson there? Simple: customers trust other customers. They may not trust slick advertising, but they trust in the experiences of other people.

You can take advantage of this by adding things like customer testimonials to your website. When users see how happy your business and its products have made other people, they are far likelier to fill out the form than they otherwise would be.

7. AIDA Model For Form Design

To create a successful lead form, you must take the prospective customer on a journey. And that means following the AIDA model when it comes to form design.

If you don't already know, AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. This is a simplified version of a customer's journey from initial interest to conversion.

Things like eye-catching product images and infographics are a great way to capture customer attention. You can then stoke their interest by pointing to customer testimonials about the quality of your services.

From there, highly-specific promises (such as the aforementioned "increase your website traffic by 20,000 users") will transform interest into desire. At that point, they are primed and ready to take action via your CTA.

Throughout this entire process, don't forget that less is more. Things like streamlined design and good use of white space help customers focus on the most important info.

8. Perception of Value

We all hope to dazzle our customers with the relevance of our website, products, and services. And in some cases, this may be enough to get someone to fill out a lead form.

However, most customers realize that they are giving away valuable personal information to your business. Understandably, they want to know what they are getting in return for that information.

As we mentioned before, specific promises of certain outcomes (like a major increase in web traffic) may be enough to convey the value of filling out the form. However, we recommend sweetening the deal by offering something like a free ebook to anyone who completes the form.

By establishing this "quid pro quo" early on, you also plant the seeds of customer loyalty to your brand.

9. Test Your Methods

At the end of the day, there is no one approach to lead forms that works for every business and every set of customers. That's why you should relentlessly test different methods until you discover what is most effective.

For example, A/B testing can help you experiment with different layouts, different forms, different CTAs, and so on. And while it's a bit time-consuming, conducting different A/B tests over a long period of time helps you discover what gets the best results.

10. Alignment Between Form, CTA, and Landing Page

Our last bit of advice sounds simple. In reality, it's really hard to pull off. You need to make sure there is solid alignment between your form, your CTA, and the rest of the landing page.

Sometimes, this is as simple as using consistent phrasing. Are you offering an e-book for signing up or an online course? Using different terminology for the same thing will confuse users and drive them away.

Other times, this involves more advanced design techniques. For example, you can include the lead form on the right and information about it to the left. This lets you provide in-depth information about your ebook or other bonus while keeping the form nice and streamlined.

Better Lead Forms: Get Started Today

Designing better lead forms is a sure-fire way to land qualified leads and improve your company’s conversion rate. 

And if you need a little help? Referable specializes in creating dependable inbound marketing for SaaS companies. To see what we can do for your own company, contact us today!