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63% of businesses say their biggest marketing challenge is generating leads and web traffic.
And one of the most effective tools to address this challenge is lead forms.
Lead capture forms are a great way to keep your pipeline jampacked with quality leads. But there are certain tips and best practices you must know to ensure lead forms convert.
I have gathered a few tips ad best practices that will come in handy to help you convert your website visitors into leads and customers.
Keep reading!
What is a Lead Capture Form?
A lead capture form is used to collect website visitors’ information with the objective of converting them into customers down the line.
Lead capture forms are contact forms that are important to ensure higher conversions. Hence, businesses must build lead capture forms keeping in mind the factors that can successfully convert users into qualified leads.
Why is Lead Capture Form Important?
Lead capture forms are important because they help businesses capture quality leads and move them along the sales funnel.
When a visitor fills out a lead capture form in exchange for content, it indicates that they are already interested in your product. Thus, the visitor is obviously a sales lead whom you can proactively approach using the provided information in the form.
Overall, lead capture forms ensure that a business generates and captures leads that can ultimately result in a successful sale.
Things to Include in a Lead Capture Form
Your lead capture form must be briefly informative, and it must capture your audience’s attention. Having said that, here are a few must-have elements for your lead capture form.
A Clear Headline
If you plan to use popup lead collection forms, craft a clear and encouraging title for the form. Make the title easily understandable to attract more visitors effectively.
A Call-to-Action (CTA)
Did you know that personalized CTAs convert 42% more visitors into leads than untargeted CTAs? So, keep your CTA understandable that attract visitors to perform the desired action. In short, use an action-oriented CTA to encourage action from the audience.
Information and Contact Fields
Regardless of whether you prefer to have long or short forms, ensure that you include essential form fields only. Collect the necessary information and contact details through your lead collection form to effectively generate leads while making your form look less intimidating.
Image
A relevant image on your lead capture form can make it look more attractive. Your visitors will notice the lead collection form better with an image.
Submission Button
The ultimate vital component of a lead capture form is the submission button. So, keep it prominent and use buttons labeled ‘Click Here’ or ‘Go’ instead of ‘Submit’ as they have better conversion rates.
11 Tips to Create a Lead Capture Form That Really Converts
It’s easy to create a lead form, especially using a lead capture form template. However, creating a lead form isn’t enough. You must create a lead capture form that actually converts, and that can be a bit tricky.
Here are eleven awesome tips to help you create the best and most highly converting lead-capturing forms.
1. Create a multi-step lead capture form
One of the best ways to optimize your lead capture form is to build a form that gathers data step by step. A multi-step form tends to be more interactive and user-friendly. Hence, it helps in improving customer experience. Here’s a multi-step lead capture form example.
Multi-step lead capture forms have proven to increase conversions time and again. VentureHarbour changed its basic static WordPress contact form to a multi-step form and witnessed a 743% increase in conversion rates (from 0.96% to 8.1%).
Similarly, Vendio, a website-building platform, saw a 59% increase in leads after switching to a multi-step lead capture form.
2. Create interactive lead-capture forms
Interactive content in your lead capture forms encourages the audience to participate in the conversation actively. As a result, answering questions become more engaging. It helps the brand to interact more with the audience.
OptinMonster uses a survey questionnaire to make their lead capture form more interactive.
Here are a few quick ways to make your lead forms more interactive.
- Create questionnaires to learn about your existing customers and gather information from the new visitors.
- Create fun quizzes to keep the audience entertained while capturing leads through forms.
- Gamify your website to improve your lead capture forms. Create game-like rewards, badges, and scores to motivate visitors to provide their data.
Basepaws uses a spin-to-win coupon wheel to make the lead capture form more fun and highly converting.
Further, you can also use surveys, chatbots, polls, etc., to make your lead capture forms more attractive and interactive.
3. Offer incentives and discounts in your lead capture forms
Improving conversion rates is easier when you provide incentives through your lead capture forms. A special discount on purchases, guides, eBooks, or free delivery if you are an eCommerce business – these incentives work great in drawing in new customers and collecting information.
Bulk.ly offers an interesting incentive targeted at customer needs to ensure high conversion rates. Also, the company uses a bright submit button to make users click on it.
4. Implement a pop-up lead capture form
Lead capture form pop-ups are effective in improving your conversion rates. They quickly grab your audiences’ attention, gather lead information, and improve the overall user experience.
You can add eye-catching visual elements and color schemes to make your pop-up lead capture form attractive. It makes your website look more appealing as well. Also, ensure that the form pops up at the right time; else it may annoy the visitors.
Zillow uses a simple pop-up lead capture form with a CTA to generate more leads. When the pop-up appears, the background dims to make it easier for the visitors to focus more on the form. Also, Zillow makes sign-up easy by giving you the option to connect to your Google or Facebook account.
5. Keep the length of your lead capture form short
Unbounce took down their 11-field contact form and replaced it with a 4-field form. The result? Form submissions increased by 160%. Also, the team did not find any difference in lead quality between those who filled out the 11-field form and those who filled out the 4-fields form.
Long forms can overwhelm users. They increase the possibility of visitors leaving the website midway due to the number of questions asked in the form.
Crazy Egg uses only one form field visible on its landing page, along with a sign-up CTA, social proofing, and incentive to ensure higher conversions.
6. Use Lead Capture Form Template
Lead capture form templates are an easy way to get your forms up and running. There are several platforms that offer pre-built lead capture form templates that work well for conversions. With these templates, you can save the extra time and effort on creating the forms from scratch.
WPForms offer several lead capture form templates to choose from. Take a look.
7. Make your lead capture form’s CTA clear and prominent
Write a clear CTA focusing on what you want your visitors to do. Keep the CTA concise and position it well so that the audience can distinctly see it. Using action verbs for your CTA helps to encourage visitors to take the desired action.
Also, you can add imagery or arrows to guide the visitor if required. Use bright colors to make the CTA buttons eye-catching.
Simple Habit uses a clear CTA written in 1st person and a colorful button to convert visitors, that is, to make them download the app.
8. Personalize lead capture forms
Personalization improves user experience. It makes consumers more likely to do business with the brand. In fact, 79% of organizations with a documented personalization strategy exceeded their revenue goals.
For lead capture forms, targeting enables you to approach the audience at the right time with relevant content. Also, lead capture form pop-ups, multi-step forms, and AI bots can help you personalize your forms based on your audiences’ online behavior.
Using the visitor’s browsing data, you can offer them the right content at the right time. For instance, information like
- What page your user is on,
- Time spent on the page,
- User’s location,
- Number of sessions on your website,
- Traffic source, etc.
can help you target and personalize the appearance of your lead capture form. If you target better and personalize when and where the lead form appears, visitors will be more likely to convert.
9. Avoid asking for too much personal information
Create a simple lead capture form because that’s the best way of getting high-quality leads. Trying to complicate the form by asking for addresses, birthdays, contact numbers, and more can lead to adverse results.
Research shows that asking for contact numbers can reduce your conversion rates by 5%. So, collect information that you truly need (like email address) and leave the rest for the latter stages of the sales funnel.
10. Always add an opt-in box and your privacy policy
Always add an opt-in box to take customers’ consent to receive marketing messages. Once they tick the box, you have permission to send messages and newsletters. Thus, you can target and personalize content accordingly to keep them engaged.
Mention your privacy policy clearly on the form and ensure it is visible. You can also embed a link, add a pop-up, or a bot that directs visitors to the page where the policy is fully described.
11. Ask for critical information first
When creating your lead capture form, ask for the crucial information first, like your email address. This way, even if the visitor does not complete the form, you can access their email id. Also, make the relevant information mandatory and if you include personal information, keep it optional.
Top 3 Lead Capture Form Best Practices
After the 11 awesome tips, here’s a bonus section where I will brief three lead capture form best practices that can effectively yield results. Take a look!
1. Pick the right position for your form
Your lead capture form must be positioned well on your landing page. Though there’s no hard and fast rule, placing your lead capture form above the fold works well as it is easier to spot, and there’s no need for scrolling.
Here’s an above-the-fold lead capture form example by HubSpot. The brand is all about growth, and that’s what it says in the above-the-fold content.
Besides, above the fold, you can also place your lead capture form within or beside the landing page.
Additionally, you also have the option to place your form below the fold. A study shows that 76% of users scroll to some extent and 22% of users scroll to the bottom of the page if the page has a scroll bar.
2. A/B test the lead capture form
Perform A/B tests to identify the best version of your lead capture form. Determine the most effective variation of the form’s copy, design, and CTA to improve conversion rates.
However, remember to test one element at a time to get perfect results. For example, if you are testing the color or size of the CTA button, don’t simultaneously check the length of the form.
3. Send emails after form submission
Whether your audience wants to download free content, schedule a demo, or contact about your services, they prefer an immediate response after hitting the submit button. So, send automated emails after your visitors submit the lead capture form. This way, you can start building your relationship with the lead on the right note.
Capture Quality Leads with RevenueHero
With RevenueHero, you can capture, qualify, and distribute leads at once. You can qualify leads based on their answers to the form fields and route them to the right reps. By doing that, you are saving your sales reps time by avoiding unqualified leads from booking their calendar.
