At adWhite we’ve been focusing intently on new SEO objectives around here lately, which has lead us to some great new information on landing pages. Recently we had an internal discussion about some of our collective, recent learning on the use of submit forms on a landing page. To re-cap, a landing page is a specific web page designed as part of a campaign, used to capture a user’s information and pique their interest in your product or service.
So, keeping all of the landing page basics in mind, let’s see if you’re using the submit forms on your site correctly. Landing pages are simple and should only contain one link, which is the CTA (Call To Action) for the user – aka your submit form!
The submit form should be short and sweet, yet the way you ask people to fill this out does matter. It’s important to know that the way you ask your prospective customer to fill this out is just as important as the information you’re asking for. So the way you ask for their information and what you ask for are equally important.
Next, let’s discuss audience friction as it relates to completing online forms. Friction is created by any hesitation the user might have to completing your submit form. It’s important to make your lead generation relevant to the audience in order to make them correlate with the level of friction involved to obtain the incentive. There are two categories of friction, perceived and actual. Perceived friction is essentially the “shock factor” of having to complete a long form. This perception is that the form can be overwhelmingly long and cause people to change their mind. Avoid this and split your form over more than one page, if needed.
Actual Friction refers to the time and trouble it takes to actually fill in the form. To ensure you don’t lose a prospective customer, avoid too many open-ended questions, don’t provide drop-down menus that don’t encompass all options, and lastly capthca forms, while safe, can significantly slow this process down on a landing page, so just avoid it if possible.
Our last teaching point that we’d like to share with you is that using different virtual currencies can increase your conversion opportunities and offer people more options. It’s important to offer an incentive to your prospective customer for completing your submit form. The goal is to balance the size of this incentive with the friction. We suggest offering an incentive such as: a free trial, discount coupon/voucher, contest entry, free quote, newsletter registration, or free consultation to just name a few.
So let’s see what you’ve taken away from our discussion and take the mini quiz below (answers are below):
1) (T or F) The way you ask people to complete a form doesn’t matter, so long as you have a form.
2) It’s important to make your lead generation relevant to __________ in order to make them correlate with the level of friction involved to obtain the incentive.
3) 4) (T or F) Actual friction is the perception that the submit form can be overwhelmingly long and cause people to change their mind.
4) Different __________ can increase your conversion opportunities and offer more options.
Answers
1) F – The way you ask people to complete your form fields is just as important as the information you’re asking for
2) The audience
3) F – Perception friction is that in which the user perceives the form to be overwhelmingly long.
4) Virtual currencies
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