We know that the key to conversion is having an excellent and well-optimized landing page. Even if your landing page has a great design and a clear call to action, though, you may still be experiencing a lower rate of conversion than you want. What’s the cause? It might be your landing page’s form.
In a recent webinar, the folks over at MarketingExperiments discussed a case study where they examined what the presence or absence of just one form field could have on conversion. They hypothesized that the form field requiring interested viewers to submit their phone number may have caused drop offs. To test this, they revamped the form, making the phone field optional and were shocked by the results. Their test found that just by making one form field optional instead of required, conversion increased by an astounding 275%!
What can we take away from their results? If you haven’t given much thought to your form fields, they could probably use a little optimization. Here are some things to consider.
Are any of your fields causing friction?
The amount of information you need from customers/viewers depends entirely on your business, your industry and the call to action involved. But if your customer feels like you’re asking for too much personal information, they may fail to complete your call to action. If you’re offering a free ebook download, but are asking for readers’ phone numbers before giving it to them, they might be disinclined to follow through. Reevaluate your form and see if there are any fields you could remove or make optional, while still giving you the basic information you need.
Are you asking for too much too soon?
How long is your form? Are you simply asking for too much information? If your form looks intimidating or inconvenient, customers will probably ignore it. Pare it down wisely and look for other opportunities to collect that information, perhaps down the road when you’ve built more of a relationship with the customer.
Is it easy to navigate from desktop, mobile or tablet devices?
Forms aren’t always easy to navigate from mobile devices, so you may be experiencing drop off from just that reality. Ensure that there are mobile versions of that landing page and form that are just as easy to navigate as their desktop counterpart. You may need to make the form shorter or adjust the ratio of the form to the page, but take the time to do it. It will pay off in conversions.
Are form errors causing people to give up?
There are few things more irritating than a form field that automatically clears all of its fields when an error occurs. Although you might consider it an issue of security, customers just see it as an inconvenience and may abandon the attempt altogether. Instead of defaulting with this, call out the field with the error in it so that customers will be able to see and fix it immediately without having to start over.
Need more landing page help? Don’t worry, we’re here for you. Check out our Landing Page Guide for great tips.
