Improve Conversion

Every site today should have a form of some sort to capture details and make it easy for potential customers to get in touch or register.

However, more often than not the form makes it harder rather than easier for a customer to make contact.

Common Mistakes on forms

• No title or heading above the form to tell the user what the form is for and what they should expect after filling out the form.
• Not making it clear which fields have to be filled in. Additionally once a user sends the form but have not filled in all required fields, is there a clear message to tell them what has been missed.
• Do you need to know the life story of the person sending the form? The more fields the less likely they are to complete. Of course demographic interests are good to know but they can be drawn from a customer later when they have a better relationship with you.
• Don’t use reset buttons. The only thing this is likely to do is be clicked by accident instead of the send button and frustrate the user.
• Instead of using ’submit’ use text that forces the user to click like, ‘Contact me now’, ‘receive your quote’, ’send me your brochure’ etc.
• Use a better image than the standard grey box so it stands out more and is more appealing to the eye.

The most important element

How are your users going to find your form? If it is only on the enquiry page, and only 20% of your visitors go to that page, then 80% of your visitors will not find the form to even try and submit.

Look at incorporating on all pages if possible or on each main product or service page.

Use tracking to improve conversion rates via tools like Google Analytics

• Do you know how many form submission you have over a given period?
• Do you monitor submission rates?
• Do you know where successful submissions came from?

Try to send successful submission to a new ”Thank You’ page. This can then be tracked as a goal and by using analytics you can see the submission rates from keywords, direct to site, other sites, banner campaigns etc. By using this data you can drive up spend and focus on the areas that are leading to submissions.

On the ‘thank you’ page reinforce when they can expect a reply. If you say you are going to get back to them in 24 hours make sure you do. Point them to other products or services they may be interested in or highlight more information about your business and why they should buy from you. They have taken action on your site and are likely to do so again if you have an attractive offering.