PixelMEDIA Inc.

You’ve done the keyword research for your site and optimized the content for appropriate terms. You’re actively engaged in a link building campaign and your pay-per-click (PPC) campaign has a very high click-thru-rate (CTR). Additionally, you’re analytics program is showing excellent site metrics. Users are getting to your site so what’s the problem? The problem is that your site is not generating enough leads.

A major factor hindering your lead generation is the size of your web form(s). Users get overwhelmed with the length of the form and abandon the page. It is understandable that you want to collect as much information about a possible lead, but it is not always practical.

Take this example. A user browses your site and reads about a solution that interests her. She sees a focus area with a whitepaper that directly relates to that solution and clicks the link. She is then taken to a registration form. In order to download the whitepaper she has to supply her name, phone number, e-mail address, business address, city, state and zip code. To top it off, she has to answer how she got to the site, whether she would like to sign up for the e-mail newsletter and whether she would like a sales rep to contact her. There may also be fields related to current business practices and objectives. That is a lot of information to ask for to download a whitepaper! Frustrated by the lengthy form, she leaves your site and heads to your competitor’s site.

Believe it or not, many companies require all of this information before you can download one of their whitepapers, webinars or other resources. One of the rationales I always hear is that the user who fills out all of this information is a better lead. This statement may or may not be true, but how many leads are you losing because your form asks for too much information?

The most successful site I’ve worked on for lead generation only asked for six items, and two of them were optional. The form consisted of these fields (a * indicating a required field):

* Full Name

* Job Title

Company

* Email

* Phone

Comments

This form is nice and short, yet still grabs the most important information. You get the potential lead’s name and job title as well as two ways to contact her. And ultimately, isn’t the follow-up contact what will decide whether this lead turns into a sale? No matter how much information you ask for, you still have to make the effort to connect with this lead on an interpersonal level.

Tags: form submission, website form