Online forms and conversion rate optimization

Do you know your goals?

From an online forms perspective the answer is simple: to get the best conversion rate you can. but, what are your goals? this you should find out.
Conversion rate is simply the ratio between those visitors who submit a form to everyone who was exposed to it. So ideally you want every visitor to fill your form and submit it, translating into a 100% conversion rate. Unfortunately in most cases conversion rate would be a single digit number or low two digits. Most people just abandon the form within seconds after being exposed to it. This post is about the visitors who abandon, and what can you do to change their minds.

Who are those leads ?

The visitors who arrive to your form came for a reason. If the form is on your website, people will get to it for a reason such as to signup for a newsletter, fill in a contact form, register for a webinar, or fill a feedback form. While conversion rates are important for all types of forms, it's easier to explain and demonstrate their importance when talking about landing pages. A landing page is where you conduct your first meeting with your visitor. Visitors to your landing page may come as a result of paid advertising, organic searches, social network activity, content marketing you are promoting etc. In all those cases, your visitors have shown initial interest: they arrived to your form, which in many cases means they have already cost you money. E.g. if you are running an adwords campaign, paying on average $5 per click (PPC). every new arrival to your landing page cost you $5. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to put a little effort in making him stay and submit? Because what you really need is to learn how to attract quality leads.

Why do you need to optimize your landing page or web form?

Imagine you got 1000 visitors to your page. (you can decide if this is over a day, week, month or even a year...). Every 1% of change in your conversion rate equals 10 more people who submitted their contact info and become real leads for your business. If nothing else, the knowledge that these visitors have already cost you should make you think of optimization even harder. (believe us they do cost you, even if you are not doing direct paid advertising).
According to Jayson DeMers, who talks about How To Build The Perfect Landing Page For SEO Or PPC ", it’s not enough to simply build a landing page and hope for the best. In order to be successful, you need to spend time refining and perfecting your landing pages to optimize them for conversions".

What do i need to optimize first?

The short answer is almost everything: starting from your key text message, your design and layout, your number and selection of input fields and all the way to your call to action button.
Research have shown that you have less than 8 seconds to make your impression. Optimizing your form is all about improving that first impression. You can think of your landing page as a Tinder profile picture (even if you don’t have one, you probably know what it is), you want to use the best one you have, and avoid mistakes like using sleeveless selfies from the gym. (read more tips for a perfect tinder profile)

Read CRO books, Hire an expert, or use FormTitan’s auto CRO engine

There are many “technical” rules which are known to impact online forms conversion rates. We are talking about stuff such as where to place your labels, which fields should not be mandatory, how many elements you need, what colors and font sizes to use, etc. You can read articles and books to learn about these and implement yourself, you can hire someone who knows it already, or you can use FormTitan: the only form builder who comes with a built-in conversion rate optimization engine that goes over your form and gives you correcting tips in real time. FormTitan’s CRO engine is based on a knowledge base that includes hundreds of best practice rules for online form building.

So I follow the rules, what else?

Once your form is optimized you can move to the next step and start testing your message and/or design. Using A/B testing you can compare different graphic design, images or background videos. Create 2 or more versions and see how they compare. If you make more than one change at a time make sure to test several versions so you can associate changes with the impact they make on conversion rates. (read more about a/b vs. a/b/c/d testing) The text you use on your forms and landing pages is as important as your design. Craft your message carefully, and again use a/b testing to try different messaging till you get it right.

Learn from others (both mistakes and success)

Some tasks are never done. You can always try to optimize just a little bit more. Read about common CRO mistakes and try avoid those. More importantly look for case studies with examples of best practices, preferably from your industry. Understand what works and what does not. For example, look at the case study of eccocitta’ - a real-estate development company which was able to double its conversion rates within 30 days. Following some of the basic guidelines provided in this short post.

Choosing a tool with a “holistic” approach

There are many online form builders out there. Most of them will help you build a form quickly and offer some templates. One or two even offer a/b testing. FormTitan is the only professional form builder which takes an holistic approach to your forms, visitors, conversion rates and leads. Built from the ground up around conversion rate optimization and offering affordable price plans. When it comes to building your online forms - FormTitan is the best choice you can make.