One of the easiest ways to generate leads for your business is by adding a contact form to your website. When website visitors land on your website, they have a choice to make. If they’re interested in your services, they have to find contact details and get in touch. But if you have a contact form, they can simply leave the ball in your court.
What is the advantage of using a form?
There are a few distinct advantages to using a contact form alongside your contact details.
- Gather the information you need from the customer
- Follow up with the customer in your own time, so you won’t miss enquiries
- Reduce pressure on staff to stay by the phones
- Reduces barriers to conversion
- Easier to track your conversion rate
Some customers will want immediate support, so you can still offer traditional contact methods like a phone number, address and email address. But for those enquiries that aren’t time-sensitive, you can improve the lead generation process by including a contact form.
How do I track form conversion?
As we mentioned above, it’s easier to track your conversion rate when you use a contact form. This will help you to see which traffic sources are the most successful (organic search or PPC, for example). It will also help you to understand trends in your enquiries that can improve your website user experience.
The easiest way to track form conversions is by using Google Analytics. You can read more about how to track form conversions on the Google support site.
What is the average conversion rate?
Comparing your average conversion rate to industry benchmarks can help you to identify if your website is under or over performing. The average conversion rate for a contact form is around 3-5% across all industries. But some industries perform better than others.
Your website traffic will also determine if a 3-5% average conversion rate is impressive. For a website with 100 monthly visitors, a 5% conversion rate is only 5 leads. But when you have 100,000 monthly visitors, the number of leads jumps to 5000.
To get more granular, you can also look at the value of a lead. So 5 leads a month might not seem like much, but if the lifetime value of a lead is £25,000, this will be more powerful than getting 5000 leads per month that are only worth £10 each.
To determine how much each lead is worth, you need to know the lifetime value of a lead (your average order value) and your lead conversion rate. It might be complicated to work out these numbers, but it’s an excellent way to assign value to your marketing activities.
How to increase form conversion
Once you know your conversion rate, you can then look at ways to improve the user experience. There are a number of best-practice form conversion guidelines to follow, including:
- Use A/B testing to explore changes
- Make sure the form loads fast and correctly on all devices
- Keep the form simple
- Only use required fields if you absolutely need the information
- Keep it a single column design
- Only include the fields your need
- Make the most of auto-fill
- All copy and paste
- Make sure the CTA is obvious
- Redirect to a helpful success page
How many fields should a form have?
Only include the forms you really need to be able to follow up with the customer. For example, you might need address information to be able to qualify leads, but do you need an entire address or would the city/town be sufficient?
Most forms will have a minimum of 3 fields, typically including name, email address and message. If the purpose of the form is very specific – to request a callback, for example – then you don’t need the message field.
Using drop-down fields to guide answers will also improve the conversion rate.
What’s the difference between a form and a pop-up form?
Your pop-up might include a web form, but these aren’t really the same thing. A pop up can appear anywhere on the website, but your contact form should be used as a strategic call-to-action on key landing pages.
A pop-up form might be used to encourage mailing list sign-ups, or it could be used as a “request a callback” contact form.
If you need assistance with any aspect of form conversion optimisation, get in touch with the Auburn team today. We can help you identify new lead-generation opportunities