Part 2. Contact Forms: Increase conversions with multi-step web forms

In Part 1 Contact Forms & Lead Generation with SurveyGizmo, we showed how you can use SurveyGizmo not just for surveys but also as a powerful web form creator. We use it right here on SurveyGizmo.com with our Contact Form. In this article we will show you how SurveyGizmo can help you increase the percentage of people who fill out your forms.

It doesn’t matter if you’re running a survey, contact form, sales lead generation, or newsletter sign-up — everyone wants to maximize conversion rates for their data collection projects. And one thing is quite clear: the more people who fill out your form, the better.

A great technique, useful for both lead-generation forms and surveys, is to use a staged approach. In other words, ask the same number of questions, but break them up onto multiple pages.

This helps reduce abandonment common with long data entry forms. This method increases overall conversion and the amount of data collected by showing the lowest number of fields on the first page and then following-up with optional, customized or more detailed questions on a second page. To make this technique work, it is vital that you keep the first page short, quick and uncomplicated.

Tip for SurveyGizmo Users: try to target the second page of questions to each lead by asking them a ‘qualification’ question on the first page. Use question hiding or page jumping to show only relevant questions on the second page. This will boost your conversion even more!

There have been tons of case studies and best practice guides that explain this trick. In fact, it seems that every month marketing research firms like MarketingSherpa and MarketingProfs come out with an article or event that reminds us of the golden rule of web based information gathering:

A concise form + fewer questions = more respondents

So why do we keep seeing “lead-gen forms from hell” on the web? It’s because very few of us can launch a campaign without layers of approval and buy-in. It seems every stakeholder in a project (sales, marketing, customer service, managers, etc) has different sets of questions they want answered. Naturally, when you let everyone add questions, the length of your contact forms, sales inquiries, and newsletter sign-ups became so long that users will avoid them.

So before you launch your project — in fact, before you begin your project – write down the one top-level goal. What is the reason you are collecting this information? Keep that goal handy; it will help you decide which questions really belong and which ones do not.

It goes without saying (but we’ll mention it anyway) that SurveyGizmo has all the tools you need to create multiple page lead generation forms. Here are some real-life tips from our customers that show how people are using our software for their lead generation and qualification needs:

• Ask qualification questions

  When running a sales inquiry/lead generation campaign, choose a few qualification and bucketing questions to help your sales team distinguish which part of the sales cycle the lead is from. The best place for really detailed qualification questions is on the second page. If just one out of five prospects fills out the additional questions, then wonderful, raise them to the top of the stack. But if you had asked those questions on the first page, you might have sacrificed those 4 other leads. In short: use the additional questions to bolster your lead generation efforts, not shoot them in the foot.

• ‘Up sell’ your newsletter sign-up form

  Obviously many businesses have the same goal of building their email lists and want to provide a very quick and easy way for readers to join their lists. Just look at the success of companies like Constant Contact and Aweber, which offer simple forms that can be embedded on a web site to process newsletter signups.
  Great as these services are, SurveyGizmo can solve a problem that these services cannot: how to ask follow-up questions or suggest other newsletters after accomplishing the first newsletter conversion.
  SurveyGizmo can be used in place of the standard newsletter signup form. Collect the name and email in the first page of the form and have SurveyGizmo send the subscription information to your email service provider (all in real time). Then, show a second SurveyGizmo page with additional questions or more newsletters to subscribe to.

• Support Forms

  If a customer has a problem, you need to know about it. You should encourage the customer to contact you through a fast, painless, and trackable system. And while you are at it… it might be wise to follow up with a few questions about the user’s computer setup or how they use your service. These answers can be valuable from both a troubleshooting prospective and a marketing one.

Tracking Conversion of Web Forms

There is another benefit to using SurveyGizmo to build your web forms: tracking. With SurveyGizmo, you can quickly see how many people are hitting your web page with the form, how many folks convert through your first step, and how many complete the entire process. It’s easy to make tweaks to your forms and compare your conversion rates over different time periods. Web site owner rarely measure conversion of web contact forms, but this is a valuable touch point for customers — so why not make the most of it?

How to Build Your Own Web Form

To get started, log into your SurveyGizmo account and click ‘Create Survey.’ Then, from the template list, choose ‘Contact Form - Extended with Lead Qualification’. This template is an excellent starting point for any multi-page form. You might want to look at ‘Newsletter Signup - Second page with optional Lead Gen’. You can preview these templates before you make a choice by clicking the preview link next to the list.

For this example, you’ll use the ‘JavaScript Embed’ method for publishing your survey. This is a really high-tech way of saying “you’ll cut and paste a line of html into your website.” If you want to play with the layout or design, choose “Look & Feel” from the menu. Otherwise, we suggest you use our standard design for your form so it doesn’t clash with your web site. The only other thing you might want to do is adjust the width or font size.

Once your form is live, you should see data begin to flow in shortly. Any visit to the page with no form filled out is considered an Abandoned. A certain percentage of these is normal. Some people are just looking, but you could experiment with your form to see if you can increase this first important conversion step.

Any user who completes the first page but not the second is seen in SurveyGizmo as a Partial. Partial means someone has completed part of your survey/form but did not reach the end. Keep in mind these are likely the people you would have lost entirely had you asked all the questions upfront.

In order to include your Partials in overall reporting, you need to convert them to a completed status. This tells SurveyGizmo you understand some questions are missing, but want them in the final report anyways. Completed is someone who has filled all pages of the form.

We hope this aids your online marketing and communication and gives you yet another valuable way to use your SurveyGizmo account.

Update: You might also like to read this case study Case Study: Generating better lead qualification and more newsletter sign-ups

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