People on the internet like their anonymity and like to stay anonymous for as long as possible when interacting with companies. Did you know that, on average, 97% of website visitors remain anonymous?
Forms can help you identify these anonymous visitors when combining them with a compelling offer and a call to action that makes the trade-off between sharing personal information and what you get for it seem like it’s nothing.
Forms furthermore allow you to decide what info you want to collect from your visitors. Capture this valuable information to make your unknown visitors known to your brand and turn them into loyal customers.
Let’s look at some things to keep in mind when building a form, and the different purposes forms can have for your business.
Things to keep in mind when integrating a form
There’s no such thing as the ideal form because every audience is different. However, some best practices seem to work for most industries.
When using forms, the first important step is placing your form above the fold and instantly drawing attention to the call to action. Making it easy to convert from the first moment will optimize your conversion rate.
Make sure, however, that you have a strong CTA because this eventually makes or breaks the conversion.
Even though you want to make your form stand out, you shouldn’t put too many elements around it because it will cause distraction and lower your conversion rates.
Use enough white space to increase scannability, improve readability, and make the form stand out.
The most important thing to make people complete your form is offering them something they can’t refuse.
Customers nowadays are familiar with spamming and phishing and aren’t as quick to share their details as they used to. Think of the trade-off between sharing personal information and if it’s worth it for your customers.
When looking specifically at the content of the form, the key rule to keep in mind is that less is more. Make it easy for your audience to convert, and don’t ask for too much information at once. This decreases your bounce rate because unmotivated people or visitors who don’t trust you enough yet will bounce a lot quicker when having to share too many details.
Remove unnecessary fields and keep it simple from the start. However, if you want to include optional info, mark these optional fields in your form rather than the required ones. This makes your form look easier because people get to skip parts of it if they want to.
Ask for an email address first; this gives you retargeting opportunities to contact the respondent later when they abandon your form. Ask for basic information like the name after the email address and then build up towards the other info you’d like to receive.
The amount of info you need usually depends on what you offer. If you’re offering an ebook, you don’t need as much information as to when you’re offering a free website analysis or a job alert. The latter requires you to have more info to understand the respondent because you need to understand their needs and give them a decent solution.
If you need a lot of information and, therefore, a large form, it’s better to use different steps instead of one lengthy form at once.
Different form purposes
1. Contact forms
This is the most basic version of a form and can be found all over the internet on almost every website. As is in the name, contact forms are specifically made for your visitors who would like to get in touch with you.
They usually consist of basic information like a name, email address, subject, and message field where the respondent can leave his message. Contact forms are an excellent way for your audience to reach out to you with questions or to gain extra information they might need that is not on your website.
Make sure your contact form is easy to find on your website and isn’t too long so you won’t lose any potential leads. Contact forms are valuable lead sources that can be implemented quickly and easily. When completing this kind of form, your visitor is willing to identify himself to you, all you have to do is follow up.
2. Feedback forms
Feedback forms are a useful implementation for brands that are trying to get more information about the user-friendliness of their website, when they are doing some sort of market research, or anything else they would like to know from their visitors. It is a valuable tool to get feedback from your website users and can be used to ask for opinions and suggestions. The feedback you’ll receive can point out pain points you might not previously have thought of, or even better, can give you new business ideas.
Let's take at a more hands-on example in the recruitment industry. If a candidate has looked at a vacancy but decides to leave the page, you can trigger him with an exit-intent form. By doing so, you can easily ask why they did not interact with the vacancy, what they’re looking for, what is unclear about the vacancy, and so on. Analyzing this feedback can give you valuable information about future applicants and how to improve your website and vacancies, for example. Once the feedback survey is completed, you could activate another form that registers your candidate to a job alert for future vacancies.
3. Pop-up forms
Pushing your form with a pop-up rather than letting your audience find it themselves is an approach that’s a bit more aggressive. However, forms implemented in pop-ups have an explosive conversion rate compared to regularly implemented forms. According to Sumo, the top performing 10% of pop-up forms convert at a spectacular 9.3%.
You can choose to show your pop-up to everyone on your website automatically, or you can trigger it by a specific action. Typical implementations of pop-up forms to trigger anonymous visitors are lead magnet popups, newsletter subscriptions in return for a discount, and job alert forms. The opportunities are endless when it comes to targeting unknown visitors and getting them to identify themselves to you. Keep these forms light and make them light, easy, and quick to complete.
4. User registration form
This form is for unknown visitors that actively want to become part of your community. The registration form allows them to register themselves and to create a profile on your website.
This allows you to target these newly acquired leads with relevant content and nurture them until they're ready for a purchase, and eventually further down the funnel towards becoming a loyal customer.