Setting Up Web Forms for Conversion Success

Forms are the last touch point for your demand generation campaigns. Ensuring they’re set up to maximize the chances of a conversion is critical to achieving marketing ROI. After stiff competition, media dollars invested and ABM strategies, don’t let your website or landing page forms be the blocker to fueling your sales funnel.

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Follow these top tips from a demand generation agencies experience in setting up web forms for conversion success:

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Block Free Email Domains

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It’s a no-brainer that the label for your email address webform field should be “Business Email” or similar. However, this doesn’t guarantee the page user will not input their personal email address. Then, you have the problem of bots and spam traffic completing forms on your site or landing pages.

An effective solution to both problems is to block free email domains from successfully submitting your forms. Tools like HubSpot have this feature built in and also share a list of the free domains to block.

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For B2B brands, personal email addresses are a serious score detractor for your lead scoring model. They skew campaign performance reporting and ultimately leave a sales team wanting more. A study by Toggl found that 40% of low-quality leads come from these free email domains so if you haven’t implemented this simple trick yet, yesterday was the time to do it. 

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Block Competitor Domains

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In a similar fashion to blocking free domains, you’re also going to want to block your competitors from successfully submitting one of your forms. Consider these use cases:

1. New salesperson sees a conversion from one of your competitors that they’re not aware are a competitor… potentially embarrassing show for your brand when they reach out to offer a demo. 
2. Your form is gating your new ‘top ten secrets to success’ report. Probably advisable to keep that away from your competitors if possible.
3. You’ve launched a creative new post-form-completion UX journey. With one form submission your biggest competitor can steal and replicate those ideas for themselves. 

I’ll give one counter argument to blocking your competitor’s from completing your forms. You would no longer be able to see who is actively trying to get information on your brand and marketing. But, when research by automation software company Pardot shows that companies using domain filtering see a 20% improvement in lead quality it’s logical to block undesirable domains, like competitors, from completing your web forms.

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Fields You Need vs Fields You Want 

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Convincing someone on the team that you don’t need to know the user's mother’s cat’s maiden name as part of every form has been a challenge for marketers since digital marketing began. Data enrichment is abundant today, plus, your sales team should be researching contacts to enrich CRM data every week. 

To help decide between the fields you need and the fields you want, start by looking at what can be obtained through data enrichment. Then look at the research on the biggest field deterrents; for example a Formisimo study revealed that phone number fields often cause drop-offs, with up to 37% of users abandoning forms when asked for their phone number. Finally, set yourself a minimum and maximum number of fields; according to a study by HubSpot, reducing the number of form fields can increase conversion rates significantly. Forms with 5 or fewer fields have the highest conversion rates, with an average of 20% conversion. As the number of fields increases, the conversion rate typically decreases:

- 5 fields: 20% conversion

- 6-10 fields: 15% conversion

- 11-15 fields: 10% conversion

- More than 15 fields: 5% conversion

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Consider Form Submission UX

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You’ve achieved the form conversion, what now? The new contact has entered your CRM, but their experience and journey to purchase are still only 50% complete. Our experience has found customized thank you pages perform significantly better than the generic “thank you”. Consider adding your latest resources for download, some video content, or your latest offer alongside the thank-you message.

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To take this one step further, look at an automated email flow welcoming the new contact to your business. Outline what they can expect from hereon, and again offer value in both recent and relevant content.

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Salesforce did some research on form follow up’s and, according to the report, forms that provide immediate feedback (e.g., a confirmation message or email) see a 12% increase in user satisfaction. Intercom’s research found that offering clear next steps, such as a link to schedule a demo or additional content, improves user engagement by 15%.

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Other - Captcha, Optional fields

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Setting up your web forms for conversion success requires more than just 5 steps. Here are some other top tips we’ve seen from our experience in curating and running demand generation campaigns for scaling B2B SaaS companies:

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- Captcha can help reduce spam conversions.

- If you can’t part ways with a field, try making it optional for the user.

- If you think a field is crucial, test removing it to see what the impact is, good or bad.

- Consistently trial new form layouts, field names and on-page locations.

- Take note of the forms you, as a buyer, convert on. As marketers we don’t absorb marketing tactics the same as others do, be aware of how you felt completing a form. Including those that deterred you.

- Don’t forget to mirror your successful form recipes on your LinkedIn lead gen forms ads.

- Be sure to include all the necessary legal stuff and ensure you’re getting marketable contacts with every conversion (where possible).

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At Bordeaux & Burgundy, it’s our job to explore and learn these marketing best practices so our B2B clients enjoy pipeline growth. Hopefully, by adopting the tips on setting up winning web forms, you can also enjoy an increased conversion rate on your next demand generation campaign.