The use of contact forms on landing pages has long been a challenge for marketers trying to generate leads. Indeed, landing pages are by far the least popular kind of sign-up form despite having one of the highest conversion rates. Landing pages are valuable for marketing strategy. However, they tap into one of the biggest customers’ pet peeves: Sharing their data with a business.
Some stats to highlight the dilemma position held by landing pages: According to research, businesses that have 30 or more landing pages are likely to get up to 7 times more leads than their competitors. There’s a crucial reason for it: Landing pages are instrumental in segmenting your audience group and ensuring that each potential customer can be targeted. As such, they are not going anywhere at the start of 2023 and need to be part of your marketing strategy. But, at the same time, landing pages with a contact form asking for personal information record the worst conversion rate by far (below 6%). Does it mean marketers should abandon contact forms on the landing page altogether? Of course not. But it becomes essential to understand and appreciate the issues that come with a contact form on a landing page.
You need a lot of traffic to generate leads
According to Findstack, landing pages have, on average, a 9.7% conversation rate across all industry sectors. Exact figures vary depending on your specific sector and can range from 3% to over 11%. However, when it comes to landing pages with a contact form, the conversion rate drops to 5-6%. In other words, for every 100 users reaching the landing page, the company only gets 5 sign-ups.
Generating leads from your landing page is a major goal for many businesses, and one way to do this is by driving traffic to the page. Without traffic, there won’t be anyone to interact with your contact form, so it’s important to ensure that you are actively driving people to your page. Targeted PPC and paid social media marketing campaigns and SEO strategy can help boost your landing page visibility. To maximize the number of leads, you want to focus on generating a high volume of traffic to the landing page.
One way of doing this is through affiliate marketing – using relevant influencers or other companies to promote your page and get more eyes on it. Affiliate marketing can help increase the amount of traffic that lands on your page, which in turn can help to drive more leads. Additionally, affiliates often bring a dedicated and highly-targeted audience, which makes them more likely to convert.
Emails can be incorrect
When it comes to contact forms on landing pages, one of the biggest problems that businesses face is incorrect emails. Issues with email addresses can dramatically affect the real number of leads from the contact forms.
So why do email addresses end up being incorrect? There are many reasons. But one of the most commonly overlooked issues is typos. A typo in an email address can render a form useless, as the user will not receive a confirmation or further communication. Incorrect emails can be extremely damaging for businesses as it not only prevents them from gaining leads but also makes them appear unprofessional to the leads who filled up the form.
To prevent inaccuracy issues, businesses should implement a couple of techniques. Firstly, they should ensure that their contact forms have an automated email address check feature. This can be done by requesting leads enter their email address twice so the tool can compare the two entries. This will flag any typos as soon as they are made, allowing the user to correct them before submitting the form. Secondly, they should consider using an email verification checker to help eliminate the possibility of errors. A checking tool can help review business email lists for syntax errors in the email address, invalid domains, etc. By removing incorrect emails from your lists, you can also get a better view of the real conversion rate of your landing pages or, in some cases, manually correct the errors.
Businesses can ensure their contact forms are effective and gain more leads by taking the necessary steps to reduce inaccuracies.
You need to hit the right content length
When it comes to landing pages, content plays an important role in helping to convert leads. But one of the biggest challenges is finding the right content length. Too short, and you won’t be able to communicate all the necessary information about your product or service. Too long, and readers might be overwhelmed and leave without taking any action.
The ideal length of a landing page depends on a few factors, including the complexity of your offer and the attention span of your target audience. Generally, most landing pages should range from 500-1000 words. However, some studies suggest that a content length between 1500-2000 words can work if you have a complex offer. It’s important to understand the needs of your target audience and the type of offer you’re making before deciding on a content length for your landing page.
When crafting the content for your landing page, make sure to include the main points about your product or service, highlight its features and benefits, provide proof points and testimonials, and clearly state how readers can take action. It’s also a good idea to include a call-to-action that’s visible and prominently placed on the page so that visitors know exactly what they should do next.
In short, your content must be long enough to:
- Inform about the product
- Reassure about your business
- Build brand authority (aka why people should buy from you)
- Show the benefits of your offer
- Explain what the visitors need to do
You can’t ask for too much data
But you shouldn’t cut your contact forms too short, either. Asking for too much data on a landing page can be a huge obstacle for potential customers. Nobody wants to spend ages filling up a contact form. But if you fail to secure the relevant data, you’re at risk of creating an environment where you have a high-converting form but a low number of actual new customers. It’s difficult to strike the perfect balance between collecting enough information to make the best decisions and overwhelming users with an excessive amount of data requests.
On the one hand, collecting too little data can limit your ability to understand who your leads are, what they want, and whether they are potential customers. On the other hand, asking for too much data upfront can easily put off potential customers, especially if they’re not sure of the purpose behind the request or feel like the data isn’t relevant.
The best solution is to find the middle ground. Michael Aagaard, former senior conversion optimizer at Unbounce, shares his negative experience reducing a 9-field form to 6 fields and recording a 14% drop in conversion. Contact form length is irrelevant if you remove fields that would allow visitors to interact better with your brand. Finally, clearly explain why you need each piece of data so that customers understand the value of providing it.
What happens to the people who don’t fill out the form?
When a potential customer visits your landing page but does not fill out the contact form, their visit is excluded from the conversion calculations. Yet, this begs one important question: How long does it take for a potential customer to make up their mind? The answer is: It depends on their level of readiness. Someone who is only at the researching stage when they find your landing page may not be willing to fill up the form immediately. But they could note down the URL or the website name and come back organically at a later point to convert. These are indirect leads and should be partially attributed to the landing page too.
Additionally, you can retarget missed opportunities through remarketing campaigns. Remarketing allows businesses to create targeted ads for individuals who have already visited your website or specific pages on the website without converting (such as the landing page). By creating ads that are tailored to the specific interests and activities of these people, you can re-engage them with your business and drive conversion rates higher.
When the form isn’t responsive
According to Thrive Myway, only half of all landing pages are responsive, making them tough to access for individuals using a mobile phone. As almost 9 in 10 of the most successful landing page campaigns are mobile-friendly, it is vital to focus on responsive design for the landing page and the contact form.
If your form doesn’t resize to fit different device sizes, people are much less likely to fill out a form on a small screen. By making sure that your contact form is responsive, you can ensure that more people will fill it out and generate more leads. Don’t let poor responsiveness get in the way of your success!
Of course, we don’t live in a world where every click becomes a serviceable lead. However, ensuring that your landing page is designed to capture the right leads for your business is the sine qua non of a high conversion rate and landing page success.