By Gregory Smyth
Marketing teams and website designers spend a tremendous amount of time and effort getting people to convert. Good campaigns, good ad copy, correctly targeted products, and well-thought-out SEO strategies often take months to develop. All that hard work gets negated in seconds if users abandon the process at the end of filling out the form because of a poorly designed form. Form design is a critical but often overlooked element of the conversion equation, but even small improvements in the optimization of forms can have a tremendous effect on enhancing completion rates.
Forms Are a Marketing Tool, Not Just Design
One of the problems is that form design is usually left to developers or designers, but never discussed as part of the marketing initiative. The forms will not be beautiful works of art, but are equally essential as the ad copy or campaign creative. Users do not come to a site to enjoy good design but for information, products, or services. That practical mindset needs to guide the method of designing forms as a resource towards marketing goals, improving conversion performance, and fitting within overall optimization strategies for forms.
Briefer Versions Lead to Better Completion
Form length is still one of the biggest inhibitors of conversion. The longer the form, the higher the potential dropout. Poor progress indicators on multi-page forms are very annoying and tend to undo good SEO and digital marketing efforts. Marketers are today encouraged not to ask more than the minimum at early stages. One could ask for an email address and zip code as openers because the zip code already indicates location. Sensitive information, such as phone numbers, is best requested later after trust is established, normally by progressive profiling rather than at first interaction. Good forms optimization is done by streamlining by cutting out extraneous inputs while keeping things smooth.
Make Language Simple and Clear
Clarity is essential when you create forms. Technical vocabulary and excessively technical queries confuse users and reduce conversions. If you require very detailed data, you’d do well to ask that after the user’s already converted, not before. AI-driven validation will also make that even simpler still, highlighting incomplete answers or answers that are confusing and offering bright, helpful cues that don’t impede progress.
Reduce Friction by Intelligent Inputs
From a technical perspective, forms should decrease friction. Disruptions of flow by overuse of dropdowns are very bad on phones, where most conversions today occur. Otherwise, allow users to type with auto-completion of common answers, such as countries or states. Introduce dropdowns to toggles, radio buttons, or searchable input when possible. Accessibility also requires thought when designing any fields that may easily be populated with minimal use of the mouse. Contextual assistance provided by use of tooltips or inline prompting gets users moving instead of abandoning the form, looking for answers.
After-Conversion Pages Are A Missed Opportunity
Finally, remember that the customer journey doesn’t end at form submission. After-conversion pages are an often-overlooked asset of digital marketing. Industry studies show that nearly 40 percent of users are willing to divulge additional information after they have already converted. Asking for that information at a later date, when trust is higher, will increase response rates. Asking for the same information at an overly early stage will nearly always decrease conversions.
