Marketing Matrix: The 5 Critical Components of Fantastic Lead-Capture Forms

This article is an excerpt from our new ebook, An Introductory Guide to Building Landing Pages. To download your free copy of the complete ebook, click here.

On any given landing page, the lead-capture form is the most crucial element. Without the form, lead generation simply wouldn't be possible.

Therefore, the form is the main focus of your landing page, since the ultimate goal is to get your visitors to complete it. Because the formatting and design of your form have a direct impact on conversion rates, it's absolutely critical that you approach them wisely. Here are the five most critical components of fantastic lead-capture forms.

1. Positioning

First of all, you should make sure your form appears above the fold, or in other words, that the viewer does not have to scroll down the page in order to see it. Immediate visibility is important, since you want to draw the visitor’s attention to the form.

2. Length

The next -- and probably biggest -- question when designing your forms is, how long should it be? This is a tricky question, because the length of your form inevitably leads to a tradeoff between the quantity and quality of the leads you generate. A shorter form usually means more people will be willing to fill it out, so you’ll generate more leads. But the quality of the leads will be higher when visitors are willing to fill out more forms fields and provide you with more information about themselves and what they’re looking for. Therefore, shorter forms usually result in more leads, and longer forms will result in fewer, but higher quality leads.

The other critical factor to consider is the effect of the length of the form on the prospect’s willingness to fill it out. If the form is too long, prospects are going to stop and evaluate whether it is worth their time to complete all of those fields. So you need to find a good balance between collecting enough information and not asking for too much information that they’re not willing to give.

3. Fields

Of course the next question is, what should those form fields be? What information should I ask for? Oftentimes, companies have forms on their sites that ask for way too much information (or the wrong kind of information). Your goal should be to collect enough information through your form field examples form to enable you to both contact and qualify the lead.

You can use fields such as name and email address to gather contact information about the lead. It is important to be able to follow up with your newly converted lead so you can put them into your sales funnel to try to convert them into a customer.

Before you do that, though, you’ll want to be able to qualify the lead. To do this, include fields and questions in your form that will help you identify how strong that lead is – in other words, how likely they are to become a customer. You can include fields such as company, website, role at company, and number of employees to learn some basic background information. Then add in a question that will allow you to gauge their need for your product, their likelihood to purchase your service, or their fit with your company.

For example, HubSpot sells marketing software, and all of the forms on our landing pages include an optional field that asks visitors to describe their biggest marketing challenge. We use this information to learn more about and qualify our leads before putting them into our sales funnel.

When you’re deciding which fields and questions to include on your form, remember that you should only be asking for information that is essential to be able to contact and qualify them. You can always ask for more information later, and in fact, that is usually the better approach. Too often, companies request all kinds of contact information and ask tons of questions of their visitors, neglecting to realize that their 15-field forms are significantly lowering conversion rates.

4. Privacy Policy

This brings us to the next concern that prospects have with regard to filling out forms, and that is security. Most people experience some sort of anxiety when asked to provide sensitive information, especially online. You need to show your visitors they can trust you with their information. Link to your privacy policy next to the field that asks for the visitor's email address. Have your logo and a client testimonial visible. Use some sort of authority endorsement, third-party security certification, or guarantee seal. Just make sure that your website looks credible, and that should help to reduce friction for filling out your form.

5. Submission Button

The last major component of your form is the button the visitor must press to complete the form and send you their information. The default text for this button is usually “Submit,” but studies show that landing pages with buttons labeled “Submit” actually have lower conversion rates than those that use other wording. The top-performing variations in this study were “Click Here” and “Go.” Compared to “Submit,” these buttons feel much less committal and imply a lower investment of time and effort.

submit chart You should also try to make your buttons engaging and relevant to your offer. Try something like “Reserve Your Webinar Seat Today!” or “Get Your Free Ebook Now!” Alternatively, you could use those as headlines above your form and use shorter button text, like “Download Now!” Just make sure you put some thought into your choice of text – it could have a significant effect on conversion.