How to Increase Your Contact Form Conversion Rate (3 Steps)
How to Increase Your Contact Form Conversion Rate (3 Steps)
Danny Shepherd, Co-CEO • Intero Digital • July 6, 2023
3 Steps to Increase Conversion Rates
- A/B Testing: Experiment with different form formats to determine what works best.
- Timely Follow-Ups: Respond quickly to maintain interest and build momentum.
- Multiple Touchpoints: Engage leads through various channels to nurture them towards conversion.
Given the growing number of digital touchpoints between you and your consumers, it’s critical to take full advantage of all your available tools. One of the most effective tools that we have in our toolbelt as marketers is the contact form. While the contact form is seemingly simple, it is often undervalued in its ability to significantly amplify lead conversions.
After all, the goal of an effective conversion rate optimization strategy is to engage leads so that you can drive qualified traffic to your contact forms. Then when your potential customers are on your site and ready to convert, making it feel natural and necessary to journey over to your contact form. The question then becomes: how can we harness the power of contact forms to boost conversions and attract fresh eyes to our content?
The answer lies in a two-pronged approach. First, you must have an intimate understanding of your conversion rate, and second, you must possess strategic knowledge of how to optimize your lead form conversion rate. We’ll cover both tactics below.
The Role of Contact Forms in Modern Lead Generation
Contact forms act as a direct line of communication between your business and your prospective customers. They serve as a platform for interested visitors to express their intent, ask questions, or request more information. As such, a well-designed contact form is a vital component in lead generation efforts.
Although their potential seems straightforward, contact forms are often underutilized or misused, leading to a disappointing contact form conversion rate. To understand how to generate more leads from your website with contact forms, you first need to understand their dynamics and tailor them to your audience’s needs and behaviors.
Decoding a Contact Form Conversion Rate
The success of a contact form is defined by its conversion rate, which measures user engagement. The basic form conversion rate is calculated by the ratio of visits to a landing page over a specified period to the number of users filling out the form. While the average rate for contact forms can vary widely, there are many factors unique to businesses and websites, like industry, pricing, marketing language, number of form fields and more, that can impact it. Monitoring your conversion rate ensures that your contact forms align with increased sign-ups, signaling that people are keen to know more about your offering.
However, there is another dimension to your conversion rate, measured by the percentage of leads that book a call. This metric involves tracking how many qualified leads schedule a call for more information. While the conversion rate provides an overall picture of lead generation success, tracking the number of qualified leads who take the additional step of scheduling a call can provide deeper insights into the effectiveness of your marketing and sales efforts. It indicates the level of interest and engagement of leads who are actively seeking more information and are likely to be closer to making a decision or taking the next steps in the customer journey.
By monitoring this metric, you can assess the quality of your leads and the effectiveness of your lead nurturing strategies. It helps you identify areas for improvement in your sales processes, messaging, and lead qualification methods. By focusing on increasing the percentage of leads that book a call, you can work towards enhancing engagement, building trust, and ultimately driving higher conversion rates and sales.
The Strategic Trio: How to Increase Conversion Rate
Understanding how contact forms and conversion rates work is just the first part of the puzzle. With a solid understanding of contact forms and conversion rates, the real challenge lies in how to increase conversion rates. Here’s a three-step approach to optimize your contact form conversion rate:
1. Conduct A/B testing.
Not all contact forms are created equal. It’s essential to experiment with different form formats, lengths, and types of questions to understand what resonates with your audience. A/B testing involves comparing two versions of your form to determine which performs better. This data-driven approach allows you to make informed decisions and improve your form based on what your audience responds to best. Software tools like Google Optimize, Freshmarketer, VWO, and Optimizely can help streamline this process.
Pro tip: With the proliferation of AI and especially LLM’s there are increasingly more advanced and sophisticated ways to leverage your first-party data from your website’s analytics to get highly impactful data points that can help drive the optimal conversion path for your new customers.
2. Prioritize timely follow-ups.
Speed is of the essence in the digital world. Once a user submits a form, they should be contacted as soon as possible to maintain their interest and build momentum. Implement a system that allows for swift follow-ups, preferably within minutes, not hours after a form submission. This immediate response not only enhances the user experience but also sets the standard for your business’s customer service.
3. Review leads and offer multiple touchpoints.
One interaction is rarely enough to convert a lead. To effectively guide a lead down the conversion funnel, it’s important to establish multiple touchpoints. After a user submits a form, reach out through different channels, such as email, phone calls, or social media messages. Offering multiple opportunities for interaction can help nurture the lead and gradually move them toward conversion. A full-funnel marketing strategy that tracks and advances your audience down the funnel will help to increase the likelihood of customer engagement and a form fillout.
You can also use automated lead scoring to review contact form submissions and devalue those with key terms that may mean they are not qualified or are spam. By leveraging technology to streamline the process, you can effectively save time and resources. However, it’s essential to employ human verification as well. This combined approach guarantees that your efforts are focused on qualified leads while avoiding unnecessary time spent on spam submissions.
Mastering Contact Forms in 2023
In the ever-evolving lead generation landscape, contact forms remain an essential tool in successful lead generation and digital marketing strategies. By understanding their importance and the metrics behind them, you can better align your lead-generation strategies to secure more business.
In the end, it’s about bridging the gap between your business and the potential customer—creating a seamless, intentional journey from lead to prospect to customer. Just like any other marketing tool, you’ll need to experiment, learn, and refine until your contact form becomes a powerful asset for your lead generation strategies. When properly optimized and integrated, contact forms are more than just a static feature on a website—they are a dynamic and vital part of the lead generation and conversion process.
