Case Study: Conversion and Lead Creation

How we increased conversions 318% and saved 1,000s of hours

Write a rule once, apply it everywhere it belongs. With better user experience and automation, this lead capture operation not only increased leads, but opportunities for partnerships.

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THE CHALLENGE

Increase conversions and form completion

Sounds easy enough, right? All you have to do to get more signups on your contact form is do some user testing, a little analytics, review incomplete form submissions, and take appropriate action.

In this case, the firm had more to worry about than one or a few contact forms.

Websites
Campaigns
Forms*

That's right, 6 separate websites or "properties" as I like to call them, 4 major campaigns with as many partners at any time, and 37 forms that were live at any given time. There were hundreds that were dormant though, waiting to be put back in the game.

In this situation, it's not practical to make rules for one form. Rules have to be applied Globally.

THE SOLUTION

Style Guides and On-page Analytics

We studied the forms once they were built out with all the information we needed to gather. It was immediately obvious we needed to make the forms multi-paged. All of the legal consent was handled programmatically with a third-party integration. From there, we just tried to make it as easy as possible to fill out these forms.

Here are a few points we learned:

Woman is unhappy with the user experience of the mobile site she is using while at an auto repair shop
An online form, a new input appears when a radio button is selected

INSIGHT #1

Only ask for what you need

When building the form, it's easy to get lost in all the scenarios. There will always be significantly more possible answers than any one user can answer.

In the case of a Real Estate campaign, an agent or broker may want to know if the prospect is buying or selling. A question about timeline may be appropriate for both, but there will be other questions only one or the other need to answer.

Using conditional logic and custom scripts, we only asked the questions appropriate for each type of prospect and made it clear what was being asked of them. Context seems to matter a lot for users.

A low vision user may not see a new choice appear or make the connection between the choice they just made and the new prompt that has appeared. We made sure to populate the follow-up questions right below the checkbox or radio button. Non-sighted users will experience the list of prompts in order anyway, so this does not affect them negatively.

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INSIGHT #2

Automate Everything

The default action for most form plugins on WordPress is to send entries as emails. This is fine for contact forms for small businesses who get a few emails a week.

When hundreds of leads come in over a 2 hour period every day for weeks at a time, a different system is needed.

We ended up with a complex logic system that checked tags, IDs, sources, and inputs to route each lead to the appropriate source. It's a good idea to invest in a lead management SaaS provider or similar when handling this type of data at this volume. But many businesses would do just fine with a CRM.

Having a CRM is an incredible first step. After that, a lot of their APIs will allow lead routing rules to be embedded in the request. In addition to that, it's important to have logging in place to make sure leads are posted correctly and to be able to salvage them when they are not. This fallback can help recoup hundreds, if not thousands in sales or opportunities.

Finally, it's a good idea to have notifications and form analytics in place. This can be as simple as how many leads were captured, how many converted from a campaign, how many abandoned and why, and failed routing to CRMs or Lead partners.

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INSIGHT #3

Keep it Simple

The design of the form, the background image, and fantastical color schemes had little to no impact on the success of the form in the best case and had negative effects in the worst case.

There are zero times where a person ends up on a web page with a form and, previously having no intention to at least start the form, is convinced to do so because the form is "pretty" or "bold" or "catches their attention". That should already be done at this point.

Conversions increased
%

THE RESULTS

The thing that consistently increased conversions...

  1. Promising something
  2. Delivering on that promise

When a prospect sees "Get an Instant Quote!", it is appealing. Oftentimes, the follow-through is at best that the quote is emailed AFTER the name, email address, phone number, and picture of family pet is submitted with the form. It's "Offer for Lead", and it makes sense.

The prospect knows this is the deal, and honesty really helps.

"3 Steps to an Instant Quote, you will receive a preliminary quote after step 3" has worked well.

Make life easier for your company as well as your prospects.

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