Conversion rates are king. If you’re able to convince more people to do what you want them to do, put simply, you’re winning.
The problem is that there are some common and easily missed blockers that can cause more harm than you might think.
But it’s okay – the tips below are easy fixes and quick wins to help improve your conversion rates and get people filling in your forms when you want them to.
1. Don’t ask for information you don’t need
If you don’t need the information right now, then don’t ask for it. Simple.
You’re just giving them the excuse that your form requires too much effort.
Seeing a form with 10 fields in it is an immediate turnoff for a whole lot of people, myself included. If I see a form that only asks me for a username and a password, I’m much more likely to at least give it a go, since I know they aren’t trying to collate all my data.
2. Let them know why you need the info
If you truly need to know someone’s location or their sex, tell them why. Don’t make them feel like you’re going to go all ‘Big Brother’ on them.
This doesn’t mean you have to drown your form in information that makes it bulky and unwieldy. But you should at least provide some information, somewhere, as to why you need that information (by the way, there’s a tool for that).
If it’s obvious, (if for example, you’re creating a dating site) then of course the explanation isn’t needed. But if there’s any wiggle room for confusion, explain it.
3. Keep your requests casual
People are less inclined to give you personal information if it’s not specifically needed for them to benefit from your site / app. Everyone’s heard about Facebook and privacy issues. Just don’t go there.
4. Don’t need it yet? Don’t ask for it
If all the user needs to get up and going is an email and a password, then ask only for that.
Don’t ask them for billing information right away. You’re only trying to close the deal too early. Let them in, let them poke around, and when they want to get serious and move forward, ask them for billing information.
While billing is an obvious-use case for this point, you really should think about every field in your form. Do you need that field’s information right now, or can it wait?
5. Take away the risk
If there’s no penalty involved, people will be more inclined to at least provide the minimum information required to get in and poke around, then cancel their account if it’s not what they’re after. If they think they’re going to be hounded by a sales team, or worse, be charged straight away, that’s a turn off.
There are two ways to remove the risk: remove the form fields that might bring about this mentality, or add some content letting them know that you aren’t going to spam them.
6. Remove distraction
If there’s a specific action you want a user to take, like filling in a registration form or moving through a checkout process, that should be the page’s main action.
Remove anything that could take the user down an alternative path. This can be as drastic as removing your site’s footer and main menu, so their full attention is on the main body. I’m not saying your user has a short attention span… but you can’t risk assuming they don’t.
Sure, there are other actions that could increase your conversion rates even more, like creating specific landing pages for each campaign to maximise user connection, but they take a lot more time and effort. If you aren’t ready to go in that direction yet, then make sure your forms, at least, perform well.
These 6 tips should each be fairly easily to implement, if you’ve got more quick tips or feedback on these, leave a comment and let us know.