Whether in B2B or B2C, it is important for every company to generate new contacts. There are various ways to do this in the online and offline world. Many companies go to trade fairs and events, publish content via social media channels, have their own profiles on XING, Facebook or Twitter, and keep a whole range of brochures and flyers on hand as well. But all this is of no use if the prospective customer is not given a simple and quick way to enter into an exchange with the company. We will show you how to create perfect online forms.
Imagine that you have put a lot of work into high-quality content, which you provide free of charge on your website. Your goal, of course, is to exchange your content for data. Both sides benefit from this exchange: The prospect gets the information he’s looking for quickly and free of charge, and you get his name in return in the form of his email address. A typical conversion. A stranger thus becomes an acquaintance with at least one known attribute. Expanding these attributes and learning more and more about the prospect follows on from the conversion as a further marketing measure (keyword: lead management).
In order to achieve a maximum conversion rate, no obstacles should be placed in the way of the prospect during the exchange, data for content. For this reason, registration and download forms should be optimally structured. An abandonment within a form would be like a highly interested customer in a store who suddenly runs out in a rage because he was received rudely. To avoid your prospects running away, we provide below different tips that will help you create online forms.
How good registration forms work
- Ensure comprehensibility: the requested fields are easy to understand and the prospective customer does not have to think about them for a long time.
- When naming the form fields, make sure that they are named exactly (e.g. “Address” – here it is unclear whether street and house number, postal code and city?).
- Group fields that belong together (e.g. postal code and city).
- Make it easier to enter data by making all fields accessible via mouse and tab.
- Distinguish between voluntary and mandatory fields and mark them.
- In the case of problematic queries, explain why you need the data.
- Prioritize the data query from the user’s point of view: what is most important to him?
- Avoid scrolling within forms.
- Build the form clearly.
- Make it easy to grasp: the eye must see everything at a glance.
- Choose a simple and slim design. So spare the human perception possibility.
- Work in your corporate design.
- Provide enough space between all fields. Nothing should look pressed.
- Work with not too many different colors. This will keep the form clear and uncluttered.
- Make the submit button stand out so that it is recognizable.
- Optimize the form for mobile use. The input fields must also be easy to fill out on mobile.
- Describe what a prospect should enter their data for.
- Thank them after submission.
- Create an incentive/clear added value.
- Catch the eye positively visually.
- Don’t design a purely technical database query, but work with style.