Why Visitors Aren't Responding To Your Landing Pages & Forms

Landing pages and forms have the possibility to create quality leads... but let's face it, sometimes they just don't work.

MarketingSherpa revealed in a recent survey that 56% of marketers think that optimizing your form’s logic will have a very significant impact on your website’s performance. 46% of marketers went even further to state that the lay out of your form also has a significant impact.

So, why aren't your landing pages and forms producing the results you expected?

If you're looking for some additional pointers, our eBook "The Immediate Solution For Lead Generation”, will help you create a successful page.

Your Landing Pages Fail the Blink Test

You don’t have a whole lot of time to impress your visitors and leads online. As a matter of fact, many researchers have suggested that you have anywhere from 2 to 6 seconds to grab someone’s attention and get them to actually engage with your page, so how can you do that?

First and most importantly, you need to get rid of what marketers like to call “page friction”. Page friction is a term that used to describe a part of your landing page that’s distracting, confusing, or causes any level of stress to your visitors.

Check for things like:

• Too many blocks of text
• Inappropriate jargon or language being used for the targeted audience
• Bad or distracting navigation
• Poor color schemes
• Forms that contain too many fields

Not sure if your page has too much friction? In our eBook “Website Redesign 101” we talk a lot about how page layout really has a big impact on your lead conversions, and what you can do to improve your page.

Your Form Is Too Long

Why are you asking where someone lives and what their age is when they’re just trying to sign up for an introductory offer? Is there a point? How will you be using this information to the benefit of your customer and yourself?

There’s no concrete answer to how long a form should be, or what fields should be presented at what point during the sales funnel. But one thing that we do know is that the more fields you have on that form, the less likely people will sign up.

A recent chart from Eloqua shows that forms with more than 3 to 7 fields have a significantly higher abandonment rate. It's best to test and measure, and see what works for your company.

Here’s something else to consider: A lot of forms have repetitive information that can frustrate your regular visitors. Rather than ask them for the same information over and over, try marketing software like HubSpot’s “Smart Forms”.

This software will remember what fields a particular lead has filled out before in the past, and won’t make them re-submit the same information, thus saving you redundant information and your lead their precious time.

What You Want Is Not What You Need

When crafting your forms for your landing pages, it really will comes down to determining what you need from your form and separate it from what you want. This will likely take some time and patience as you analyze exactly what info you need from what leads at a certain point in the sales funnel.

For example, an entry-level B2B form may only need three key pieces of information:

• Name
• Email address
• Job title

The job title request may be the most important field. When you know who you’re talking to (administrator vs. CEO), it'll be easier to send a personalized message that will successfully nurture the lead.