(Web) form your way to high conversion

The first step is figuring out what part of the marketing funnel is declining. To gather the required information, you need to extract your website data — we suggest using Google Analytics, though you could go for any other reliable solution. Make sure that it shows how the visitors navigate the website and how they handle their orders.

You need to do this separately for each traffic type — ads, social media, organic traffic, direct transfers, and emails. This is crucial for further segmentation of the audience and targeting your web forms. You also must separate people who have visited the website 2+ times and your first-time visitors, since the latter usually spend less time on the website and have different timings.

Based on this data, you can calculate the average performance for each step of the funnel. It will allow you to see the traffic segments with below-average performance for each step. These underperforming segments will be your growth points.

When your funnel is already working great, you’ll want to add the average bill increase to the list, but we’re leaving this one out for now.

Now that you have a better understanding of the segments and the steps of the funnel, you can divide them into two categories: those who completed the purchase and those who didn’t. The second category is what interests you — these are the people you want to convert.

This information is essential since it determines when your web forms have to appear. If you show the form too early, you’ll likely annoy the customer and they’ll leave, and if you show it too late, they’ll be already gone by then.

In most cases, you’ll end up having a lot of segments, depending on your website traffic. It can get confusing, so you’re better off focusing on the most potentially profitable segments with higher traffic.

Some marketers just look up the timings online. The truth is it never works, and it leads to disastrous conversion rates. Don’t do it, ever. Your strategy and actions can only be based on your own data: your website, your visitors, and your customers. There’s no way around it, unless you wish to fail.

We learn more about the segment using the tab with our recent analytics. For this segment, the average time before adding an item to the cart is 185 seconds, and the average time before leaving the website is 205 seconds. They usually go through five pages and view three products before leaving.

This information will help us set up the web forms later.

We set up the web form using the data we have. Let’s say we went for the first option and we want to offer them a time-limited discount. We have a lot of information on this segment and its behavior. How do we use it to properly set up the web form?

This way, the web form will only appear for this segment: the people who are visiting the website for the first time and came here through ads. And, what’s important, only to those who have already looked around on the website, but still haven’t added anything to the cart. If they add something before the 180-second period ends, the web form will not be displayed.

This is pretty much it for setting up a targeted web form. You can apply this thought process to any segment and step, and be sure that your forms will appear at the right time for the right people. Feel free to use the tab we provided as a reference to know which data to collect.

Now that you know what you’re working with and how you’re going to do it on a technical level, you need to pick a perfect type of web form to execute the task. Let’s go over the options.

There are three main types of sign-up forms: pop-up forms, inline forms, and landing pages. Their difference lies in how they are displayed — and, therefore, how they are perceived.

It’s hard to overestimate the importance of a well-targeted web form. It can really do wonders for your conversion rates, sales, and mailing list growth. A poorly set-up form will do just the opposite, annoying potential customers and even scaring them away from your website.