Clever Way to Increase Lead Submissions

Businesses are constantly trying to reduce the amount of friction on their lead capture forms by asking fewer and fewer questions to get more signups. Take this form from gblawyers.com as an example:

Notice that there are only 4 fields the user has to worry about—Name, Phone Number, Email, and case type.

This strategy works for a specific type of end user—the end user that doesn’t want to go through the cumbersome process of filling out a lot of information.

However, this isn’t the only type of end user that could be viewing your form. There’s another group of users who are much more skeptical about what happens after the form has been completed. Will they get bombarded with phone calls and emails? This concern is definitely warranted because plenty of businesses spam their customers after they’ve completed a form.

Reducing the number of form fields does nothing for this second type of user. Their concern isn’t being addressed for the sake of a more streamlined lead capture form.

What this means is that we need to do something that may seem counterintuitive at first, especially when trying to increase conversions. We need to add a little friction.

To show you what we mean, we mocked up a concept for the above gblawyers.com form. Take a look:

Here is a zoom view of what we added:

There is psychology behind this move and it’s targeted squarely at the visitor who thinks, “I’m scared that if I give my info I’ll get bombarded with emails.”

Here is what happens: This user is concerned so the story they tell themselves is that this company is going to make registration easy so they can bombard them later.

Now, when this user sees the question “What Comes After Monday?” it doesn’t fit this story. Why would someone add an extra question if their only goal is to capture my email?

What would have been seen as a negative (a super simple form which might have a hook) is now being seen in a positive light.

By adding that one question the business has clearly demonstrated that they don’t want to get just any email address.

Warning: This idea is going to increase your email signups. But it should only be used only if you don’t have an aggressive email practice. If you do, then shame on you.