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Many initial sales enquiries may be by phone or email, following a personal recommendation. In contrast, if selling products, courses, events or recruiting effective online forms are crucial.

I.T. helps improve this experience. Whilst almost every new piece of I.T. seems to be called AI, highlighted here is some great ‘non-AI’ IT stuff.

Having done the hard work of driving traffic to your form, the last thing you need is high abandon rates.

conditional logic

A web designer yesterday loving the conditional logic he just added to a form

Nothing increases form abandonment more than superfluous questions. Good web designers encourage clients to just collect data that’s essential.

How CL Reduces Abandon Rates

With Conditional Logic(CL) you can just display relevant questions.
CL: If X happens, software does Y.

For example, if ‘Add an additional signatory’ checkbox is ticked, all the relevant fields appear.

This avoids wading through irrelevant questions, risking the applicant getting frustrated and abandoning the form.

A web designer yesterday loving the conditional logic he just added to a form

How Conditional Logic Blocks unsuitable Candidates
Previously, this consultancy was swamped with irrelevant CVs. Now, only applicants ticking Yes to ‘Procurement experience within Construction’ can complete the form and submit an application.

Automation

An I.T. principle: “If you do the same task 3 times, automate it”. Consider what can be automated when working with forms.

Automate the Formatting of Output (not AI)

  • Instead an email, submissions can be auto-formatted, with your logo and date of submission, as a PDF email attachment.
  • The public are notoriously bad at labelling files! Avoid getting 100s of CVs called cv.doc. PDF files of submissions and CVs uploaded can be automatically renamed using the name entered on the online form.

Automate how you Receive Submissions (not AI)

  • Never miss a submission. Get emailed each Monday a spreadsheet summary of the past week’s form submissions.
  • Direct to your system: As well as emailed, submissions can be sent to a nominated DropBox folder or straight into your CRM.

A Principle of Forms: Don’t get TOO personal

Back in 2015, I highlighted how asking for phone numbers increases abandon rates. For due diligence, some forms (such as job applications) need a lot of personal information.

However, for others, with trust considerably lower, decide what personal information is essential.

Research Gathered in 2015

  • 81% of B2B customers preferred to communicate by email. 58% by phone. – Source KO Marketing 2014.
  • Personal information buyers prefer not to provide on a form:
    • 58% Phone no.; 53% Address;
    • 21% Title/ Role; 20% Last Name; 18% Company;
    • 16% Email; 11% First Name
      – Source: KO Marketing, 2015
  • Almost third drop in responses when insisting on a phone no. – Source: Hubspot, (40,000 contact forms) 2010
  • Form submissions increased from 42.6% to 80% when phone no. changed from required to optional – Source: Expedia

Unless there is a justified reason, e.g. confirming a reservation, always make the phone number optional.

Click below to read my original article from 2015.

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