Multi-Step Forms: The Secret To Boosting Landing Page Conversion Rates

When designing a landing page, it is not uncommon for marketers to want to gather as much information about the visitors as possible to be able to assess their needs and curate more targeted campaigns. Given that the average landing page conversion rate stands at 4.02%, this desire to capitalize on every viable lead is unsurprising!

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However, this pursuit can cost you valuable leads if the design of the post-click landing page or single-step sign up form is intimidatingly long-form. A bankable way to work around it and get visitor information without risking a high bounce rate is a multi-step form.

Let’s delve deeper into what it is, and how to use it to boost landing page conversion rates: 

What is a Multi-Step Form?

Simply put, a multi-step form is a long-form broken into several short steps, making the process of sharing information less daunting for the end-user. This approach is a win-win for both marketers and visitors. For the former, it helps in gathering detailed information about the prospective buyer. For the latter, it serves as a tool to demonstrate how interested or invested they’re in a particular product or service.

Since the momentum on information gathering is built up slowly, starting from baseline information and leading toward more pointed insights, multi-step forms prove effective in countering friction on landing pages. This, in turn, helps in generating high-quality leads that have a higher likelihood of converting into sales through the right nurturing in the marketing funnel.

Multi-step Forms vs. Single-step Forms

Well, this does raise the question of whether multi-step forms are better than single-step forms. Is one a more viable replacement for the other? The simple answer is no. Whether your landing pages need multi-step or single-step forms depends entirely on the information you seek to extract from your visitors.

As you already know, multi-step forms are divided into different steps. A user has to complete one stage to move on to the next. In a single-step form, your visitors have to fill out all the required information on a single page.

Why would a visitor want to go through multiple steps to furnish information when they can do it all on one page, you ask? An analysis shows that adding more steps to your post-click landing page form can boost conversion rates, especially if your form has more than 3 fields. WhatIsMyComfortZone.com makes an interesting case study in the matter.

The website’s conversion rates drove up to 53% after switching over to a multi-form approach. The same trends can be replicated with landing page forms, provided the design and flow are executed mindfully.

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The biggest advantage of multi-step forms over their single-step counterparts is that they counter the two perennial problems posed by the latter – make the form too long and you risk scaring the visitors away; make it too short, and you end up generating unusable leads. On the other hand, multi-step forms on the landing page, designed in keeping with what’s on offer and the visitors’ position in the sales funnel, can help you generate astute leads.

5 Compelling Reasons To Use Multi-Step Forms

Are you still wondering whether a multi-step form is the right approach for the next landing page you design? Here are 5 reasons to use multi-step forms that will help you make an informed decision:

1. Capturing the visitors’ attention

The human attention span is on a constant decline. With so many different businesses – many of them your competitors – vying for the attention of the same target audience, standing out, grabbing attention and building trust becomes that much harder. A multi-step form is the first step toward making that happen by ensuring that you offer your visitors a solution they’re looking for upon the completion of the form rather than having them wait for a resolution via email or phone.

2. Addressing needs swiftly

The end-user today expects swift redressal of their needs. With a single-step form, they know that completing the process isn’t going to move them closer to having their needs addressed. However, a multi-step form on a landing page that seeks pointed information on their interest, needs, and issues (if any), generates hope that these insights might better equip a business to understand and deliver on their requirements.

3. Offering Customized Solutions

Customized, tailored solutions – that’s the secret of driving up customer engagement. While users want customized solutions, they’re not naïve to believe that there is a magic wand that can create these with just basic information such as name, address, email, and phone number. The detailed nature of a multi-step form on your landing page inspires confidence in your visitors that their individual needs will be addressed at the end of the process. It also equips businesses to better understand the expectations of their target userbase and deliver on them.

4. Conversions at Every Step

With the right tools, you can break down your multi-step landing page forms at every step and work toward optimizing them. By doing so, you can build in and track an option to secure conversions at every step. Besides, by continually testing the performance of different steps of your form and improving on them, you’ll be better equipped to get your visitors to the end of the process, and slowly, enrich your marketing funnel with minimal cost.

5. Building on Lead Quality

Any visitor who goes through with and completes the multi-step form on a landing page is undoubtedly invested in your products/services. Once they’re done sharing their contact information and personal details with you, they’d be expecting to learn more about what you have to offer. With such quality leads in the bag, you have a better chance of securing conversion and sales through pointed marketing campaigns.

3 Best Practices That Make Multi-Step Forms Work

So, we know that multi-step forms can be a value-addition to your landing pages. They grab and hold visitor interest, build trust, and get them invested in your business offerings. But at the same time, the process of going through multiple stages of Q&A, each more intimate than the previous, can itself be daunting. These simple practices can ensure that these forms engage and not scare away your visitors:

1. Start with Low-threat Questions

The simplest way to inspire confidence in your visitors is to lead with questions that don’t make them wary of sharing information. For instance, you could lead with an announcement of a special discount, and ask your users to submit their zip code to check whether the discount is valid in their area. By making the question about your offering, you’ve made the process of sharing information non-threatening.

2. Get into Specifics

Now that the ice has been broken, you can get into specifics. But let these specifics be related to your products/services rather than the visitor. For instance, you could ask them what kind of products they’re interested in, how frequently they buy products in a certain category, in what quantity, and so on. This creates a sense that the objective here is to understand user needs better – which is true to a large extent.

3. Ask for Personal Details

Ultimately, seal the deal with a request for their personal details and contact information. Once again, telling them that this information will help you serve them better is more likely to push them to complete the process. ‘We’re compiling the information you’ve asked for’ or ‘We’d like to share information about our upcoming offers with you’…‘where can we reach you?’

A visitor who has come this far won’t shy away from going through with it.

4 Steps To Create Multi-Step Forms

So, how can you start using multi-step forms in your landing pages? Thankfully, there are automated building tools that streamline the process to an extent that it can be completed in 4 easy steps:

1. Start Creating the Form With an Automated Solution

Find an automated builder tool that is intuitive and easy to use. Typically, it’s as simple as going to the forms section on the chosen platform, clicking the ‘add new from’ option, and selecting the multi-step format.

2. Specify Questions and Form Steps

Before you get started on creating the form, you should have in place a carefully curated set of pre-decided questions and the order in which you’d like them to appear. Choose the layout, images, buttons, and go on to specify the question and form steps.

3. Design Your Form

You can customize the form by playing around with the text, visual elements, text fonts and size, CTA buttons, color schemes, and so on until you have exactly what you wanted.

4. Embed the Form into Your Landing Page

Copy the form embed code and add it to your chosen landing page through the backend.

Conclusion

Multi-step forms can reduce landing page friction, improve lead quality, and ultimately, boost conversion rates. Besides, they help businesses gather valuable information about user expectations and needs. All in all, they check at the right boxes on a marketer’s wish list.

Looking for help with creating a multi-step form for your next custom landing page? Connect with us.