A Fix for Low Conversions: Separating the Sale from the Paperwork
In the past year, I've consulted with six businesses that handle complex paperwork for their clients - such as travel documents, business registrations, and tax filings etc.
I got involved because they weren't making money from their Google Ads. They were paying Google to send hundreds of people to their sites, but only a handful ever became clients.
Different Services, Same Costly Mistake
The businesses offered different services, but they used the same process: the visitor supplied the required information and then paid by card. Once payment was processed, the business would spring into action.
Each website had a form to collect the information.
All the forms asked a lot of questions. The most recent one I looked at had 43.
Some of the forms were divided into separate screens to make it look easier. Each screen asked a few questions. The only way to progress to the next screen was to answer all the questions on the current screen.
The final step was entering card details to make payment. You couldn't pay for the service until you'd provided all the required info.
I Wasn't Surprised That Very Few Visitors Turned Into Clients
People see an intimidating form and bounce. They go looking for a less complicated way, or they postpone it if it doesn't absolutely have to be done right away.
And many people who started the form couldn't finish it, often because they didn't have the information needed at hand. Others couldn't finish because they didn't know which option to choose.
This isn't unusual. Using the same form to win the client and gather information (almost) always leads to terrible conversion rates.
The Fix: Separate the Sale from the Paperwork
Converting visitors into clients is easier when you split the process into two parts.
Step 1: Win the client.
Use a short form on the website to ask for contact info and card details.
The questions will be familiar. You'll be asking for details like name, email, and card number. They're less likely to bounce because it doesn't look intimidating.
When payment is successful, redirect the client to the intake form.
Step 2: Intake.
The intake form is on a separate page. This page shouldn't be reachable from a link on your site. It could be secured with a username and password if needed.
If you wanted to up your game, you could email every client automatically when they paid. The email could include:
- A checklist showing what information is needed to complete the form.
- A guide to where the information can be found.
- An explanation of any tricky questions.
- A link to complete the intake form.
This approach removes friction from the sales process and makes it easier for clients to be successful.
I offer 1-to-1 mentoring and consulting. You’ll get help, advice, support and answers without having to commit to a long-term contract. Details here.
Related articles
Can 2FA Reduce Contact Form Spam, and Should You Use It? 2FA can reduce contact form spam—but it adds friction, risks real leads, and opens the door to scams like SMS pumping.
The Missing Piece on Most Service Business Landing Pages When people are looking into a product or service they rarely need they need to be confident about three things before they’ll work with you: That you actually understand what they need. That you have the competence to do what they need. That working with you won’t be a nightmare.
Why I Was Wrong About the 'About Us' Page (And What I Learned) In the past, I thought About pages were just filler because marketing should be customer-focused. I was wrong.
Being "the best" is lazy. I’m talking about describing yourself as "the best" on your website. It stops you from thinking about what actually makes your business the right choice.
Why experts sometimes have terrible conversion rates. Experts often have poor conversion rates because the words on their landing pages are all about them. Here's what you can do to fix this.
How I improve conversion rate for long booking forms Complex lead intake or booking forms offer opportunities for improving conversion rates. Here are a few...
How I track WhatsApp conversations as conversions in Google Ads At the time of writing Google has no way of tracking WhatsApp leads as conversions. I've used a couple of work arounds to solve this.
How to get more phone call leads. Most businesses who advertise online to get leads struggle to contact people who filled in an enquiry form. One way to improve this is to get leads to call you.
Will using technical terms and industry jargon on a landing page improve conversion rate? Landing pages have to be written for both the expert and non-technical user because you get both expert and non-technical visitors. Here's how to do that.
Improve conversion rates with visitor-focussed headlines High-converting headlines are about what the visitor cares for, not about the characteristics of the business. Here's how to check your headline for visitor focus.
6 Critical Mistakes You're Making with Your Landing Page Amy Hoy wrote a brilliant article titled 6 Critical Mistakes You're Making with Your Landing Page. She makes a really interesting observation which resonated with me: Landing page design is actually a usability exercise.
CAPTCHA is like putting barbed wire in front of your shop Don't make it difficult for your customers to contact you. Businesses with the smoothest processes will attract (and keep) the best customers.
Do long enquiry forms get more qualified leads? If your enquiry form asks for much more than contact details you're losing qualified sales leads. Read on to learn why...
Honest conversion tracking when you've got live chat, click to call and a form I took on an account with no useful conversion data. Here's how I started tracking calls, forms and live chat accurately.
How I got landing page load time down from 0.8 seconds to 0.2 seconds. Here’s a quick tip for improving landing page speed. As you know, nobody likes a slow website. Load speed is strongly correlated with the conversion rate: Fast website = more leads.
How long should your landing page be? How long should your landing page be? The answer isn't a number.
How to craft high-converting headlines, even if you have the copywriting skills of a turnip. If you’re anything like me, starting is the hardest part of writing. It's like I'm staring at the screen waiting for someone to unblock the idea pipe. That struggle is over.
How to improve landing page experience. Improving page speed helps improve landing page experience. Google's guidance is broad, not specific. That makes it hard to know what to do. Google does provide one specific set of instructions, following these will improve landing page experience and boost conversion rates.
I’m paying for clicks but I'm not getting enough leads. Read on to learn how your website could be sabotaging your advertising. And, what you can do to get more leads from your the clicks you've already paid for.
Improve website conversion rates with autocomplete. Here's a small tweak to the contact form on your website that'll make it easier for people to complete it. Adding autocomplete to your form fields is one of those 1% kaizen improvements. They all add up.
Landing pages: Click-to-call or contact form? You get the highest conversion rates from landing pages that concentrate on convincing visitors to do just one thing. Offer visitors too many choices and they bounce. But what if there are two equally good things your visitor could do?
Use HTTPS for your landing pages or kill your conversion rate. The number of website enquiries you get is going to fall off a cliff after 24th of October if your website doesn't use HTTPS. After the 24th of October 2017, Google Chrome will warn people that web pages with forms are insecure unless they’re served over HTTPS. Here's how to fix this.
We read websites like we did 100 years ago Even though the internet is infinitely more ubiquitous now. Even though we've had a generation grow up with Google. Even though 2-year olds have iPads . The way people read websites hasn't changed...
What's your landing page's first job? It’s not to convince someone to buy from you, establish trust, build your brand or educate your customer. Those things are important but they're not the first job. The first job is ...
Length is a liability; value per page is an asset. This is a quote from Write Useful Books by Rob Fitzpatrick. His advice is perfect for lead-generation landing pages.
How to improve landing page conversion rates by increasing visitor motivation Here's how I doubled the conversion rate on some Google Ads lead generation landing pages by improving visitor's motivation.