How I improve conversion rate for long booking forms

I've consulted with several businesses that have complex booking or lead intake forms on their landing pages.

The businesses were very different. There was a physiotherapist, a law firm, junk removal, a psychologist, pressure washing, visa service and others in the mix. But, they all shared the same problem: their Google Ads leads cost too much.

They couldn't reduce their cost-per-click because they're in competitive markets. The only way to reduce their cost per lead was to improve the conversion rate.

Luckily complex forms offer plenty of ways to do that.

Here are some of the ideas I shared with them. If you've got a complex form some of them might be useful.

Secure the lead instead of hoping for the booking.

Everyone I spoke to had more or less the same reason for their intake or booking form: efficiency. They wanted a calendar full of appointments or an inbox full of receipts without ever having to speak to a lead.

The problem with this approach is that it's all or nothing. If the prospective customer didn't book or make payment they were lost forever.

I suggested that they change the form to ask for - and save - contact information up front. That way they could chase people who didn't complete the whole process.

You've still got efficiency from people who complete the process on their own. And, you've got a list of prospective customers who can be nudged across the line.

Allow people to save progress and come back later.

Have a button to save progress or save the information automatically as it's entered. Either way is kind to your prospective customer.

From a technical point of view it's probably better to save this in your database instead of on the user's device. That way they'll be able to resume even if they're on a different device.

If you ask for an email address early on you can automate a message with a link to get back to the form. Someone is much more likely to return knowing that they don't have to start from scratch.

I expect you'll need to think about the person's privacy. One way to do this is to send an email with a password or login link when the person tries to access the form again.

Measure how many people start, and how many people finish.

If you don't already have this information I recommend you do this before making any changes.

Knowing how many people don't finish helps evaluate the potential upside vs the cost of making changes. It also serves as a benchmark to see if your changes actually improve the conversion rate.

Follow up with people who don't complete the process.

This is the main reason for saving contact information early on.

You can automate (yay efficiency) a series of messages to people who start but don't finish. It might work something like this:-

• The person enters their contact information and clicks the 'Save and continue' button.
• They see a screen that tells them that you've emailed them a link to come back if they need to.
• Your system sends them an email with the link to the form.
• If they haven't completed the form in the next 30 minutes your system sends them the first follow-up email.
• It sends more follow-up emails over the next few days/weeks.
• When they complete the process the follow-up emails stop.

You could do the same with SMS or WhatsApp if you prefer.

Cut questions.

Every question you delete makes it a little more likely that someone will complete the process.

I interrogate every question, dropdown, and checkbox on the form. If it doesn't pass 2 questions it gets the chop:-

• Why do we need to know this?
• Do we have to know this so the person can complete the process (book an appointment or finish the intake form)?

For example, the physio had a 2-part question asking about what hurt. You selected say shoulder, and then had to select from a list of possible reasons for shoulder pain.

These are both poor questions because:-

• The physio would treat any body part so the answer didn't matter.
• The person filling in the form was unlikely to know if they had a rotator cuff injury, adhesive capsulitis or shoulder impingement syndrome. And, the physio would do their own diagnosis no matter what reason was selected.

The psychologist asked for the medical insurance provider and policy number. They needed this information. But, not until after the appointment. And, they asked for it as part of their intake at the clinic. Dropping these requirements make it easier to complete the form as most people don't know their policy number offhand.

Design easy-looking forms.

There is a lot of guidance on designing forms out there. I'm not going to repeat it here. Instead I'll highlight 2 things that make long forms look easier:-

• Break long forms up into separate steps or screens.
• Or, keep one long form but group related questions under headings. e.g. Contact Information, Appointment Date and Time, Address, etc.

Use smart branching to ask only relevant questions.

Smart branching is where the questions change based on answers to previous questions. For example, one of the visa services I worked with needed different information for a tourist visa than for a business visa.

Their form was horrendous because they showed all the questions for all the visas. They tried to make it easier by adding "(if applicable)" to the labels, but that just confused things.

With smart branching if someone chose 'tourism' as the purpose of their visit only the questions for the tourist visa would show. If they chose 'business', only the business visa questions would show and so on.

Offer human support.

This could be a live chat system, a phone number or an 'I need help' button that will get someone in your office to call the person.

Fix uploading.

A few of the clients I consulted with needed documents to complete the process. Things like passport scans for the visa providers, plans for the contractors and a driver's licence for the car rental company. Their forms couldn't be submitted without the documents.

And that's a problem because there are a lot of reasons why someone can't upload documents while they're filling in your form:-

• They might not have the files.
• They might not have the files on the device they're using.
• The files might not be in the format your form accepts.
• The might be on a mobile phone with low data or slow internet.
• Some technical reason might have prevented them uploading the file.

An extreme case was for one of the visa providers. They needed a photos of the main passport page, a return ticket and proof of hotel booking for every person travelling. That's 15 files for a family of 5.

You'll get more people (eventually) completing the process if you allow them to upload documents later.