Ultimate guides

How to generate more leads by asking fewer questions

Updated
When organizations utilize online forms, one of the primary objectives is to acquire important information about their leads, which allows them to focus their marketing efforts on prospects who have a greater chance of becoming customers. In order to increase the likelihood of a prospect completing your form and decrease the chances of them abandoning it, it's critical to follow certain best practices when creating your form.

Having the appropriate questions to ask (and the right number of questions) increases the probability of a prospect completing your form. In terms of online form design, what is the optimal number of questions to include? The reality is that there are so many variables in this equation that there isn't a straightforward single solution. Still, when determining how many questions to include on your online forms, there are several best practices you can follow that has been proven time and time again.

Reduce Page Friction

Remember that your visitors have short attention spans, which is the first thing to keep in mind. And by "short," it means that they'll just spend a few seconds on your website before deciding whether or not to remain or hit the back button on their browser. Due to the fact that you only have a limited period of time to capture the attention of your website visitors, it's important that you eliminate friction on your landing pages as much as possible to maximize conversions.

When a website visitor encounters anything that is unclear or overwhelming, this is referred to as page friction, and it is a primary reason why website visitors abandon online forms. Online forms that have an excessive number of fields and ask an unreasonable number of questions are a significant cause of friction. Reduce the number of questions on your forms to assist you in increasing your conversion rates as much as possible.

Only ask Essentials

Marketers have done extensive studies on how lengthy lead-generating forms should be and how many questions they should contain. (According to most research, three to seven webform questions or fields are sufficient.) According to these studies, form conversion rates begin to decline dramatically after three to seven fields. However, the number of questions to include may vary depending on the type of your organization and your unique marketing objectives.

That is why it is critical to determine the optimal number of questions for your business. The goal of most landing pages is to collect enough information to take prospects farther down the marketing funnel. Creating a high-performing online form means just requesting information that is necessary for your marketing plan. Because most website users have limited tolerance for filling out long contact forms, a rule of thumb is to simply ask for the information you need to contact and qualify your leads.

Test your forms

Running A/B testing to determine the best number of questions to put on your form design is always a smart idea. Splitting your site traffic to test two different versions of a page allows you to determine which form works better. And, best of all, there are several tools accessible to assist you in doing A/B testing quickly and effectively. Questionscout supports A/B testing and automatically determines the winning form version after providing form visitors with different forms.

A/B testing your landing pages is a guaranteed method to significantly boost the number of leads your company generates, and there's plenty of data to back this up. One luxury housebuilder conducted an A/B form test to see which version of their landing page captured the most leads. The findings revealed that a simpler form with fewer stages and fields was significantly more successful than a lengthier and more intricate form.

Quality vs. Quantity of Leads

Take into consideration if the number or quality of leads is more significant to you when determining how many questions should be included on your landing page forms. According to research, the length of your form has an influence on both the quality and amount of leads you receive.

In general, shorter forms are easier to complete, resulting in a higher percentage of individuals actually completing them. More leads are generated as a consequence. A lengthier form with more questions, on the other hand, will result in fewer individuals completing it. Request simply the most basic information, such as a person's name and email address, if you need to generate more leads.

Keep Surveys relevant

Try to put yourself in the shoes of your customer. Would you spend time on a survey if there was no option to indicate "Does not apply" or skip items that weren't relevant to you? Most likely not. Consider the following scenario, if you don't drink coffee, answering questions about your coffee habits would be a waste of your time, and the answers you'd provide would be neither accurate nor useful.

Instead, offer them an alternative. If your respondents pick a negative answer, you can send them right to the conclusion of the poll and thank them for their participation. You won't receive hundreds of new perspectives on coffee from participants who don't drink it, which is a significant advantage.

Conclusion

Despite the fact that there is no hard and fast rule, the precise number of questions to put on your online form design, it is recommended to keep your questions to a bare minimum until they are absolutely required. As soon as it is appropriate, collect relevant information. By determining exactly which (and how many) questions to include on your forms, your company will be in a better position to begin collecting more high-quality leads.

When you receive more replies, you will be in a better position to discover and evaluate data patterns, in addition to knowing more about your target audience. Considering the characteristics listed above, survey makers can avoid asking loaded questions and nurture the art of asking the appropriate questions purposefully in order to develop an effective research design for their companies or enterprises.