How Long Should Your Landing Page Forms Be?

Aaah，难以捉摸的lead-capture form。Such a seemingly simple element of inbound marketing, yet also the subject of frequent debate, particularly when it comes to deciding just how many fields to include on that bad boy. How many is too many? How many just isn't enough?

随着各地的营销人员在需要太多信息和太少的信息之间取得正确的平衡，许多人在思考，什么是神奇的田野甜点？

Most experts will tell you to ask only for the information you need to effectively contact and qualify a lead, but surely it's not that simple.

Let's dive into how you should make the decision about what is the right form length foryourbusiness.

Form Length Isn't the Only Factor

首先。尽管形式length is definitely a factor, marketers must realize that a person's willingness to complete a form isn'tonly依赖的长度the form. There are a number of factors contributing toyour landing page'sconversion rate, and form length is only one of them. It's important to recognize this, because you shouldn't just assume that adjusting the length of your form will always have a major influence on your page's conversion rate or the types of leads it generates. Note some of these other major factors that contribute to whether a登陆页面访客将填写表格：

• The value of the offer to be redeemed.（对于访客来说，值得完成表格完成吗？）
• The类型of information requested on the form.(Does the form ask for too-sensitive information that dissuades visitors from completing the form?)
• Website credibility and visitors' perceived sense of privacy/security.(Does the visitor trust the website enough to feel secure in providing their personal information?)

Marketers must understand that all of the factors above -- not just form length -- can contribute to登陆页面frictionand, thus, impact conversion. Now that we've gotten that understanding out of the way, let's hone in on form length and how to decide what length is best for you.

Do You Need More New Leads, or More High Quality Leads?

This is the single most important question you need to ask yourself when deciding on form length. In a nutshell,the length of your form inevitably leads to a tradeoff between the quantity and quality of the leads you generate.A shorter form usually means more people will be willing to fill it out, so you’ll产生更多的潜在客户。But the quality of the leads will be higher when visitors are willing to complete more forms fields and provide you with more information about themselves and what they’re looking for.

Therefore, shorter forms usually result in more overall leads, while longer forms will result in fewer, but高质量、y leads。因此，在确定表格的长度时，请确保让您的销售团队参与讨论。您对形式长度的决定应取决于您是否需要more线索，还是您是否需要更好的潜在客户和销售组织的投入对于该决策过程至关重要。让我们更详细地检查每个方案。

Scenario 1: You Need More Leads

If your sales team is suffering from an overall deficiency in leads and could benefit from more leads to work in general, this is an indication that您的表格应该简短而简单to eliminate as much friction as possible. The key here is to ask for enough information that allows you tocontact您的潜在客户（即姓名，电子邮件地址，电话号码），但要限制只有帮助的不必要表格字段qualifyleads and, thus, increase the likelihood potential leads will abandon your landing page without converting.

You may want to ask for more than just your leads' contact information to give your sales team more background on leads upfront, but remember, you can always ask for more information later in the sales process. Too often, companies request all kinds of contact information, neglecting to realize that their 15-field forms are significantly lowering conversion rates.

方案2：您需要更高质量的线索

如果原始的净新线索总数对您的销售团队来说不是问题，而是浪费时间试图筛选许多潜在客户，以将不良的潜在客户与高质量分开，这意味着您可能会受益从使用您的表格来更好地限定潜在客户，并帮助您将小麦与谷壳分开。

To help achieve this,长形式都会奏效。他们将阻止那些对您的业务不大兴趣的人完成多个领域，但他们会捕捉到足够感兴趣的人以完成更长的表格。此外，较长的表格将收集更多信息，以帮助销售人员在决定是否追求之前了解更多信息并进一步验证潜在客户。更长的表格将为销售人员节省联系潜在客户的麻烦，他们知道这些潜在客户通常不适合您的业务提供的产品/服务。

So if lead quality, not quantity, is a bigger issue for your business, what types of form fields should you be adding to your forms? In short, any field that would collect information to allow you to determine whether a lead is high quality or not. Obviously, this will vary from business to business, and it will greatly depend on thebuyer personasyou've identified as your ideal target customers. If you have a clear understanding of the details that make up your buyer personas, you can start to understand which types of information you should ask for on your form to decide whether or not your new leads fit those personas and how strong those leads are -- in other words, how likely they are to become a customer. The questions on your form could reveal background information such as demographics, location, industry, company name/website, role, etc. For example, if you're a local plumber serving only home or building owners in a specific geographic location, you might ask prospective leads to include their location. Doing so would allow you to weed out any bad leads who are outside of the locations you service.

You might also want to add in a question or two that would allow you to gauge their need for your product, their likelihood to purchase your service, or their fit with your company. For example, HubSpot sellsmarketing software，我们的登陆页面上的所有表格都包括一个可选的领域，要求访客描述其最大的营销挑战。在将这些信息放入我们的销售渠道之前，我们使用此信息来了解更多有关我们的潜在客户。

Information gathered in these fields could also serve as helpful data for more advancedlead scoringand潜在客户管理processes if that's something your business would benefit from.

测试以确定您的表格领域最佳点

一旦将自己适合上述两种情况之一 - 或者如果您认为自己可能落在中间的某个地方 - 确定理想形式长度的最好的事情就是进行一些A/B测试。如果您是使用HubSpot Enterprise的HubSpot客户，我们高级着陆页工具makes it very easy to A/B test your landing pages, and you could specifically use it to test form lengths to determine your form field sweet spot. Here's how to test for each scenario discussed above:

Scenario A (You Need More Leads):使用更较短的表格（或测试多表格长度变化）使用更长的形式在同一着陆页面上测试着陆页。分析您的A/B测试时，您应该寻找各种形式如何影响转化率。假设是您将能够从较短的形式中收集更多潜在客户，但是如果不是，另一个着陆页因素可能会对您的着陆页的转换率产生更大的影响（请记住 - 形式的长度并不是唯一的因素）。如果是这种情况，请花一些时间optimizing other elements of your landing pagesuch as copy, layout, and offer, and see if those changes positively impact your page's conversion rate.

Scenario B (You Need Higher Quality Leads):在登录页面上运行A/B测试，该测试测试更长的表格，但更多地关注您包括的不同类型的字段。分析您的A/B测试时，您应该寻找铅质量指标。The hypothesis is that your conversion rate will likely go down, but that you'll notice leads that are higher in quality and easier to qualify right off the bat. You'll likely need to consult with your sales team about their perception of the quality of the leads you produced from specific landing page variations to help you settle on the right number -- and types -- of form fields.

For more detailed information about A/B testing,下载我们的免费Introduction to Using A/B Testing for Marketing Optimizationebook。

您在铅捕获表格上包含多少个表单字段？您是否进行了A/B测试以确定您的表格领域最佳点？

Image Credit:Victor1558