Add steps to your lead gen form to increase conversions

Increase conversions by adding steps to your lead gen form

The company: B2B software company.
The goal: Increase the CVR of the lead gen form, without reducing MQL rates.
The tactic: Add an extra qualifying step to the form.
The result: 20% increase in the CVR.

What's the fast marketing tactic?

The B2B software company was looking to improve the CVR (conversion rate) of their lead gen form, without losing lead quality. At the time, they had a multi-step form in place.

The initial hypothesis was that the form was too long. So the first test was to shorten it.

Surprisingly, however, shortening the form led to both a significant drop in CVR and MQLs (marketing-qualified leads).

So the team tested the anti-hypothesis: making the form longer by adding an extra step.

Specifically, they added a first step which asked users whether they currently had a similar software solution in place. This was done as a way to capture more data for the sales team, but also to be an “easy to answer” question to get more people into the form.

What was the result?

By adding this extra step to their existing multi-step form, the team achieved:

20% increase in the CVR.
10% increase in MQLs.

In addition, the sales team now has more information on each lead, which helps them improve their sales conversations and conversions.

The extra information also made it possible to further personalize the lead form for each user, giving them a different flow of questions based on whether they needed to replace a solution, or were new to the solution entirely.

Why does it work?

The hypothesis is that—for this company and their target audience—the added, qualifying steps were important in building trust.

Adding steps to the form, as well as placing qualifying questions ahead of requests for personal information, tells leads that the company is looking to have a productive conversation with them.

Leads appreciate that the questions were designed to get to know them and better cater to their needs. They are then more motivated to accept a phone call from the sales team.

Learn more about how to improve your landing pages, including how to design your forms, in the Landing Page Optimization course.

Meet the specialist behind this tactic

Shiva Manjunath has been in the CRO/experimentation space for more than 10 years. He is currently a Senior Web Product Manager at Motive, and a cofounder of the experimentation podcast From A to B.

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