We’re all becoming quite the pros at driving web site traffic. Search and email marketing are front of the line and according to your web analytics reports, there’s lots of new and repeat traffic arriving daily.

But once this traffic arrives, you’ve got to deal with the reality of low conversion and high bounce rates. For many of you, web personalization helps. But personalization can only do so much in terms of its ability to persuade a visitor to conversion. So in desperation, it’s heard over and over again…”we’re in the middle of a complete site redesign”.

Thanks to an email from Interwoven and courtesy of Larry Chase – whereby the header clearly indicated I was receiving this “FYI from Web Digest Marketers” as part of my subscription, yada, yada, yada…Anyhow, I can honestly say Interwoven made a good investment in renting this permission-based third party email list from Larry Chase. I should add that it also arrived with a good subject line: How to Design a Successful Web Form.

First things first. This is a great example of lead generation done well. I got the email, I trusted the sender, liked the subject line, I opened it, I liked the offer and I clicked. But it wasn’t flawless execution and ironically, the trouble was with the web form! lol

Working at Sitebrand, where we’re quite fixated on conversion – especially how to maximize it – so needless to say I was curious to see how Interwoven would convert me. Given the nature of the offer, it goes without saying I was going to be very critical of their web form. I mean, c’mon, who isn’t going to be? It begged criticism.

With 11 mandatory fields, I think their form is way too long…

Interwoven

And some of the fields made me think – why do you care, especially right now as I’m trying to get to know you? I’m on the form because you offered me a free best practices white paper and now I have to answer all these questions? And some of these questions are ones your inside sales team could figure out. Better yet, why not build the relationship and earn my trust over time.

Building trust is the beauty of web forms. Demanding trust is its demise.

I really think it’s important for marketers to get what they need, not what they want, on the initial web form. Getting someone “over the fence” should be your ultimate goal. In this case, I think they could have captured about half the info they did…unless of course they are going to call me and mail me marketing collateral. This brings up another interesting point…my much beloved email address. Where has it gone? No where on the form does it ask me to opt-in to future white paper offers, or webinar invites or an e-newsletter or anything at all? This my friends is a very missed web form opportunity…especially in a case where they’ve rented a list for one-time use only. Getting me to request the whitepaper is good…but why not make an attempt to green light me for future communications? At this point, any communication from Interwoven is going to be unsolicited. Whether they call me dialing for dollars or “blast” me with an email, it’s not going to be something I’ve given the thumbs up for.

And as for the other half of the info they were requesting, could it be info they gather later in the relationship? After some time goes by, and they woo me with nice offers, I’d probably be keen to “update my profile”. This is when they could gather that other “nice to have” info. This is when I would be ok providing it. Make sense?

Rant aside, I will say this is a white paper worth reading and you can get your copy here. Even they Interwoven doesn’t do the best job optimizing their own web form, the paper does offer tons of great insight and tips you can use. One of the biggest takeaways relates to pausing before you do a total site redesign. It’s a fact that web form reworks (minor and major) – especially when combined with personalized messaging like that offered through Sitebrand’s personalization platform – will help meet the goal of increased conversion. If you download this white paper, you’ll definitely get great information pertaining to:

• Form layout
• Headlines
• Pricing
• Fields
• Opt-in copy
• Reassurance language
• Links
• Submit buttons

Take a read…I’m very confident you’ll learn something new.