Why You Need Multi-Step Lead Forms

New traffic to your website should convert new leads into your business. That’s the whole point of having a website in the first place. Most small business websites do follow this basic formula. In fact, you’re probably already capturing leads on your website now. Unfortunately, you’re probably NOT capturing as much detailed information about these new leads as you should be. What you really need is a multi-step lead form setup. Allow me to explain…

Most small business websites capture ONLY two simple pieces of data from new opt ins — First Name & Email Address. For many years, name and email were the only pieces of information you really needed to make a connection and continue your marketing efforts down the road. But now the game is much different. Name and email alone are simply not enough. You need to capture more data and more information about your prospects and you need to do it as soon as they opt-in to your list.

Capturing new lead information at the moment of opt-in is the best time to do it because your new leads are ready and willing to hand over more information about themselves. Yet, most small businesses avoid doing this because it’s proven that too many questions or long lead capture forms can slow down your new leads and dramatically lower your conversions. Yes, it’s true — adding more questions to your opt-in forms will make them more complicated, which will discourage people from opting-in and thus lower your visitor-to-lead conversion rates.

BUT, there’s a more subtle way of doing this without lowering conversion rates by using *Multi-Step* Lead Forms for capturing new leads. Here’s an example of a 3-part lead form:

Step #1 = First Name & Email
Step #2 = 3-5 Quick Survey Questions
Step #3 = Mailing Address & Phone Number

If you’re using a tool like Infusionsoft, this is very easy to setup as multiple steps so that each step by itself does not intimidate your prospects. It’s important to realize that humans are hard-wired for completion. We hate leaving things incomplete, and you can play into this reality by making prospects feel a sense of satisfaction from completing each step you put in front of them.

If you’re using Infusionsoft, you simply need to link these web forms with “hidden email” fields so the information you collect in each step continues to be linked to the same prospect (rather than asking for their email address again and again).

There are so many advantages to this approach, but the most important is List Segmentation. First, the leads who actually complete all 3 (or all 5) of your opt-in steps have already proven themselves much more valuable than those who only complete 50% of your lead forms. Second, with more information about each lead you can easily segment your list accordingly.

Are you already using multiple lead forms in your business? What’s working for you? Leave your comment below.