The selection and prioritization of form fields on the landing page can potentially affect volume and quality of conversions. If you include too many required fields, volume may plummet while quality may improve. Conversely, if you include too few fields, volume may grow while quality suffers.

The following chart compares survey results about the most important fields for gathering lead generation information.

Marketing Research Chart: Top form fields for lead gen data collection

Q: Please select the most important fields you need to collect from your leads on lead generation forms.

Click here to see a larger, printable version of this chart

Here are a few items to consider as you further evaluate this data:

Have you found an adequate balance of quality vs. quantity of leads?

The majority of respondents indicated that names and email addresses were most critical. Collecting such minimal information on a landing page may result in a high volume of conversions, but how will this affect the quality of email lists, or for that matter, the leads themselves?

What do you feel is the right balance of form fields to accrue a large number of quality leads? What trends in lead quality have you noticed when asking for less information in order to gather more leads?

Are you asking for too much information?

In the context of the MECLABS Conversion Heuristic, as it relates to lead-capture optimization, it's worth noting the large response to email address (96%) and name (89%), followed by the significant
(-38%) drop for the next highest category. The above heuristic accounts for customer friction and anxiety -- two elements that could hamper a potential lead from completing a lead gen form and entering your pipeline.

Do you feel capturing email address and name information is enough to adequately begin your lead generation and eventual nurturing? Conversely, have you seen form abandonment -- possibly due to customer friction or anxiety -- as a result of requiring too much form information?


What are your other thoughts on this data? Share your own analysis in the MarketingSherpa LinkedIn Group for a chance to be published in a future blog post. Include your feedback as either a comment or a link to a blog post where you offer advice based on this data.
And, for more information about lead generation tactics, be sure to download the free excerpt from the 2012 Lead Generation Benchmark Report.

Useful links related to this research

Lead Generation: Testing form field length reduces cost-per-lead by $10.66

List Building: The four questions every email capture page must answer

Internet Marketing: Optimizing form fields to maximize conversions

Orphan Forms: Marketing 101 change drives 32% increase in form completions