Is an email signup form more effective than a button?
-
I'm very confident it is. But I'm looking for a study I can use to tell my conservative bosses that if we replace the button with an email entry field and button, we'll improve conversion greatly.
If anyone has a link to a study on how much you can further improve clickthrough by having an overlay form appear, I'd appreciate that as well.
Joel
-
I have to agree with EGOL when they stated, "You are asking if Method A is better than Method B. I am willing to bet that the implementation is more important than the method."
I think either of these methods (button v. form) can work better, but this is dependent on a few things. You will need to consider what the industry is, who the viewers are, and what they are more likely to do. Aesthetics and verbiage will also make a major impact—so it really comes down to multiple factors. For instance, someone who is younger might be more inclined to simply hit a button for ease of use. Making it less clicks will always improve your conversion. But an older person might prefer to fill out a form—but they might also not want to give out their information. My biggest suggestion would be to sit down and ensure you are thinking about your audience, not necessarily what you think would convert the best.
Hope this helps!
-
You are asking if Method A is better than Method B. I am willing to bet that the implementation is more important than the method.
So, I would do some of each and keep track of what does best. Every situation is going to be unique and the more varied the stuff that you throw at the wall the greater your chance of seeing something big stick.
-
If you're looking for specific studies, I know there's some out there about CRO on payment forms. Kyle Rush talked about the one he did for the Obama campaign for campaign donations at MozCon in 2013.
-
HI Joel,
I can understand wanting a study to convince someone of something. Thing is, Erica is right.
You figure 100% of the people on this page are on this page. Some smaller percent will by definition be on the next page with the sign up form.
So, unless there is something magical about the button that adds to their commitment to filling out the form or some amazing content (that should be on page one if it's so amazing), I can't see how more visitors would fill out the form on page two. It would have to be so many more that it makes up for all the people that didn't click the link or button.
If the signup form is too huge for the content already on page one, you may want to try asking for just name and email on page one and the rest of it on page two. That way, you would at least get enough to keep marketing to them later if they bail on page two of the form. Of course, test that to get the data you need.
What the page two form advocates have is a hypothesis. Such is the stuff tests are made of.
Sorry about not having a study, but it really is not very debatable. Of course, every site is different and who knows what variables in information or channel you're dealing with.
Best of luck!
Mike
-
You definitely want to make any customer/community information you're collecting as easy as possible for the person entering it. Making it less clicks will always improve your conversion.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How would you encourage phone calls rather than email enquiries?
Just that really - we're getting on average around 80% online enquiries, and 15% calls. Calls convert better so would prefer calls. What steps would you put in place to increase calls? Ours is a lead generation site - we're a mortgage broker. So far we have a click to call button on the quote page which loads on mobile devices and doesn't display when the call centre is shut. We get traffic from organic and PPC. I'm trying to come up with a bit of a plan to address this. Thanks, Amelia
Conversion Rate Optimization | | CommT1 -
Email before Download or Not?
I'm designing an exhibition stand at the moment and am going to be putting QR codes that link to a technical specification on the products. The question is - do I just allow them to download the pdf or do I ask for a name and email address before they can do that. As its an exhibition stand I should get the business cards anyway - but to know exactly what products each person is interested in would help I'm not sure how many people use QR codes in Asia, have a QR code readers..... and would adding the email request just be too much? Whats your opinion? The product is an industrial one and mainly engineers and procurement types from the oil and gas industry will be visiting the stand.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Zippy-Bungle0 -
What is the best day of the week for email surveys?
Wondering what the best day of the week is for emailing surveys. Also if there are different best days for B2C & B2B.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | bozzie3110 -
Does anyone have a form solution which would allow for specific website visitor information (keywords, path, etc...from Google Analytics), to be passed to a form submitted by that user which could be passed to a Zoho CRM lead record?
Looking for form analytics which offers: security, CSS integration, capture of Google Analytics data, integration with Zoho CRM.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | greenefficient0 -
Call to actions buttons
Redoing my site at the moment and placing a few call's to action around it. The calls to action are pretty basic, along the lines of 'click here to get a quote', when you click you get taken to an anchor towards the bottom of the same page that takes you to a contact form. I've based the Calls to action on just a brightly coloured gif image that has text written on to it (not in code but added via photoshop)? This the right way to go, or should I be putting the text actually on my page and using a background coloured element to do it? The same image is used across several pages (got a couple of these images which I use across the site) and thinking it's easier to do it this way rather than code? Adding alt text to images 'Click here to get quote on X' (X being product) and also using img title tag for when mouse i hovering over - Click here to get a quote! Don't want to get hit by any dupe content issue for using the same image on multiple pages etc (I could always no index the folder where the call to action images are stored if this helps?) This sound ok to you pros?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Jon-C0 -
How can I track the traffic source/keyword of form submissions?
I'm using Google Analytics on www.nhfinehomes.com and would like to track the source of leads submitted via form submissions. Ideally, I could track if the lead originated from organic search (and what keyword phrase), PPC, referral links, etc. Is this possible with Google Analytics and if so, can anyone point to some documentation on how to do this or better yet someone who can help me set this up? This site is running ASP.NET and uses JQuery so there is not a 'traditional' thank you page that I can reference. I'm not a programmer and do not pretend to be one! Thanks in advance. Link
Conversion Rate Optimization | | LinkMoser0 -
Keeping pages indexed but making sure they fill out a form before access - confusing Q's
OK so let me break down this little scenario we have going on. I work for a b2b company so we have a lot of gated content that is behind a form fill out - this is how we get a lot of our lead generation. Some pages that we have behind the form are showing up in search which allows people to view the documents bypassing the form. At first I thought, well why dont we just no index that page so that it does not appear in search. But then I thought it would be smart to keep the pages indexed to keep the SEO value, Is there a way to keep these pages indexed but make sure that when they click the link in the SERPS that they need to fill out the form in order to gain access to the document? Something on the backend that checks to make sure that the referral URL was completed or something like that? Anybody deal with this before?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | PatBausemer0 -
How can I pass the Search Term into a lead form?
We receive lead forms from interested visitors that include their name, email, grade level, and academic goals, and we would like to also know which specific phrase they used when searching for us. I need to find a way to grab the referring keywords and pass them as a hidden form field. Can this be done, and are there scripts available that can do this?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | brycebertola0