Lately I have been working with the local client stuff and optimizing their site and page. One concept I had for the client was to do a lead capture instead of doing a phone call. This way I can guarantee my leads and it will be up to the client to sell their services to the consumer.

From my own experience the shorter the form the better the conversion, since the client does not understand this and wants them to fill out a HUGE form, I was able to talk them down to a shorter form – 3 fields. Even I prefer 2 field or even just 1 – I settled for 3. The other problem is the client wanted all 3 fields filled in. I personally know that email should be the only one required.

Since this is local and I am jumping into this space – I required all 3 fields. Tracking the optin rate I use prosper202 and ClickTale to help me with my analyzing. See example image…

Looking at the image the drop rate happens at the 3rd form field. This specific field I did not want to be required, but the client wanted it to be required and his traffic drop rate is at 33%! For local traffic that is a lot of lost traffic! It tells me that at the 3rd field users did not want to fill it out or were hesitant to hit the submit after they filled out field 3.

Moving over to affiliate marketing, advertisers, list building…

Since I showed this potential to the client, they wanted to do some crazy moving of the fields around… argh. Anyways, this is important because you can see where the user fails to complete the form. If you are doing list building, you can determine your fields and what they are NOT filling it out. Is making a form field required prove to produce more conversions than a field that is optional?

What if you are the advertiser, Clicktale helps with figuring out which of the form fields are not performing well at all. For affiliates that work directly with an advertiser, you can ask to put pieces of code to watch the end user. Or if you do white label offers (host and posts) you can see if a form isn’t doing well and create a suggestion to the advertiser.

Having this sort of data is powerful, it leverages the consumers interactions to help better your business. There are many reasons that the end user might not hit submit, it is in your best interests to figure it out. Are their too many fields to fill out? Are specific fields required?

Some reason users may drop off is…

• The required field is too personal
• The form itself is long, time consuming
• A field is required, force optin fields

These are some that I figured out when dealing with the local client. I bet if you work with a host and post offer that has a submit field, you can go back to the affiliate network or advertiser and put in your input about the offer because you have hard data to present.

Clicktale proved to be always on their game and it seemed this form report is a great addition, I have not see it within their dashboard and I have been using Clicktale for quite a while. It was recently when I started applying it with my local client that i found this new feature (if it is new).

So are you doing list building? Are you an advertiser with short forms? Are you an affiliate that does white label offers? I suggest this tool to you because it is quite powerful. Showing a lost of 33% in traffic to my client means he is losing business. In essence you may be losing money because you probably are not tracking the form optins.