Long Forms or Short Forms you choose! You don’t have to stick to a standard contact form on your site – in fact, you may get better results with a longer and more detailed offering.

Conventional wisdom has it that the more things you ask people to sign up to online, the less likely they are to do it, in terms of web form optimization the golden rule has generally been that shorter forms mean higher sign up rates.

It’s true that a shorter form means there’s less for the visitor to do – but does making it easy for the visitor, actually produce better results, or do you simply get more form entries of lesser quality?

The type of conversion you are looking for will determine the type of form and the number of fields you need to use, for example, a newsletter signup form needs only very basic information, but a quotation form requires more detail. 

The quality of the Lead is something you may want to take into account when deciding what information you want to get from the form filling process. 

How much information do you need? You will probably have to accept that adding extra fields is the price you have to pay to obtain quality over quantity.

Start with the easy stuff first and finish with the email address and contact details at the end – once they have invested time in the early section of the form they will be less inclined to quit the process at the end.

If users see value in filling out a form they will be happy to do it – make it clear in any notes on the form page that there is a value to the process, ie saving time or money further along in the process. In general, I think that someone who has submitted a lot of information on a form is a more committed prospect than just email signup.  My experience has shown that where there is no commitment on the part of the visitor at the form filling stage, there will be a lot more work to do during the follow-up process – whereas if you have a good understanding of the prospect’s needs from the beginning, the follow-up and sales process can be considerably shortened. Personally, I would suggest that if a visitor to your website is serious about engaging with you, he or she will understand the logic of providing good basic information from the start.

An awful lot of time can be taken up with chasing up time wasters and tire kickers. The online world doesn’t demand the same level of commitment that is needed in the real world – with a click of the mouse the surfer is on to the next website.

So could a longer form on your website, help to increase visitor engagement and produce better quality leads?