WebForms

To begin with, I would like to thank CXL Institue for creating such a wonderful course and giving me the chance to take it. It is difficult to put into words how I am profoundly grateful for that. This article covers my second-week review of studying Conversion Optimization Mini Degree at CXL Institue

With regard to the CXL Insitute, CXL Institute is a paid training program institute and it provides mini degrees and online certification courses in marketing. All the programs at CXL Institute are taught by industry leaders and top marketers which makes this perform the best place for team marketing. CXL Institute providing Minidegrees in 5 scopes of Digital Marketing and they are:

1. Conversion Optimization
2. Customer Acquisition
3. Digital Analytics
4. Digital Psychology and Persuasion
5. Growth Marketing

In this article, I will cover the best practices for E-commerce with you.

WebForms

As you know, one of the essential parts of E-commerce is WebForms. Forms are quite similar to-or explicitly related to-final conversions on most websites. So optimizing the form can lead to big growth. Higher completion rates = higher profit.

There are different types of forms such as sign up forms, checkout forms, payment forms, lead generation forms and etc. Unfortunately, most of them are stuck on the websites.

Looking at forms, our prime objective as optimizers is to reduce friction. Here are some of the easiest ways to get it done:

1. Set clear expectations

Managing expectations is a broadway of optimizing sales and customer satisfaction. If you're clear upfront on what's going to happen — e.g. first any personal information, then payment data — so there's less risk that the form-fill would (negatively) be shocked when it arrives.

If you have a multi-step process where you are asking for payment in the last step, and it has not been discussed anywhere, you can see massive drop-offs.

2. Minimize the number of form fields

Minimizing the number of form fields is one the simplest thing we can do and it can have a significant effect on completion rates of the form. The friction increases with each additional area of the shape. There is no denying that by doing away with them you are and friction.

A comparative analysis of two ways of Contact Us best demonstrates that argument. When an 11-field version of the form was replaced with a 4-field version, there was a 160% increase in the number of forms submitted and a 120% increase in conversion. Equally surprising, the quality of submissions stayed the same when the essential requirements remained in the form.

You should ask for the information you absolutely need. Let's say you would like to sell a $20 PDF, all you need is their email to send PDF to, and their credit card information. The form does not have to be longer than this:

If you ship physical products, you’ll also need their shipping address.

Avoid optional fields – if you don’t absolutely need the information, don’t ask for it.

Are fewer fields always better? Not exactly. 

Sometimes you'll find that the conversion rate is the same when comparing 1 field vs 4 fields. So if you can ask for more details, then why not?

Here is an A / B test in which KinderCare introduced yet another area in variation B:

Although Version B was made longer by the 'comments' field, conversions remained identical. The additional sector has also improved lead quality which has been a big win for their sales department.

 An Eloqua study found the ‘sweet spot’ for form length is between 5-10 fields where 7 was the optimal number.

3. Intentionally increase friction to improve lead quality

Sometimes, you'll want to deliberately increase the number of fields. Evidently, the goal is not just to have more fields for the hell of it, but to improve the consistency of your lead.

The length of form eventually leads to a trade-off between the quantity and consistency of the leads you produce. A shorter form (usually) means it will be completed by more people, so you will be creating more leads.

There are three things longer forms can do:

1.Individuals who are more motivated to fill out long forms. We`ll get higher quality leads.

2. Longer forms help people to self-qualify–and people who are unqualified will leave.

3. You will do better lead scoring if you have more details on lead.

4. Multi-step forms

The concept behind multi-step forms is to minimize frictional awareness. Let's assume you have 16 fields on your form. It can be overwhelming to display all 16 fields at once, and therefore hurt conversions. For these cases, the treatment may be dividing the process into several short steps. Four measures, each with four fields of the form, are far easier to swallow than 16 all at once.

Autodesk tested a two-step form, which broke a long-form into two parts (while keeping all the form fields) by means of an overlay, increasing the free trial sign-up rate by 23% at a 99.9% confidence rate.

A good technique for using multi-phase forms is to get the most relevant information (such as name, email, telephone) in the first step –and store that information even if they don't finish all the steps. This way you get the lead-in and can follow up manually if necessary. This can, for example, be very useful when arranging appointments.

5. Start with easier fields

Ask for their name and email first as they're convenient, then after filling them out there's some progress going on, and since they've already begun filling out the form, it could be finished as well. If you start with something challenging – say numbers on your credit card–people would be less likely to get moving.

In most cases, putting a label over an input field works best so users are not required to look at the label and the input field separately. They need only one eye fixation to take in both the input labels and the ground.

Top-aligned labels often work well for forms involving localization or long labels, as there is plenty of horizontal real estate to expand/contract the label without adversely affecting the overall page layout. However, top-aligned brands do take up a lot of vertical real estate.

Top aligned example:

If your form has a lot of fields and the whole thing (including the call to action button) doesn't fit above the fold, you might want to go for right-aligned fields.

Right-aligned example:

6. Pre-select what you can

Often you have to ask people about their location or address. By auto-detecting their location according to their IP address you will reduce friction. It isn't great, but far better than giving no suggestions at all.

You can find out their state and city in the US (and possibly most countries), based on their zip code.

7. Feedback and error validation

There is a large amount of error detection and direct feedback. In doing this right you will score big gains.

An event with the same error message should be registered in Google Analytics (via event tracking) for any error message your website is able to display. This helps you understand the error messages number and frequency and what are the most popular error messages. You should go ahead and answer them when you know the problems! If error messages aren't registered, you're blind.

No-one really intends to see a message of mistake. There will be a drop-off any time people see an error message-a section may never try again. Thus your first task is to AVOID messages of error. If you have compulsory fields, make it clear that those are important.

Here’s an example of bad execution:

8. Form analytics

Probably, you would like to know which of your form fields triggers the most amount of friction?

There are three ways that assess this:

1. By checking the user testing, and paying close attention to which type field they think twice,
2. See replay videos from the user session (the ones supported by tools like Hotjar or Clicktale),
3. Using type analytics providing you with quantifiable data.