• Increasing Your Conversion Rates With Multi Step Landing Pages

    Most often the first thing to do when you get a landing page idea running is to gather a focus group or simply send it to some colleagues or friends for evaluations. Sometimes, you even get to consult yourself with a designer or a page builder, but in the end, you can always get a […]

    multi-step-form-example-770x384

    Most often the first thing to do when you get a landing page idea running is to gather a focus group or simply send it to some colleagues or friends for evaluations. Sometimes, you even get to consult yourself with a designer or a page builder, but in the end, you can always get a worse landing page conversion rate than your old one.

    There is one trick that doubles or triples conversion count, regardless of the segment you are operating in. The price. Has it ever happened to you to get excited about a product and you see the price missing on the page you got to? Well, it’s frustrating.

    If a client has to click a few times or even scroll down in order to reach the price, then you have work to do with optimising your landing pages.

    Why isn’t your landing page converting?

    Common landing page practices are to reduce form fields as much as possible and to hope that this improves conversion rates. But it’s not as simple as that. What are the main three reasons people fail to convert on most landing pages?

    1. Most landing pages usually lack the information to push the client prospect any further. Demanding information, without giving often fails to work.
    2. People know that simply [Email], [Name], and [Phone Number] are not enough for anyone to devise them a personalized quote. Visitors aren’t stupid. They are well aware that this is a trick to push them in the funnel in the form of a newsletter or another list.
    3. People, regardless of being involved in some kind of business or not, are well aware when you get their information with the sole purpose of contacting them. Many would even consider this offensive and refuse to proceed on the webpage.

    The speed at which people learn with technologies improves with each generation and nowadays you can’t expect for everyone to fall in such lists only because they are curious about the price of your product. Other aspects like banner blindness also tend to get worse with time. Online visitors are overloaded with information and rarely perceive what we want them to, especially in their peripheral field of sight.

    Give out the answers, don’t tease your visitors as much as you think you should. The answers are just a browse away and lead to your competitors.

    Examples of Converting Landing Page Forms

    Standing out often means breaking some rules. Yes, some marketing Gurus like Neil Patel often say that the first thing you should do is cut off the unnecessary stuff from your online forms. While you can’t argue with the fact that you don’t need the client’s fax or phone number in some cases, there are some things that you can use.

    Knowing more about the visitor’s intentions can sometimes double, even triple your conversion rate. If you’re wondering how, let’s dive into some examples.

    Form
    Converting form, Image Courtesy of Marketingautomationinsider.com

    Segment the number of questions you want to ask to make your visitors feel specially treated. For each answer, you can devise a separate niche sales page, where their needs are properly addressed. For example, if you are selling marketing automation software like in the image above, you can easily divide the clients to distinct businesses in both size and field of operation. Propose each with the most adequate offer.

    What is important to note here is the fact that you are getting a tailored answer. The form suggests that the answer is different for everyone. If it simply asks for the client’s phone or contacts, then it’s pretty obvious the answer would be the same.

    Here’s another great example of a good form that converts.

    Hubspot Website Grader
    Hubspot Website Grader, Image Courtesy of Hubspot, and ventureharbour.com

    Look at that beauty, it asks for your website so it can analyze it. This means it does it for every website separately. And in order to get your answer, you need to share your email. And it has to be a working email address since most likely you are getting the answer there.

    Afterwards, more questions follow, but you’ve already signed with the email, so even if you don’t complete the process, the lead has been successfully generated. So what do these two examples have in common, aside from the high conversion rate? They both a relevant question at the beginning of the form.

    One of these takes the smart approach to also get the email address of the lead from the first page. If they do so, even if the lead doesn’t complete the process, they’ve already got it for further use.

    Why do Multi-Step Landing Pages work?

    Has it happened to you to fill in a 40 questions IQ test, and then to find out they need your email so that you get your answers? Well, most certainly you shared your email because you had already committed half an hour to answer all these questions. This is one of the main reasons why Multi-Step Landing pages work wonders compared to single ones.

    Contrary to popular belief, decreasing the number of steps before your leads convert might sometimes result in lower conversion rates. People are smarter online than they used to be and they know when they are getting rushed.

    Multi-step Landing pages enhance the trust of your customers

    Your visitors believe they are getting the best and the most tailored experience on your website when they actually fill in related questions to the use of your product. Moreover, going through filling several personalized questions makes them commit to the process of converting. Some of the biggest PPC spenders on the google search network, like Ask.com and the University of Phoenix use Multi-Step landing pages for the majority of their google ads campaigns.

    Consider these additional steps as foreplay before the big fiasco. In most cases, the information the customer wants the most is the price. And although we said you can put the price on the first page, you can lure them into the funnel with a tailored proposal tactic. For example, you’re selling lawnmowers.  First page:

    Lawnmowers from $199 to $599

    Get to know which lawnmower suits your needs

    • How big is your porch
    • [Name, Email]

    Then you can hit them with other questions, and on the last page, let them know what product fits their need the most and how much it costs.

    Ask non-threatening questions

    ActivaCampaign landing
    Active Campaign Multi-Step Landing, Image Courtesy of Landingcampaign, and ventureharbour.com

    In many SaaS oriented businesses, the Multi-Step landing pages take the following approach as shown in the image above. First, you get to sign up with an email and answer a simple question like what your field of operation is. Then you get a block of three simple questions with drop-down menus like how big your company is and what industry are you operating in. This keeps the user engaged and allows them to feel a special attitude toward their business and the answers to the questions.

    The possibilities for non-threatening questions are practically limitless. You can ask how many employees they have, what the zip code in their area is (In order for them to see if they are eligible for that juicy discount.), or how soon they need help.

    With each next step, you need to get more specific. Once they’ve filled in the general info, now you need to ask specifics like quantity (if you are selling items), amount of work done per interval of time, etc.

    And, finally, ask them about their email address or phone, so you can contact them with the personalized offer, that you can devise thanks to the information they shared with you.

    5 Reasons to Use Multi-Step Landing Pages

    If you recognize your own audience in one of the descriptions mentioned below, then you should probably address their needs with multi-step landing pages. Which are the most common reasons why we use them?

    1. Visitors need to see answers ASAP.

    Distractions in the online space increase each year. People have less time to spend researching your business and making a decision. Single-step landing pages, consisting only of forms like email and name let visitors know that they are not getting a personalized offer and that you’re simply fishing for a lead.

    On the other hand, multi-step landing pages hint that there is more on the next step and that they might get an addition to the answer they’re seeking. Generally speaking, people know what filling a zip code is less threatening than sharing your entire address, phone number and name on the first visit on some website.

    2. People have limited time

    overwhelmed time
    Time, Overwhelmed, Image Courtesy of achancetochange.org

    With more responsibilities and a constant flow of information overload, people tend to spend less and less time performing certain things without being distracted and hopping onto the next. That means we have limited time in which to grasp the opportunity of engaging them.

    Nowadays’s online visitors are getting smarter by the day, and they will certainly compare your products with competitor ones until they are certain that they’re getting the best deal out there.

    Single-step landing pages fall behind multi-step ones in this particular sense – visitors don’t want to speak with 150 websites on the phone. And single-step landing pages mostly serve the purpose to generate a lead that would be contacted later.

    Multi-step landing pages speak to trust and tailored experience. Moreover, single-step landing pages with a contact form make people think they are going to have to wait to get contacted. Whereas, multi-step landing pages ask about specific information which often leads the visitors to think that they’ll get an answer right away.

    3. Multi-Step landing pages can be improved step by step

    When you break down your landing page into a few steps, each of these pages has its own conversion rate. That means all of them can be optimized separately. Gradually improve them and increase the overall conversion down the funnel. Split test if needed and analyze as much as you have to.

    Regardless, you should expect your multi-step landing to yield a higher conversion than a single page, unless you’ve placed some threatening questions right there.

    4. Visitors that go into your multi-step landing page convert more easily

    Increasing the number of leads you get isn’t always correlated with increasing conversion rates. Sometimes, it can even lower the conversion greatly. More often than not, when someone takes the time to fill in all the extra questions in the multi-step landing, they are more likely to pick up the phone or to answer your emails, because they’ve already committed so much time.

    Once they’ve answered your forms, visitors believe you have all the needed information to properly help them out and address their needs, unlike other websites that just ask about their email address.

    Great multiple-step landing pages that don’t use the “Ask Email first” method, often put in the email form at the end and pair it with a sentence like “Based on the information you shared, we are preparing a quote for you, where can we send you our personalized offer?” And then they ask you for your email.

    You’ve already taken the time to answer 2-3 pages of questions, you are most likely giving out the email to find out the answer.

    5. People get answers or at least think they’ll get answers faster

    After filling one or two steps, people are lead to believe that a machine or a human is gathering information and devising an offer for them and that they would get an answer in the last part of the landing.

    Well, visitors are smart and they are well aware that it takes time. Custom solutions need to be thought out and put together and nobody can devise a tailored proposal with only a phone number or an email as information about a lead.

    Thus, pre-qualifying questions need to be put at the beginning of the landing. Step by step, by answering your micro-conversion questions, people will commit to your funnel and reach the end.

    How to make a Highly-converting Multi-Step Landing page

    In order to get started, well, you need to know your business really well. What are your competitive advantages?

    If you are running a marketing consultancy and you’ve put up a huge banner in the Hero section stating free website audit, but then every other consultancy does the same, how do you differentiate yourself from others? It’s practically like you haven’t said anything.

    Follow the principles and the examples shown above throughout the article, always remember to start with micro-conversion non-threatening questions that qualify your leads. If you are renovating houses ask them how big their house is, in which region it is, etc. If you are running a Saas start-up ask them about their business, about the field of operation and the size of it. You get the point.

    There are two types of Multi-step landing pages to try out. One of them is to ask for an email at the start, paired with a qualifying question, like shown with the example of Hubspot’s Website Grader. The other option is to ask for the email last after they’ve filled all qualifying questions and share your quote with them via email.

    Also, ensure that your landing pages are passing form info through the URLs to one another.

    Conclusion

    Even if you haven’t tried designing a multi-step landing page before, you should give it a try, as they often yield much higher conversion rates than traditional forms you meet in landing pages.

    Engage your visitors with qualifying micro-conversion questions, and let them commit to the process of getting a tailored offer. Wrap up by asking them about their email so that you can share a quote. And voila.