| July 2006
Building a Sign up Page that
Converts
How to build successful
sign up pages and avoid common mistakes.
The sign up page is
the “money page” for many sites and represents
success or failure. An exit from the signup
page is usually a loss and is often not recovered.
If we look at the total cost of marketing including: salaries,
Paid Search Engine Listings, Search Engine Optimization,
direct mail, print advertising, banner ads,
and web site development; then divide that total
by the number of conversions, the cost per conversion
can be daunting. Costs can range into the
hundreds of dollars per conversion, meaning
every sign up will add hundreds of dollars to
your net worth. Doesn't it make sense to invest
a significant amount of time improving the tool
that gets these signups?
Many site designers
treat the signup page as a last minute, end
of project afterthought. Be sure yours is as
effective as it can be by beginning a regular
effort to review and improve your signup page.
Conversion analysts
have studied signup pages for years trying to
get it right. The first formal study I saw was
done in 1999 by Georgia Tech. It measured the
drop off rates for each element in a signup
form. Web behaviors have remained consistent
enough to indicate that these rates are still
valid today. As a few examples, they found:
nearly 13% dropped off because the address was
required, 12% because it required too much time,
and 17% because they didn't trust the site.
If you don't bring them
to the signup page in the right mind set, equipped
with the right information and compelled to
commit, no sign up page will save you. The focus
of this article however is not these lead in
pages and how to motivate the buyer; it is solely
the signup page. We'll assume you have motivated
the users to give you information. If you have
them ready to engage but make significant mistakes
on the forms page, you will lose a surprising
number of signup's. If your form breaks, you have lost. My
testing still shows a surprising number of forms
breaking for simple reasons such as: pop up
issues, field format issues, the entire form
emptying completely due to one missing or incorrect
value, and confirmations failing to appear.
It only takes minutes to test your forms and
we will tell you how.
While we have a good
idea about what works, we are often surprised
by what we continue to learn. I have seen or
been a part of a wide variety of signup page
tests and have observed pages a group of experts
thought were excellent get a 20% lift by the
change of a background colors and minor layout
changes. No text, font, or fields were changed.
We all thought it had been optimized. It is
a mistake to believe we know it all and ongoing
testing is essential.
Let's summarize some of what is known:
Keep the form simple,
and then make it simpler. You need a very good
reason for every field on the page and management's
curiosity for metrics is not a valid reason.
You must fight to keep every possible required
field off this form. You must fight to keep
every optional field off this form. Try for email address only with name optional.
Plan to collect more information after you have
engaged them in the signup. When marketing resists,
explain the drop off rates for each field, the
cost per conversion and the potential lost ROI
for each lost signup.
• Clearly mark required fields with an asterisk,
a yellow background in the field box and possibly
even a red field label. If you use an asterisk
make sure that you have, in red at the top of
the form “* indicates required field.”
• Put a simple dark border around the entire signup form
and make the background color slightly different
to distinguish it from the rest of the page.
This change identifies the size and (lack of
complexity) of the form, which is reassuring.
• Avoid offensively “loud” colors. I am
honestly not exactly sure why but I do know
from our personality profiling research that
certain strong colors are “confrontational”
to groups of people and I suspect it relates
to this issue.
• Use common web conventions such as blue
underlines for hyperlinks etc. This is not the
place for eccentricities, unusual field names,
or strange icons to identify fields (not that
it is anywhere on most sites for that matter.)
• The lack of a policy
statement is one of the largest factor in drop
offs. Link to a policies page but also try to
offer a strong clear statement like: “we will
not release your information to any other company.”
On the policy page, prominently note your signup policies regarding how
their information will be used. If you see a
lot of traffic to the policies page, where page
durations exceed 10 – 20 seconds; consider better
addressing your credibility in the sales funnel.
Don't obsess on this since other factors may
be at play and start by testing your brand perception
and content effectiveness - See Improving Conversion
Rates for more information.
• Repeat the benefit of signing up in one or two sentences
right in the initial eye path, and bold the
key words. If they are signing up for a newsletter,
mention frequency and link to examples. If they
are getting an email, explain what they will
get and when to expect it.
• Make sure that the form remains on your domain and follows
the look and feel of your site so it is clearly
identifiable as your page. Maintain navigational
consistency with nav bars etc. I believe that
a forms page with no navigation options makes
people nervous, even more so if it has jumped
to a new domain. Users may decide they want
to check something one more time before signing
up. Some conversion experts feel that the signup
form should have limited navigation. I recommend
offering navigation options in case someone
has come directly to this page from a referral
and will need to research the offer before signing.
• Offer a less demanding engagement option then
full sign up. If they aren't ready to sign up
for a direct contact offer then suggest a newsletter,
link them to some past issues, reinforce the
sales element and try to get them to come back.
Offer them an email link for more information.
• Make sure they understand
that there is a clean
and simple unsubscribe option. Reinforce
that they are under no other obligations if
they sign up (unless of course they are, in
which case make that clear as well).
• Research shows that
except in rare cases, a form that takes more
then two minutes will lose a huge amount
of signup's.
• Provide friendly,
helpful correction error messages when
they fail to fill out the form completely. An
error message “Missing required field” is not
acceptable. Statements like, “Sorry we are unable
to complete the form without your X information”
are gentler and not annoying. We have all dropped
off sign up forms which were cumbersome and
insulting. Don't let yours be one.
• Be sure to test the procedure on up to 5 people.
Bring them to the site and ask them to review
the information, find the signup page and fill
it out. As you observe them, probe for an understanding
of their “feelings” about the process. Make
sure this is done on a computer with different
pop up settings, outside your network and on
differing browsers.
• Consider the possibility
that visitors may
be interested in forwarding your product
or offering information it to a friend. The
signup page is often the last chance to make
this happen. We all know that Word of Mouth
is extremely powerful. Be sure to provide an
easy option to do this but instead of forwarding
the form alone, make sure you give them an easy
way to deliver compelling, complete information
with an easy link to the form. Build a document
or landing page/path solely for referrals.
• Lastly, deliver an
exceptional thank you note and confirmation.
If someone gave you a $50 dollar gift, you would
certainly thank them very kindly. Consider each
sign up as a $50 or in some cases $500 gift,
consider their potential as a life long customer
and deliver a clear expression of your appreciation
promptly, personally and be as specific as you
can. Sending an automated confirmation is adequate
at best as an immediate response, but make sure
that the first line indicates that a follow
up email is coming and when. Follow the automated
confirmation with a personal email and be sure
to personalize it. I often ask a question to
try to elicit a response. Any response will
immediately give you significant personal information.
The business lift from this simple step is enormous.
Finally after all this
is done, once again test your “money” page with
several layouts, options, word choices and schemes.
If you want further help there are resources
on the web or we are available for consultation,
page development and multi variable testing.
All the work and money you invest in: marketing,
product development, infrastructure, outreach,
and site design is worthless if your signup
page isn't working optimally!
For more information
See Improving Conversion Rates for more information.or
contact us.
Todd Follansbee
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