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If you have a Website that collects leads, sells a product or service, or needs visitors to submit info for any reason you know how difficult it is to get form fills.  Internet users are cautious with their personal information and have short attention spans, both contributing to low form fills.  Below are some simple steps to increase form conversions so your visitors don’t end up like the frustrated visitor pictured above:

1. Make sure your Calls to Action leading to the form are clear
a. I’ve seen too many sites with no clear Call to Action.  Don’t just use a link.  Use a strong Call to Action button and a link.

2. In the Call to Action make it clear what the user is getting 
a. “Click Here” isn’t good enough.  Try “Start Saving Money Now” or “Get Info on HDTVs” or whatever works for your site. 

3. Keep the form short
a. Users don’t want to fill out a 20-field form.  The fewer fields the better.  Can you cut it back to two fields? 

4. Add an images of a trustworthy looking person to the form page
a. For some reason an image of someone that can be trusted increases form fills.  I guess it makes the form feel more human.
 
5. Include a Thank You Page or confirmation email after the form fill
a. Don’t leave your new lead wondering if the form submitted correctly.  This will cut back on multiple submissions from the same user and offers a second chance to build your brand and up sale.

Share with others what tips you have for increasing lead form conversions.

I like Google.  At least for now.  Everyone likes Google until they get banned.  What I don’t like about Google is how easy it is to get banned and how vague their reason is for banning you.  I just read an interesting article by Robyn Tippins about Google making more enemies.  It’s worth checking out.

In 1998 I bought almost all of my Christmas presents online.  Retailers were offering free shipping and other incentives for those that were willing to buy online.  It was a tremendous success.  Everything arrived on time and I saved a bundle on taxes and shipping fees. 

I was so happy with the results from 1998 that I decided to buy everything online for the 1999 Christmas season.  1999 wasn’t as successful.  In one year thousands upon thousands of consumers learned about online shopping and decided to give it a try.  The online retailers were not ready and orders got backed up.  About a third of the gifts I ordered didn’t arrive on time.  Even though there have been huge improvements since 1999 in online buying I still make sure to order everything early instead of trusting the last minute guaranteed shipping offers. 

Online shopping is a norm now with retailers pulling in large portions of their annual revenue during the months of November and December.  I bought about half of my Christmas gifts online this year.  I ordered an iPod Shuffle from the Apple site and some CDs and books from Amazon.  Online shopping has become sophisticated and much simpler than the early days of the popular Web and I expect it to get easier in the coming years as usability improves and becomes a must-have for all sites. 

What are you buying online this year?  Share your online buying experiences?

When I was a kid I was a huge Spider-man fan.  I had subscriptions to all the comic books and for years I followed the life of Peter Parker and his adventures as the crime-fighting web slinger.  He had some cool powers but one of my favorites was his “spider-sense.”  Whenever something dangerous was about to pounce on him his “spider-sense” would warn him and he would jump out of the way just in time to avoid being hurt or killed. 

As an adult I started describing gut feelings as spider-sense.  Whenever I didn’t listen to my spider-sense I would kick myself.  “You’re spider-sense told you not to speed over that hill.  You didn’t listen and now you have a ticket.”  My wife even began to use the phrase.  Sometimes we listened to that warning in our heads, or spider-sense, and made good decisions about our life or a moment, and sometimes we didn’t.  Over time we learned to listen to it more and more.

Recently I’ve been working with a big client on a Web site redesign.  The client is difficult to work with because they don’t know much about Web design or Internet business, but they want to be involved with every step of the redesign process.  They have had some good ideas but mostly bad ones and I diplomatically knocked down idea after idea until I felt I was wearing them down.  Instead of staying at it and sharing my experiences with them on design elements I backed off and let them run with a few things I thought could be done better.  My spider-sense told me this was a bad idea.

I should have listened to my spider-sense because the client was informed that something I let them do was not a best practice.  They were frustrated even more than when I was a rejecting all their previous ideas.  I had a gut feeling and I ignored it hoping to appease a difficult client.  This was the wrong thing to do.  I ignored my spider-sense.

Most of the time when we are about to get into a dire situation something is telling us it’s a bad idea.  We are guided to do what is right and most of the time the answers are there for us.  They may not be the answers we want to hear but they are there if we take the time to listen.  If you look back on your life at what has gone right and what has gone wrong you may remember the tingle of your spider-sense.  When your spider-sense is tingling you better listen because often that’s the best guide you’ve got.   

This blog isn’t meant to trash companies. The purpose is to help you create better sites so that you can increase conversions and make more money.  But I do believe that by revealing what some companies do wrong we can all learn.  One company that does plenty wrong and has personally wronged me many times is Charter Communication. 

I’ve never dealt with such a sloppy company as my old cable company, Charter.  In any other industry the laws of the free market would have killed Charter – or they would have responded and improved their service to save themselves – but with all the monopolies in the cable market Charter has been able to survive. 

A few months ago I finally got tired of Charter constantly screwing up my bill, providing poor cable and Internet service, and then not being able to get an intelligent person on the phone when I called.  After months of calls and multiple dropped calls I dropped Charter Communications.  It was the best thing I ever did.  I replaced Charter with Direct TV and haven’t had a problem since.  My reception in clear, my Internet service works, and my bills are correct.  In a year and a half I probably called Charter’s customer service 15 times.  I have only called Direct TV once, and that was to order new service. 

If communities are ever freed from the cable monopoly we will see an end to the poor service we get from companies like Charter.  There’s never and excuse for poor customer service.  Eventually Charter will pay for all the years they took advantage of those that had to deal with them because of unfair monopolies.

At last week’s adtech conference in New York there was a lot of discussion about mobile advertising and how it’s going to affect the industry.  I have written a little about mobile technologies and plan to write a lot more and I wish I could give you some solid answers as how to best utilize mobile search for your business but it’s a little too early for that.  Instead I’m going to spend time keeping up with mobile search news and talking about what is known about mobile search. 

Bob Davis spoke at adtech New York about where the entire industry is going and mentioned mobile search.  He stated that even ten years ago people were saying that mobile search is right around the corner, but he does believe that this time the hype is real.  The Google Phone following the iPhone is proof that the mobile search market now has vitality.  But it’s still not clear who will lead the market. 

I’ve been a fan of cell phone technology for some time and think that I know as much about ringback tones and mobile search as anyone in the field, but there is still a lot to learn and to figure out.  My main purpose for writing this post is to keep the momentum going and to keep you thinking about mobile search because it’s coming and you should start preparing for how you are going to utilize it to your advantage.

I just got back from a wedding at a modern styled church.  The building was beautiful and used the best and latest technology.  On each side of the stage were two giant video screens.  On each screen were moving graphical images of stained glass church windows.  This distracted only slightly from the service, but it did distract.  This post isn’t about visual ascetics of modern churches but about how working on Websites for so long has changed the way I see everything.  I compared the two screens to flashing banners in the left and right columns of a Web page.  I couldn’t help but think how poor of a Web page the church’s stage would make.  I’ve been doing this too long…

I returned to my familiar bed late last night after a fun and useful week at ad:tech New York.  I met loads of great people and learned about many new companies.  Some of which have a great future, and a few I’m not so sure about.  It was good to hear the leaders in the industry speak about the current state of the industry and its future, and it was nice to hear that I’m on the same page with them.  I took some notes that I’ll use to spark ideas that I’ll share with you in the coming weeks.
I’m here to help you so if you have a question about any area of Internet marketing post a comment and I’ll try to create a post so that we can all benefit. 

Here I am meeting the only true SEO expert, Bruce Clay.  Read more about it at Clickfire.com

I just wrapped up my third day here in New York City at ad:tech.  I have been working with Emory Rowland of Clickfire fame to send daily updates.  You can read my adtech New York 2007 daily reviews at Clickfire.

Hanging out ad the oxygen bar located at the Atlas booth