Developer Marketing Tip: How Many Fields to Include on Landing Page Forms?
Landing pages are an essential part of any marketing program, but few marketers agree on the characteristics of a successful landing page. One of the greatest landing page debates is centered around the number of fields to include on your forms. Research from Wordstream suggests that conversion rates drop off significantly after seven form fields, but is that true for every audience?
The benefits of a detailed landing page form are obvious. Each time someone completes the form, your sales and marketing team obtains an incredible amount of information about that person. The challenge in developer marketing is that programmers don’t see the value in stepping away from code to complete most landing page forms.
We showed the following landing page examples to a developer on the team here at Stack Overflow. Then, we asked him a simple question:
Which one of these would you be more likely to complete?
Our developer was quick to select Example 2. Why? “Because it only requires a little bit of information, I’m more likely to complete it with my actual information,” he explained. “But if something I wanted to download was behind a longer form like Example 1, I’d fill in fake information. In fact, I have a separate email account for those instances.”
Developers typically end up on a landing page when they’re searching for a solution to a coding challenge in real-time. With that in mind, if you must gate your content (and we suggest testing this), consider only requiring a developer’s email address on your landing page forms.
Although this likely makes the sales process a bit more challenging, developers and technologists are more receptive to brands that understand the needs of the programming community and make it easy to access the high-value content that can help research and solve their immediate problem.
For more best practices on writing ad and landing page copy that resonates with the developer and technical community, download our eBook, “Beyond Lead Generation: A Primer on Developer Marketing”
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