Capturing Prospects From Your Website
Prospect capture forms have gotten to be the norm on websites for years now. The “hook” frequently goes something like this: “Sign up today for our free newsletter, e-book, or demo CD” and the prospect is thus induced to enter in their contact information in order to ascertain the “free” materials.
This is an excellent way to build an e-mail or mailing list for future use in your campaigns.
However, what I don’t see a lot of websites doing is incorporating the capture form into their home page. For example, what you will typically see is something like the following: “Click here to sign up for our free newsletter!”
Why would you make the prospect take an extra step in signing up for your product/service? Furthermore, why would you want to take him off of your home page?
A better example of a capture form is one where the prospect can simply see the offer as soon as they come on to the company website and enter in their information immediately.
Also, don’t forget to place this form “above the fold” on your website. What this means is that it is visible as soon as the website appears on the screen, and no scrolling down is required to view it.
If you follow these steps I can guarantee that your conversion rate will increase dramatically and the goal of building your list will be achieved at a much faster rate.
