By Ben Barr

Driving visitors to the form finish line requires a more consultative and reassuring approach than traditional B2C eCommerce sites. You aren't looking for conversions from the checkout page. Data security and privacy has become a prevalent concern for all internet users, who are more cautious than ever about the personal data they are leaving on the Web. Still, there are ways to help potential leads through the form funnel and put their concerns at ease. Once you identify where users are leaving the form, what data they are concerned about entering, and what qualities define a qualified lead, you can start optimizing your forms to increase the leads generated by your website.

Better Safe than Sorry

You don't have to be glued to the Internet to know some major organizations have had data-security issues. In 2014 alone, big names like Staples, Sony, JP Morgan Chase, UPS, and even the state of New York had serious security breaches, compromising millions of customers' personal data. Given that these breaches always make the top news headlines, sometimes for weeks at a time, people are more hesitant than ever to leave any sensitive data anywhere on the Web.

43% of all companies had a data breach within the past year – USA Today

Don't think that all hope is lost! If you are tracking activity on a form at a field-level, you can identify where users are dropping off while entering their data. These abandonment statistics can be a very effective way of identifying the exact fields where users feel uncomfortable and distrusting. If you notice that a specific field – Credit Card Number, Social Security Number, Personal Identifiable Information (PII) – is responsible for the majority of form abandonments, you can use that point in the form to remind users that their data is safe.

This may be a great place to include your BBB logo, which is a universally trusted seal of legitimacy. If the field that is giving you the most issues isn't absolutely vital to qualifying your leads, then maybe you could make it optional, and request the data after they have completed the application.

Form Woes

One of the major reasons that users abandon while filling out an online form is because the form is too long or complicated. Often, when faced with a myriad of required fields, in no particular order, potential leads can get overwhelmed and drop off without completing. Again, a great way to identify these issues is to track abandonment by field. Once you start looking at this data, it should become clear which fields are causing hang-ups in the form funnel.

Engage and Convert

Regulated Industries have form abandonment rates of 70% - this is based on 6000 Ve clients abandonment data.

After you have tracked abandonment on your form and made adjustments for user experience hiccups, you can start re-engaging abandoned users and nurture the leads that haven't completed their intended registration form. Here are 3 ways to engage users when they try to abandon your funnel on site:

1. Give a customer service message that connects them to the correct representative to answer any outstanding questions, or to simply give reassurance.

2. Link to customer testimonials in your onsite messaging to build trust and confidence in your products.

3. Offer incentives to complete the form - like free giveaways.

If you aren't able to re-engage onsite, using post-abandonment emails to redirect visitors back to their unfinished application or form reinforces your message and creates an additional channel for re-engagement, in turn driving more lead generation.

The Extra Mile - Qualified Traffic that Converts

In Ve's experience, re-engaged users not only have a higher chance of converting, but they also are much more qualified than users who were reached the site organically and completed the form.

In a case study using Ve's on-site re-engagement product VeChat, a major personal loan site saw funding rates of 11% when a user is re-engaged, vs. a funding rate of 2.5% for organic traffic.

Why is this the case? When you re-engage a customer who has already expressed some level of interest in the service you are offering, you can provide additional information to them, and take the opportunity to address some of the reasons they may have left. You could also create targeted campaigns, showing them different images, messaging and information based on the type of loan they were interested in. Every little piece of data that a user leaves on your form before abandoning is important and can dictate relevant messaging to use maximizing both, lead and funding rates.

The Form Finish Line

When your business depends on generating leads through an online form, any small effort to improve the customer experience and re-engage abandoned users can help when trying to increase your bottom line.

Learn more about using the data visitors leave behind: http://www.vecommerceiq.com

About Ve:

Ve is a multi award-winning technology company offering a suite of apps across one platform, which help online businesses successfully reduce bounce rate, increase customer engagement and minimize website abandonment.

The company supports over 6,000 domestic and multi-national online businesses and retailers in the delivery of real-time marketing communications at key points within their customers' journeys.

Tracking billions of transaction daily, Ve's comprehensive data set provides unparalleled insights into customer activity, while driving each app to deliver highly-targeted content to customers based on their purchasing activity and profile.

Founded in 2009, Ve works across 19 languages and within 47 territories. Headquartered in London, the company has 26 offices worldwide. Ve North America, established in 2011, has headquarters in Boston and offices located in New York City, Santa Barbara and Kansas City. http://www.veinteractive.com/us