Homebuilders.com

What information do you need from your web leads? It’s an ongoing debate for many marketing professionals.

• What personal information is required from web leads and what questions (if any) get asked?
• What’s too much information and what’s too little?

Gone are the days when prospective buyers had to scroll through the page to answer all the questions…Or are they?

There are two schools of thought:

1. In today’s market where new leads usually aren’t as plentiful and competition is prevalent, many marketing professionals advocate just get the lead’s name, email and perhaps phone first; then use your follow up and nurturing processes to qualify whether the lead is curious or serious. Makes sense.
2. There’s another group of marketing professionals who feel that it’s better to ask a number of questions. The rationale: you tend to get more interested leads , but the downside is you’ll get fewer leads. This method can also work.

Is there a right or wrong approach?

It depends. I believe the two most important elements to keep in mind are a) put yourself in the buyers shoes (how would you like to be engaged?), and b) always make it easy to register. In other words, get the core information – first name, last name, email address and telephone number; then go from there. If you have questions to ask, only ask the most important ones and makes those consistent across your communities. If you use security codes, to avoid spammers don’t use a code that is difficult to translate – this drives people crazy and is a complete turn off!

If you’re using a CRM system that allows for additional fields to answer qualifying questions, your online sales counselor or sales professional can always ask these questions in conversations during the sales process and continue to build the prospective buyers profile.

We have worked with hundreds of clients helping them with their registration pages to get the right information into their CRM system. Here are a few tips that we have gathered along the way:

• Think like a buyer – how do you feel you would like to be treated?
• Make it easy. Whether it’s 2 or 10 fields to be completed make it easy and clear to complete.
• Clearly indicate which fields are mandatory for submission and which ones aren’t.
• Use caution with open-ended questions. Ask for feedback or comments, but don’t make that field a mandatory question to complete.
• Consider having multiple registration forms for different requests on your website:

1. Newsletter signup – might just be an email address request.
2. Ask an Expert or Online Sales Counselor – basic contact information and a comments/question field.
3. Register Your Interest – basic contact information and possibly a few qualifying introductory questions.
4. Book a Sales Center visit – might include more questions specific to what they are looking for.

If you’re unsure whether you’re asking too many questions, too few questions or you’ve hit the mark with the perfect registration page? Test it out. Try multiple registration pages and measure which ones work better.

It is always great to get your comments – Please share your feedback on what has worked best for you.