Stage 4: Defining Profiling Needs And Capture Form

In a similar way to that described in the last section, we can monitor the effectiveness of the landing page in converting those who have expressed an interest to action. You can compare how many leads you receive, compared with how many click on the links and go through to the page. A number of steps can be taken to maximise the response rates.

1. Information requested on forms should be kept to a minimum. Make it short. Early practice on information collection through online forms seemed to be to collect as much information as possible to build up profiles of customers. There was a backlash against this, with users refusing to fill in too much information. Some companies then went to the other extreme and captured the minimum information, usually just an e-mail address. Each company should decide on a realistic minimum for its purposes. Remember that you can gain more information on the customer as the relationship develops. We suggest the following minimum information for B2C organisations:

   • e-mail address

   • first and last name

   • age

   • gender

   • geographical location

   • product interest

   • preferred means of communication (opt-in and whether HTML, with pictures for simplicity, or text)

   and for B2B:

   • e-mail address

   • first and last name

   • company name

   • company size (employees or turnover)

   • company sector/product if applicable

   • role of individual in buying decision (job title is usually a proxy for this)