We recently launched a new site for the SteelChief lads down in Ballarat.
Their previous website needed some love.
Through a great layout, good site structure, and better presentation of their content we were able to take a big step forward. Polished the rough diamond so to speak.
What really put a firecracker under the new site launch was this multistep form we implemented.
Previously, their quote form was a long, arduous process. A real “Fill out these 25 fields” type of affair.
Instead we implemented a very simple “multi-step” form.
You can view this here.
Over 8 steps the user is asked a series of questions about their requirements.
Step 1: I am looking for…
Step 2: Approximate length?
Step 3: Approximate depth?
Over the 8 steps we extract the information required for a sales person to put together a detailed quotation.
On the very last step we ask for some contact details:
Etc, etc, etc. I think you get the idea.
When launching the site something amazing happened.
We blew up their sales department.
Hundreds of quote requests started flowing through.
In fact the volume of leads that started coming was so great the sales & production department were caught off guard. They just couldn’t keep up.
The guys have since caught up but this was seriously a quality problem to have.
So why do multi-step forms work so well?
- They reduce the mental friction of longer style forms breaking the steps up into “chunks”.
- The first impression is much less overwhelm.
- By showing the % progress it encourage users to complete the form.
- You can ask ‘sensitive’ questions (e.g. email address) on the final step when users have more ‘skin in the game’ from filling out previous steps.
Take a look at the any long forms or data capture on your website and see what can be reworked into a format similar to the above.
