Q&A with Instapage CEO: How to Use Multi-Step Forms to Gain More Customer Insight

As marketers, you know that webinars are an indispensable tool to generate leads, increase user engagement, and brand awareness. We understand this, too, because we host our own weekly webinar that shows people how to master our software (have you registered yet?):

In the past, we documented how we increased our webinar registrants by 129% with a few simple design tweaks and demonstrated how you can use webinars to win customers in three phases.

We’ve even discussed in detail what the correct placement is for post-click landing page forms, above or below the fold?

Today, though, we’re not here to talk about webinars or form placement.

Instead, we’re focusing on our webinar thank you page. In particular, an A/B test using a multi-step form that continues to increase our blog readership and user engagement.

To show you a unique approach that accomplishes both of those goals, I interviewed Instapage Founder & CEO, Tyson Quick. He hosts our weekly “Master Instapage” webinar and manages both the webinar post-click landing page, and its thank you page.

So, who better to ask about this A/B test than the founder of Instapage?

BW: What is a multi-step form and how is it different than a standard form?

TQ: A multi-step form is a longer form that is broken up into shorter steps. It’s different than a standard form because the additional fields only appear after baseline information such as name and email have been acquired.

BW: What is the purpose of a multi-step form?

TQ: It’s purpose is to more easily collect additional information from your prospects. By breaking down longer forms into multiple steps, you’re reducing psychological friction and encouraging them to engage more with your brand.

BW: How is it different than a two-step opt-in?

TQ: A two-step opt-in is a single form that is placed within a pop-up box or on a second page that appears after clicking on a call-to-action button. Again, a multi-step form is a longer form that is broken into multiple steps.

BW: Why did you put the blog signup in place?

TQ: I put the blog signup form in place to grow our blog audience from a group of already engaged visitors.

BW: When did you start using the multi-step form on the webinar thank you page?

TQ: For this particular test, I started using this feature at the beginning of February.

BW: What A/B tests have you run with the multi-step form?

TQ: For now, I’ve only tested visual design changes using three variations. An extremely simple all white background:

White background with a box highlighting the content:

Using more color and people as the background image:

BW: What is the conversion rate and how many blog subscribers has it generated?

TQ: I am constantly testing this page and have been running these three variations above for about one month. Since beginning the test, the baseline variation (white background with a box) is winning, converting 89.9% of the time:

It’s interesting that so far the best-designed page (people background) is not performing the best. That’s why you should always A/B test because the “best” designed page doesn’t always have the highest conversion rate.

BW: Is the multi-step form only good with webinar thank you pages?

TQ: No, not at all. Multi-step forms are good for a lot of things, and this is just one small example. Most multi-step forms are being used to collect more detailed information about the prospect so that more effective lead nurturing can be implemented.

BW: How do you use a multi-step form with Instapage?

TQ: Currently, I’m only using it to generate blog subscribers from those post-click landing page visitors who opt-in to our weekly webinars.

If Instapage decides to release an Enterprise plan in the future, we would be using it to generate higher quality leads for the sales team.

BW: How can Instapage users add a multi-step form to their pages?

TQ: It’s pretty easy. Let’s use our Top 10 A/B Testing Tips post-click landing page as an example.

Once I’m signed into my Instapage account and editing the page, I click “Add New” in the top panel, and then “Form:”

After I customized the form a little bit, you’ll see the variation below has form fields requesting first name, last name, and email:

For the purposes of demonstration, we could create a thank you page that asks for more in-depth business information, such as income level and marketing challenges:

After someone converts on the post-click landing page, their name and email would already be captured in the “leads” dashboard. But if that person also completes this second form and submits their information, that additional data would also be compiled in the same lead record.

You would then redirect the post-click landing page to the thank you page and see all conversion data about the prospect in your “leads” dashboard within our analytics:

After you accumulate a lot of submissions, you can start to learn more about your prospects and customers.

The above example is very basic information that you could begin to collect. If you really want to get to know your buyer personas, you can request information such as job title, geographic location, industry, and more.

So, now what?

You, too, can enjoy high conversion rates like ours with a multi-step form!

Don’t risk losing conversions by requesting too much on your form right off the bat. First, allow your prospects to show genuine interest by completing a short form for your offering. Then, send them to an additional form where the fields are optional, and they tell you more detailed information about themselves and their business.

Adding a multi-step form may look like a lot of extra work, but it’s really not. And the payoff can be very beneficial to you and your marketing team.

Create a multi-step form to increase your blog subscribers, engagement, gain more insight about your prospects, and nurture them further down your marketing funnel.

Sign up for an Instapage Enterprise demo today.