How to Create Mobile-Friendly Lead Generation Forms Keep it simple, and consider alternative calls-to-action.

Customer onboarding is by far the most important goal of online presence. The problem is that when dealing with mobile traffic, you are limited to small screens and mobile device functionality. Creativity becomes necessary to get around the issue. You only have one chance to make a good impression, yet you have to get your message across.

Related: 5 Ways to Be More Mobile-Friendly in 2017

Why care?

Mobile traffic is rapidly on the rise. A1QA claims that in 2014 the number of mobile-connected devices exceeded the world's overall population and estimates there will be 11.5 billion mobile devices by 2019. Marketing Land reports that mobile now represents 65 percent of all digital media time. Furthermore, by 2019, mobile advertising is estimated to represent 72 percent of all U.S. digital ad spending.

According to Email Monday, mobile email opens have grown by 180 percent in the last three years. That being said, it's no longer a case of asking whether mobile optimization is important. It's clear that it is. The question is how to optimize for mobile devices to convert your mobile site visitors into buyers or subscribers.

KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

The first bit of advice is the most basic, and something that we should keep in mind in all steps of the mobile-friendly design process -- keep things simple. Lead generation forms are already running the risk of being crowded and over stimulating. They can take focus from the general UI of the website or act against the intuitive nature of gesture movements and brand choices.

When you have your first version, take some time to go through your lead generation form properly. Try and keep a fresh perspective, as though you were a user who had never seen it before. Do you find the form cumbersome? Does it look good and clean? Is the information well organized and easy to understand? Is there a step you wouldn't have needed explained, or that was redundant?

Simplify the forms based on these questions, until you have stripped it down to the minimum.

Related: Goodbye, Forms, We're Done Filling In Your Blanks

Avoid being aggressive.

Having too many sales prompts can really work against you. No one wants to be aggressively sold to. If you put in too many overlay purchase reminders, you are not likely to get those sales. The user will probably just leave and find an alternative that doesn't invade their headspace.

Keep in mind that pop-up calls-to-action may affect your mobile rankings too. Since January of this year, Google has been penalizing sites that use intrusive popup forms for mobile users.

Opt-in forms that cover the main content, either immediately after the user navigates to a page from the search results or while they are looking through the page, have been defined as intrusive. Google doesn't want to send mobile users to pages that provide a poor user experience.

Use event triggering to serve your lead generation forms to people who kept browsing your website or asked for more information. Don't serve aggressive calls-to-action immediately after a user lands on your web page.

Use alternative calls-to-action.

In many cases, you simply must have a form on a mobile devices, but a much more obvious call-to-action for a smart phone is "Call now." Phones are made for calling, and that's what many phone users will be more inclined to do.

Use calls-to-action that encourage visitors to call instead of filling out a form. Don't forget to make all phone numbers clickable on your site. This way you'll make it easy for mobile users to perform an action and get in touch with your company. Here's very clear instruction on how to create "Click to Call" call-to-action from Google.

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Use tools.

Here are some tools for better-performing mobile lead generation forms.

• Use Google's Mobile-Friendly Test to run a quick preview of how your web page looks on mobile device. You'll still need human testers to go through your website, but this tool gives a good starting point.
• Set up a business monitoring dashboard using a tool like Cyfe to monitor mobile traffic and conversions. Cyfe lets you import all types of Google Analytics stats (including conversion reports) as well as imports lead generation reports from Unbounce. You can then monitor all the reports from a single dashboard.
• Set up mobile-only lead generation forms using tools like Hellobar or Sumo.

Are your lead generation forms perform well on mobile devices? It's time to test!