How do I create an online 'submit form' that people will actually submit?

• Our Google Analytics report shows that we are generating a lot of traffic to our company's online "request more information" form page. Unfortunately, no one seems to be submitting the form. How can I create an online form that people will submit?

Answer: The first element to examine is the quality of the traffic that you are driving to the page. On the one hand it could be as high quality as coming from a highly targeted email marketing campaign, a specific keyword search looking for your product or service, or a link from another page within your site. On the opposite extreme it may be low quality traffic generated by an exit pop-up or cheesy redirect that lands a totally disinterested visitor on your page who quickly clicks away.

Of course, we'd expect to get a reasonable conversion from page visitors that are looking for your goods. On the other hand, you will get a statistically zero conversion from any sort of untargeted campaign (yes! statistically zero; like one in a million).

Of course, because we can't really know the quality of the traffic that's hitting your page, we can only make recommendations that assume your traffic is fairly high quality. So to optimize your forms for conversion, we suggest you focus your attention on the following details:

• Does the form actually work? (duh!) Kinda like the tech-help guy whose first question is, "Is the computer plugged in?" ...we have to ask. Be sure to test, and retest to ensure the form is actually submitting and relaying completed information into your company database, email, or whatever means you've created to capture the information. Remember to test across browser platforms–IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox, etc.
• Are you asking too much of the user? If you're requiring more information than the av...