Tag: UX Design

Article

Jul 26, 2019

14min read

20 Examples of Excellent Lead Generation Forms

AB Tasty

If you’ve invested time and money into creating a sleek website for your business, you want to be sure that it works to generate more clients or customers.

But beyond having an attractive design and great copy, there are a few things you need to ensure that your website traffic converts into leads. How do you do that without spamming your readers with pop-ups and “Buy Now!” calls-to-action?

You create an excellent lead generation form that users can’t resist.

Fortunately, there are ways to seamlessly integrate creative (and effective) lead generation forms into your website to entice users to click, call, and sign up.

In this guide, we’re covering what lead gen forms are, why they work, and 20 examples to inspire you to create your own high-converting lead generation form design.

Why Use a Lead Generation Form on Your Website?

The lifeblood of any successful blog is the email list. – Gregory Ciotti

In the age of spam, cold emailing, and shady marketing schemes, consumers are becoming increasingly hesitant when it comes to handing over their precious email address. With that, simply telling users to “Sign up for our newsletter!” doesn’t quite work the same as it used to.

Savvy business owners need to get a bit more creative.

An effective, high-converting lead generation form works by enticing users to fill out a form in exchange for content or information they really want.

In your audience’s case, this could be in the form of a free quote, a downloadable ebook, an exclusive interview, free email course, or anything else that provides a lot of value. You’re giving them something they can’t resist, and you’re gaining a new lead in the process!

Components of a Great Lead Gen Form

Beyond the call-to-action (CTA), a great lead gen form should be visually engaging, easy to find, and simple to fill out. When creating a lead generation form, you will want to consider the following factors:

Design – Your form is visually appealing and grabs the user’s attention
Copy – The copy on your form speaks to the user and persuades them to sign up
Placement – Your form is easy to find without being an annoyance to the user
Call-to-action – The CTA entices users to opt-in in exchange for the content they want
Form fields – The form is simple to fill out
Follow up – Users get a friendly follow-up message to their inbox

Follow these best practices to create amazing lead gen forms for your website.

20 Best Lead Generation Form Examples

Ready to start generating new leads? The 20 lead generation form examples below hit all of the marks. Use these as inspiration when it comes to designing your own form for your business’s website.

[toc]

Salesforce

salesforce form

Salesforce is a customer relationship management (CRM) solution that helps businesses keep their contacts organized, automate sales tasks, and streamline follow-up with prospects. To entice users to try out their CRM software, they offer a free 30-day trial.

Their lead generation form not only presents users with the opportunity to try their platform risk-free, but the design is eye-catching and the form is super simple to fill out. Users that sign up are notified that they are opting into their email list, so Salesforce can market to them later. It also makes it easy for Salesforce to push the upsell to buy their software at the end of the free trial.

Spotify

Spotify lead gen form

Shopify’s homepage prompts users to try Spotify for free, right out the gate. Users don’t have a chance to get lost in the content of their site but instead can easily sign up in just a few clicks.

There’s no credit card required to sign up, which makes handing over their email address relatively low risk for the user. Millions of songs for free? Sign me up!

Ancestry.com

Ancestry Form

Ancestry.com sells DNA tests to people looking to learn a bit more about their family tree. Even though they offer a main paid package, people can try them out for free – and are prompted to do so right on the homepage.

Ancestry.com presents two options: “Build a family tree” or “Take a DNA test”. Users can get started with what they want, get an awesome service in return, and in the future get more information about paid services.

War Room

War Room lead gen form

War Room is a marketing mastermind for business owners to increase their revenue and profits. Their homepage includes a sleek design that boldly states exactly what the mastermind is about. The benefits of joining are made clear to users, and users can get a high-value free training by just subscribing.

The appeal? The mastermind will help subscribers increase their lead flow by up to 500%! That seems like something worth handing your email address over for.

Moz

Moz Form

Moz is a local search engine optimization tool that helps businesses increase their visibility in search engines (like Google). Their tool guides business owners through optimizing their various profiles online. However, this process starts with a quick audit of their existing profiles.

Businesses want to know if their site will get organic traffic. So, Moz’s lead generation form prompts the user to check their local listings to see whether they are search engine optimized. At the same time, it collects the user’s business information, making it easy for Moz to retarget them with paid ads or outreach later. Smart!

Shopify

Shopify lead gen form

Shopify is an e-commerce platform that allows people to create their own online store. On their main page, they make it super obvious that users can try Shopify out for free.

It’s simple, but it gets users signing up before they get lost in the rest of the site. If users love the Shopify platform, they can easily upgrade after their free trial. If they don’t upgrade, Shopify can continue to market to them via email marketing and ads.

Hotjar

Hotjar form

Hotjar is an interesting tool that allows website owners to watch how users interact with their site – from how long they are on the site to how they scroll to where they click. It’s safe to say that Hotjar knows what it takes to keep users engaged.

Their website visitors are greeted with a creative and cute lead generation form that gets them set up with a risk-free trial. What better way to decide if you want to buy a tool than to try it for yourself for free?

Neil Patel is a big name in the search engine optimization (SEO) space. He offers tutorials on how to optimize your website for organic traffic. So, obviously, users come to his site because they want more traffic.

Knowing this, Neilpatel.com has a very obvious lead gen form that asks, “Do you want more traffic?” If the answer is Yes, users have an incentive to sign up for a free SEO audit. The website owner gets a comprehensive assessment of their website, and Patel gets their information so he can sell his products and services to them later.

Monday

Monday form

Monday

Monday is a handy project management tool that helps you keep your projects and tasks organized. With so many similar tools on the market, users are hesitant to pay for something they haven’t tried. Monday offers a free trial to prove to users why their tool rocks.

The copy is intriguing – “I want to hug the people that created this.” – and sign up is quick and simple. Sometimes the most straightforward your form is, the better.

Redfin

Redfin form

“Sell for more than the home next door” has a nice ring to it – and it tells users visiting the Redfin real estate website that they can make lots of money on their home. Users can get a completely free, no-obligation from a Redfin agent from just entering their content information. Website visitors become leads in a matter of seconds.

Russell Brunson’s Inner Circle

Russell Brunson is a huge thought leader and life coach that helps people lead happier and healthier lives. He charges thousands of dollars to join his program, but you can get loads of information for free. His entire homepage works as a lead generation form to get users to join his Inner Circle right away. Plus, he includes an awesome video testimonial to seal the deal.

Noom

Noom lead gen

Need help losing weight? Noom gets users set up with a free 30-second evaluation that analyzing their body type and determines how much weight they will lose with a custom Noom health plan. The questionnaire is super interactive and adds a more personalized feel to their website.

Noom form

Credit Karma

Credit Karma form

You could be missing out on money? Better try Credit Karma to find out!

Credit Karma’s lead gen form is simple but effective. Draw people in with emotion and give them information they can’t get anywhere else (at least not for free).

GrubHub

Quickly enter your address to find the best meals near you. But once your mouth is watering, it’s time to download the Grub Hub food delivery app. Users won’t mind if they already have food on their mind.

ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels form

ClickFunnels is the king of high-converting sales funnels, but it’s no surprise that they have a few lead generation forms of their own. Watch a quick intro video about their platform and sign up for a free 14-day trial. Great copy, highly engaging, and easy to sign up.

eHarmony

eHarmony form

Looking for love? eHarmony can help. Get matched on the “#1 Trusted Dating Site” by signing up for free. It’s quick and free to start meeting singles online, but eHarmony is sure to hook users in with some paid upgrades and features.

FreshBooks

Freshbooks form

FreshBooks knows that not every business owner is ready to pay for invoicing software, so they give users the free option to download a ready-made invoice template. Users can create a professional invoice for free, but will likely opt for the paid benefits of online billing, bookkeeping, and more.

Search Engine Land

Readers of Search Engine Journal can download a free “Periodic Table of SEO Factors” to assist them in their SEO efforts. Search Engine Journal then markets to their new subscribers with additional content, paid tools, and webinars.

HubSpot

HubSpot’s attractive lead generation form design gets users to take notice. Users can try HubSpot’s CRM for free by sending their first email or choose to upgrade for “more email power. It’s fun and gives users exactly what they want.

The Content Factory

Content Factory

User’s love “insider secrets” they can’t get anywhere else. To generate leads for their site, The Content Factory prompts users to download their free HARO (Help a Reporter Out) message template. With this template, subscribers can then attract more backlinks to their website.

This pop-up gives users some amazing content they won’t find anywhere else.

You might also like...

See all

Article

3min read

Experiment Health Check: Proactive Monitoring for Reliable Experimentation

Emily Healy

Jul 1, 2025

Article

9min read

Heatmaps: Your Team’s Secret Weapon for Uncovering Website Gold

AB Tasty

Jun 24, 2025

Article

6min read

9 AI Features that Transform How Digital Teams Test, Learn, and Grow

Emily Healy

Jun 20, 2025

Subscribe to
our Newsletter

Article

Dec 21, 2018

10min read

7 Ways To Make Your Testimonials More Persuasive

AB Tasty

Social proof is pivotal in establishing your company’s credibility. Recommendations from current customers cultivates trust in your brand, and prospective clients value the “tried-and-true” insight your testimonials provide.

Here are some quick stats on the positive impact of testimonials:

- 91% of 18– 34-year-olds trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

Customers are likely to spend 31% more with a business that has “excellent” reviews.
Nearly 70% of consumers rely on online reviews before making a purchase.
90% of respondents who read online reviews said positive ones impact their buying decisions.

Trust of online reviews vs. personal recommendations

But just adding a few testimonials to your website isn’t enough. Brands that inspire higher emotional intensity receive 3x as much word-of-mouth as opposed to less emotionally-connected brands.

Unless your customer testimonials tell a convincing story that resonates with people, they will never sell. So, how do you curate testimonials that have a positive impact?

Showcase Reverse Testimonials

A reverse testimonial is a positive review that begins with skepticism. It homes in on the uncertainty your customer had before making a purchase, what swayed them to choose you, and why that was the right decision. (This is something Copyblogger has made popular.)

Reverse testimonials feel more genuine than praise-only pull quotes, which can come across as saccharine and insincere. By acknowledging that your customer initially had doubts about your product, you create an immediate connection with a prospect that’s weighing your brand against your competitors.

Check out the Bony to Beastly review below. Adam begins by talking about how overwhelmed he was searching for a workout program when most of them seemed like shams.

Adam echoes a universal doubt that people feel when evaluating a product: Will I be satisfied with my purchase? Is this the best choice?

Testimonial explains why this brand was unique

Adam then notes what the deciding factor was for selecting Bony to Beastly, and why this workout program is unique compared to all the others (making it the top choice).

Feature Your High-Profile, Influential Customers

People with a strong reputation—whether they be celebrities or esteemed professionals—are often admired for their success, skillset, and expertise. When your company has a high-profile ambassador recommending your product, your perceived value automatically increases.

This, in part, is the result of a cognitive bias called the Halo Effect. According to this theory, an impression someone has of one thing will influence their idea of another, unrelated, thing.

How does the Halo Effect relate to conversions? The logic is, “I admire X, and X recommends this product, so the product must be worth buying.”

Look at how BuzzSumo features the Rolling Stones, HubSpot, and Moz.com.

BuzzSumo features testimonials from high-profile clients

This “influencer” strategy isn’t new—it’s been used by marketers and advertisers for a long time.

Check out this article, if you are interested in learning more about the evolution of this tactic.

Create a Case Study Page

A case study allows you to chronicle your success story in detail and demonstrate the true value of your product/service. Here’s how to get started:

Ask the right questions. Show where your customer was before you came into the picture and how things turned out for them.
Include data to legitimize claims.
List your case studies on a dedicated section of your website.

At AB Tasty, we named our page “Client Stories.” These stories validate our claims and give readers a sense of security, both in terms of the number of clients we’ve worked with and the quality of our service.

If you’re looking for design inspiration for your page or testimonial, check out Hubspot. You can filter results by industry, location, company size, challenges, and so on. Hootsuite’s archive is also worth a look.

Experiment with the video format

HubSpot research says that 45% of people watch an hour or more of video per day.

Another study noted that 79% of people would rather watch a video about a product than read about it, and roughly 84% of consumers have bought something after watching a video.

The bottom line? Videos are a fantastic way to engage with customers, especially with video testimonials.

Producing these videos can be costly, but the ROI is worth it. Aberdeen Group says that video marketers get 66% more qualified leads per year and achieve a 54% increase in brand awareness.

Let’s look at the video testimonial on the Codeacademy website:

The focus is on three former students—not the brand—who talk about their experience before and after the coding course. This is a video testimonial done right. It’s long enough to hold a viewer’s attention and features relatable anecdotes.

Include Quotes That Provide Insight

Quotes are relatively easy to get but tricky to get right. Potential clients usually aren’t impressed by a generic compliment like, “the product is user-friendly!”

So how do you get a quote that’s crisp, substantial, and believable?

For one, ask your clients to be specific. What feature do they love using and why? Do they have any data that highlights their successes?

Featured quote that backs up claims with data

Then, give context. Add a photograph of the person giving the quote, along with their credentials, to humanize the testimonial and give it a greater sense of “truthiness.”

Including photos of customers help make their quotes more relatable

One A/B test and found that including the face of a happy customer increases conversion rates by 102.5%.

Photos of happy customers help increase conversions

Interview Your Customers

A great example of using an interview for a testimonial is from Squarespace. They conducted an interview with Keanu Reeves (a high-profile ambassador) and interspersed his answers throughout the page, highlighting not-to-be-missed quotes.

Squarespace features Keanu Reeves on their site

The content is informative, interesting, and feels organic—it never comes across like a sales pitch.

Keanu Reeves’ interview serves as a testimonial

Look For Unsolicited Testimonials

…and use them wherever you can.

Deadline Funnel used unsolicited testimonials on their website and plans to use them in their email sequences as well.

Deadline Funnel uses unsolicited testimonials on their site

Unsolicited praise is genuine, unscripted, and without an ulterior motive: it’s just from customers sincerely happy with your brand. These sorts of testimonials cement your company’s credibility and increase your conversions.

So don’t let public praise for your company go to waste! It’s a great way to show the positive impact you’ve had on customers, and the appreciation you have for them in return.

Bizzabo showcased customer tweets on their website

Getting Started

Now that you’ve stockpiled some useful tips on using testimonials to increase conversions, it’s time to start curating! Run an A/B test to see what sort of testimonials work best for you, and don’t limit yourself when it comes to formatting, style, and placement.

And now we turn it to you: How do you make customer testimonials stand out?

You might also like...

See all

Article

3min read

Experiment Health Check: Proactive Monitoring for Reliable Experimentation

Emily Healy

Jul 1, 2025

Article

9min read

Heatmaps: Your Team’s Secret Weapon for Uncovering Website Gold

AB Tasty

Jun 24, 2025

Article

6min read

9 AI Features that Transform How Digital Teams Test, Learn, and Grow

Emily Healy

Jun 20, 2025

Subscribe to
our Newsletter

Article

Jun 21, 2018

10min read

How A Customer Journey Map Can Help You Improve User Experience

Anthony Brebion

A customer journey map is a visual representation of a customer’s interaction with a business or website. It is used to define which parts of this process might not be working as smoothly as they should be, thus improving the customer’s experience. When used properly, it can engender customer loyalty, positive word of mouth and a more efficient business model.

What Is A Customer Journey Map?

The customer journey map is a (mostly) visual tool that helps businesses understand what a customer goes through when buying a product or service from them. It maps out in clear, concise, visual terms, the journey each customer is likely to experience through buyer personas and user data.

Buyer personas are at the heart of a customer journey map tool and are broad representations, presented as fictional characters, based on real-life data and customer feedback. Typically, each project will create between three and seven buyer personas, each of which will require its own customer journey map.

The point of the customer journey map is to understand, as clearly as possible, what a customer will encounter when using your service. It will also help you improve the elements that are not functioning properly, are not easy to navigate and show you how to make the entire experience more satisfying.

Each persona, and therefore the journey map itself, is not meant to be a perfect illustration of actual interactions. Rather it is a broad representation of the experience from the persona’s perspective.

The best customer journey map is a story, brought to life visually, of the customer’s experience. In essence, the best customer journey map is a story, brought to life visually, of the customer’s experience. It should be noted, however, that more complex information on the map may require text.

The map itself highlights “touchpoints, which are specific elements of the customer’s interaction with a business. Each of these touchpoints – for example, seeking a product, researching its content, buying the product, waiting for delivery and returning it if unsatisfied – can be judged as negative, neutral or positive from the customer’s perspective.

Customer journey maps require various research techniques that include hard data, customer feedback, and creative thinking. As such, no two maps are the same and each one will depend on many different factors that can’t be simplified or stereotyped as a matter of course.

Who Can Benefit From A Customer Journey Map?

There are many reasons why a customer journey map can be useful to a business. Modern day marketing is hugely focused on the individual, with personalization gaining traction in almost all sectors.

This means that customer satisfaction is more important than ever to a business and tied to loyalty to an extent that has not previously existed. Customers are more demanding, aware of their options and willing to shop around.

By mapping each of the previously mentioned touchpoints, a well-designed customer journey map template can highlight any problems that clients might experience in the process of interacting with a business and help foster a relationship with an organization, product, service or brand. This can occur across multiple channels and over a long period of time.

Once a customer journey map template has been designed, the entire enterprise can keep the customer at the forefront of the decision-making process. With a focus on the customer and their experience, or user experience (UX), any kinks, holes or brick walls within the timeline’s touchpoints can be ironed out.

Bringing Together All Aspects Of The Business

Another way in which a customer journey map can help is by bringing together departments with a focus on customer experience. To begin with, all departments can be engaged to discuss issues that customers may face when dealing with them. This is no small thing as many departments may not be used to dealing with customers, yet the decisions they take may have a profound effect on UX. By creating an understanding of how each touchpoint affects UX across the entire business, decisions can be made from an empathetic perspective.

Traditional marketing stops at the point of purchase, but customer experience does not necessarily end there. For example, perhaps the purchase was not to their satisfaction and they want to return the goods. Departments that might not typically be involved in touchpoints before purchase now have a central role to play. How easy is it for the customer to find the return information on a website? If they need information on delivery, or collection times, how likely are they to get a response that will satisfy them? This all requires forethought and a policy that keeps customer experience central to design and organization.

How To Create A Customer Journey Map

Customer journey mapping templates appear complex at first glance, but there are some tried and tested, step by step methods that can simplify the process immeasurably.

These are:

Building personas
Defining touchpoints
Aligning goals against each touchpoint
Deciding where these goals are and are not being met
Prioritizing changes

Building Personas

Building personas is in itself a skill, into which we won’t go into minute detail here, but broadly speaking, this is the most time-consuming part of the process. It requires detailed research, including qualitative and quantitative data, and is the foundation of the entire process. A persona is a highly relatable and rounded fictional character, generalized, but not stereotyped.

Defining Touchpoints

All customer journey mapping examples are unique. This is because every sector, every busine, s and every website is, to some degree, unique. Therefore, touchpoints on one map are unlikely to work for another. In fact, every business needs to update its buyer personas and customer journey maps as their business changes. Even quite subtle changes can have profound effects on the customer journey map template.

As previously described, touchpoints are places on the map where the customer is interacting with your business or website. These should be thought about carefully and involve all aspects of the business. There is a good chance you will be surprised by the input of seemingly irrelevant departments when it comes to UX.

Aligning Goals Against Each Touchpoint

Depending on the nature of the map, this is often considered the most difficult part of the entire process. Defining is based on the previously described data and needs to be mapped onto the previously described touchpoints. Think of it like those handheld toys where you have to align each silver ball with a hole, every time one falls into place, another pops out.

The main reason this is often a difficult process is that customer goals have been largely overlooked when designing websites, with attention grabbing elements, upselling and site engagement prioritized over ease of use and efficiency of the process. Getting this balance right is essential for a customer journey map to be effective.

Deciding Where These Goals Are And Are Not Being Met

Now you have your data, customer journey mapping template, touchpoints and goals, it’s time to put it all together and define where the UX is meeting expectation and where things can be improved. It is important to note that mapping where things are going well is almost as important as defining what isn’t. Some elements of the journey can be spread to other areas and you don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

One of the best ways of understanding where things are not going to plan is through customer feedback. This is typically done through surveys and customer support transcripts. It is a foolish business that pays little attention to what its customers are telling them.

Prioritizing Changes

No matter how positive you may think customer experience is going, the chances are you will now have highlighted more than one blind spot. At this point, it is important to prioritize which touchpoints should be acted upon. Occasionally this will be obvious, such as a convoluted check out process where customers are abandoning their carts at a higher rate than is normal, but not all roadblocks will be so easy to define or prioritize.

One of the best ways to define which parts of a website needs changing will be the cost effectiveness of a page. Tweaking aspects of the most important parts of the website, which can involve some trial and error and detailed customer feedback, based on hard data, A/B testing and other methods, can produce instant results.

Best Practices

While each website is different, depending on a variety of factors, there are some universal truths that can generally be applied to all. [click_to_tweet tweet=”Customer journey mapping definitions rarely align, but put simply, they are designed to get the customer from A to B as smoothly as possible” quote=”Customer journey mapping definitions rarely align, but put simply, they are designed to get the customer from A to B as smoothly as possible”]. Customer journey maps are therefore about simplification and the same is true for the maps themselves. The whole point of visually constructing a map is so it is easy to comprehend issues, which are easily highlighted and acted upon. These maps are not complex collages, in fact, they can be little more than color coded, linear lines with dots as touchpoints. However you construct the map, it should be easy to follow.

Customer Journey Map Examples

Customer journey map templates are varied, some appear like works of art, while others the work of a child, but as long as they are clear and concise, they can be effective.

This customer journey map for the charity ‘The Samaritans’ is a highly empathetic map, focused on the purpose of the charity itself.

Note how the text is highly visual and therefore makies it easy to relate to the image of the map itself.

This is an example of a map that gives the impression of a journey, rather than a linear UX. This can help push home the point that customer experience is rarely easy to define as a journey from A to B.