1. Gather only the minimum information required on the landing page forms. Adding more (optional) fields will result in junk data and reduce the lead quality.
2. Validate required fields as well as optional fields for format and content. Email address and numeric data should be 100% validated. Even text fields should be validated for length and patterns.
3. Validate phone number and Area code (using a reference database). There is no meaning in validating these fields after getting the leads. The validation should be performed in the front end.
4. Validate geographic information such as country, state, county, and zip codes. Make sure that the validations are appropriate. If you are collecting Mortgage leads or Insurance leads, there is no meaning in providing a country drop down with 150 countries of the world! Provide a drop down with State names for US only. If you are collecting Business Opportunity (Biz Op) leads in US and Canada, let the state drop down display both US and Canadian states.
5. Validate the city against IP address of the user. Please note that this not a foolproof method and hence this could be used to score the quality of the lead.
6. Validate physical address, if collected in the sign-up form. Again, online validation is preferred.
7. Distribute leads based on suitable filters. If you are distributing leads to multiple lead buyers, multiple filter sets can be used to deliver required leads depending on the customer requirements.
8. Choose one or more suitable lead delivery methods. While email is the most widely used delivery method, there are other reliable methods for lead delivery and distribution. Email, API, Direct Application Access and Fax methods can be used in combination based on the client’s business.
9. Employ right lead generation methods. Avoiding methods such as forced pop-ups, providing incentives to the user, etc. can greatly improve the lead quality.
10. De-dupe leads after capture in the lead distribution system. Since users may be submitting the registration forms from more than one site on the internet, de-duping the leads will help improve the client satisfaction. If you are using affiliates and multiple sources, this is an important step prior to lead distribution.

Even if you are outsourcing lead generation and landing page design to third party service providers, make sure that these principles are adhered to. Employing simple, template based landing pages may not address these requirements.

The success or failure of lead generation strategies rests on the success or failure of landing pages,which in turn is dependent on the following factors:

• Conversion ratio, and
• Quality of lead information

Whether you are generating leads for your own use or for further sales to lead buyers / clients, the fundamentals of landing page design and development are the same. Here are the most common mistakes committed by even by experienced lead companies while implementing landing pages and signup / registration forms.

1. Asking for too much information on the sign-up form in landing pages. Decide upfront what information is critical and collect only critical information, without which the prospect info is meaningless. Providing more fields for input forces visitors to enter garbage.
2. Avoiding Field Validations. This is the most important mistake committed by designers and programmers. Current programming technology provides for extensive validations in the front end without irritating the user. In fact, good prospects will love error traps and exception handling. For example, it is common to make spelling mistakes while entering domain names in the email address (ex. typing .con instead of .com). Top level domain names can be validated easily. Similarly email address format can be verified. The following type of entry fields should be validated:
   • Amount or Numeric input fields
   • Email Address fields
   • Geography fields (such as Country, State, County, etc.)
   • Mandatory fields (for presence of data)
   • Phone entry fields (do not ask the visitor to enter in a specific format, let the system format it.)
3. Improper use of Drop Downs. This is yet another frequent mistake committed by the designers. Particularly, if you are a generating leads for resale, the numeric fields should be captured as numbers rather than tiers. Your customers may be needing totally different tiers and hence the accuracy of the data will be lost. Applying filters will be difficult, if tier based drop downs are used.
4. Avoiding or missing Source Tracking. If you are driving traffic to the your common landing page, capturing the traffic source and passing it to the Lead Distribution System is a critical requirement. This helps to analyze the quality of leads by traffic source and tweak the lead generation campaign accordingly.
5. Designing landing pages without analyzing the end use requirements. Unless you know and fully understand the requirements of the lead data usage, it will be difficult to plan the sign-up form. This problem is more aggravated in the case of lead companies selling leads to more than one customer, since each customer might have different requirement.

Note that implementing some of these suggestions might even reduce the conversion ratio; however it will be compensated by the quality of the leads generated and customer satisfaction. The real prospects also will appreciate your professional approach and work, there by resulting in more quality leads.