Have you gone to a website to download a specific document and had to fill out a form to get to it? If you have, you’ve used a gated form.

Gated forms allow website owners to: 

• gather data on who uses their website and marketing materials
• find which resources are most popular so they can add more of what people like
• collect email addresses of interested visitors to start conversations.

Which materials should I be putting behind forms?

1. Is this marketing material I want everyone to see? If so, leave it public. It’s hard to make sales when you’re asking for personal information from people who aren’t committed to your product or service.
2. Is this a resource I have put a lot of time into creating a large value for visitors (ie whitepapers, case studies etc). If so, this is an ideal resource to add a gated form to.

How long should a gated form be? 

The short answer is: as short as possible. The longer a form is, the less likely a visitor is to fill it out. We recommend only asking for a name and email address, and possibly a phone number if necessary for business objectives. The whole idea of gated forms is to trade a bit of their information for a bit of yours. The more fields you add to a gated form, the less likely people are to fill it out. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have 10 visitor’s name and email addresses sent to me than one visitor’s information that includes a phone number and company information.