CAPTCHA Can Kill Your Conversion Rate


B2B Lead Generation | Kill the CAPTCHA

Want better results and less abandoning of your website forms? Lose the CAPTCHA…

Christian Holst wrote this post and I thank him for it. You are read the original Frustrationat CAPTCHA Can Kill Your Conversion Rate.

I HATE CAPTCHA. I’ve many times typed it over and over before giving up. Then click on the audio and it is completely muffled and impossible to understand. I give up. I’d say almost 1/2 of all CAPTCHA are completely unusable.

By the way, we’ve removed all CAPTCHA’s from Find New Customers - it’s simply not a match with our company culture of service.

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CAPTCHA

More and more websites are using CAPTCHA to avoid spam, but they’retypically bad for your business as CAPTCHAs have major usability problems. Most visitors simply get them wrong.

Why CAPTCHAs Are Bad For Business

From the perspective of a web developer, a CAPTCHA may seem like a great solution to prevent spam. However, from a business perspective CAPTCHAs can be pure poison as they have a lot of usability problems:

  • CAPTCHAs are difficult to decipher. This is what makes them technically good, however, obscuring text and asking your visitors to repeat that text will hurt your conversion rate badly. And let’s face it, even people working with websites daily read a CAPTCHA wrong every now and then.
  • CAPTCHAs carry no meaning. Most CAPTCHAs are just a random combination of letters and numbers, leaving your visitors with little clues as to whether or not they got it right before submitting the form. Additionally, even if they do read it correctly, because it have to be an exact match there’s also the risk of your visitor simply mistyping it.
  • Your visitors don’t understand what CAPTCHAs are for. Why are you forcing them to go through an eye exam and spelling test? Some will be annoyed that you’re treating them like a 3rd grader, others may even feel insulted.
  • People with lowered vision can’t read your CAPTCHA. This makes it near impossible for them to read the already mangled characters of your CAPTCHA.

Some visitors will leave you site immediately when they see your CAPTCHA simply because they don’t understand what it’s for (problem 3). The visitors that do understand it, but are either unable to see it (problem 4), can’t read it (1) or mistyped it (2), will get so frustrated that there’s a good chance they will leave your site too. (AMEN!)

Are you willing to take this chance? My suggestion is to set up a split test where you remove the CAPTCHA and then compare the value of the extra conversions against the extra hassle of deleting some additional spam.

If You Still Need A CAPTCHA…

If you absolutely, positively must implement a CAPTCHA on your site, then at least consider these 6 ways of making you captcha more user friendly:

  1. Use a huge CAPTCHA so your visitors won’t have to go scrambling for their reading glasses.
  2. Make the CAPTCHA ask for real words or sentences so your visitors can deduce the characters that are really difficult to read from the characters that are easier to read.
  3. Reload just the CAPTCHA if your visitor gets it wrong so he don’t have to fill in all the other form fields on the page again.
  4. Give your visitors an option to get a new CAPTCHA image so they have the possibility to get another.
  5. Tell your visitors you’ve implemented the CAPTCHA to prevent spam. This way you at least explain to them why they need to through all that hassle and some visitors may even sympathize with you, as they themselves have trouble with spam.
  6. Only ask your visitors to type your CAPTCHA once through the entire session. E.g. if you have a service for getting price quotes, don’t show a CAPTCHA at every request, only during the first request.
  7. (Added by author here) Use a simple CAPTCHA - like numbers or real words. For instance, I’ve seen “What is the sum of 7 plus 5? Or give me a few words and tell me type the third word. Those are much easier for humans and damned near impossible for SPAM.

What’s your opinion on CAPTCHAs?

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“If B2B lead generation was a car, Ogden is a Ferrarri.” said by SVP Worldwide Marketing of $500MM software firm.
Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. He presented at the 140 Social Media Conference on Long Island and appears on Sales Lead Management Radio on June 9th.

Find New Customers helps companies (with between 150 and 5,000 employees who sell complex products to businesses) to implement world-class lead generation programs. As companies struggle to create quality sales opportunities for sales teams, they turn to lead generation companies like Find New Customers.

How to Find New Customers - our most popular white paper


“Don’t know how I connected w Jeff Ogden, but he’s author of hot white paper “How to Find New Customers.” Liked it a lot. So much written re: demand gen, but most is too complex.

Find New Customers

Ogden makes it simple, so it’s a ‘Must Read” and him a ‘Must Interview.’

Craig Rosenberg, the Funnelholic, in an interview with Mr. Ogden.

The Tagline of Find New Customers is “Lead Generation Made Simple”

“I think Jeff Ogden’s whitepaper is excellent and this interview is as well.”

Jeff Gaus, CEO, Prolifiq Software

Click here to read the entire interview

(As this white paper is sponsored by Marketo, your information will be shared with them alone, and you can easily opt out.)

“If B2B lead generation were a car, Ogden is a Ferrari.” (SVP of Marketing for large software firm.)

Read my blog on Kindle

Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. He presented at the 140 Social Media Conference on Long Island and appears on Sales Lead Management Radio on June 9th.

Find New Customers helps companies (with between 150 and 5,000 employees who sell complex products to businesses) to implement world-class lead generation programs. As companies struggle to create quality sales opportunities for sales teams, they turn to lead generation companies like Find New Customers.

Marketing as a business turn-around strategy


Lead Generation Companies | Marketing as a business turn-around strategy

(This blog post is based on what’s happening at a real company today - a public company in upstate New York - who put up poor results and replaced their founder with a new CEO.)

After reporting a loss for several quarters with declining revenues, the Board sends the founder into retirement and picks a successor. So what is that successor to do?

Obviously, cost savings will be an initial focus. Money-losing products will be cut short. Unprofitable divisions will be closed. And some employees will be shown the door. Certainly, cash flow will improve as outflows slow.

But a simple fact remains:

You cannot save your way to prosperity

What do you do?

  • Do you hire new sales leadership and buy training?
  • Do you invest in advertising - trade shows, print ads, etc.
  • Or do you look for outside capital?

Our recommendation is this: Invest in B2B lead generation.

It’s not quick and it is not inexpensive, but it’s the single best way to drive revenue and market share growth in future years.

How do you get started in B2B lead generation (also referred to as Demand Generation)? We recommend you start with a visit to Find New Customers, our website packed to the rafters with great free content on B2B lead generation and marketing.

“If B2B lead generation were a car, Ogden is a Ferrari.” said last week by SVP Worldwide Marketing of $500MM software firm.

What do you think? How do you recommend a new CEO turn around his business? We love comments and those who share.

Read my blog on Kindle

Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. He presented “How to Build a Great Personal Brand” at the 140 Social Media Conference on Long Island and will appear on Sales Lead Management Radio on June 9th.

Find New Customers helps companies (with between 150 and 5,000 employees who sell complex products to businesses) to implement world-class lead generation programs. As companies struggle to create quality sales opportunities for sales teams, they turn to lead generation companies like Find New Customers.