Electrasol coupon offer could have been better
Sherpa reader Barbara Kaplowitz writes in, “A print ad Electrasol caught my eye. The ad containing the discount coupon offered a “Free box of Electrasol” simply for going to the Web site. Imagine my dismay, when I clicked on the ‘Print and SAVE’ area of the Web site, to find that I had to give out my name, zip code and answer a truly annoying 6-question questionnaire. It just ain’t worth it for a $3 box of something. Think this is more a case study for how NOT to handle consumer goods traffic you’ve driven to your Web site.”
Fact is most of our Case Studies show that if you offer something of value, and ask less than 10 fairly easy non-intrusive questions, most consumers will fill out your online form — and the ones who don’t bother are probably not good sales prospect for you. So I checked out the Electrasol offer online myself. They do several things right:
– Make the coupon offer online look like a clip-out coupon in print, which catches the eye nicely
– Ask less than 10 questions
– Don’t ask anything too personally intrusive
– Keep it all to one page
– Have a visible privacy policy on the page
– Have a separate check box to join their email list
But they also made a few of mistakes which might have hurt them:
– Privacy policy isn’t on same area of screen as request for email address. You have to scroll way down to see it. Which means you don’t get that reassurance you need before you decide to give your email address away.
– Using drop down boxes for all multiple choice questions instead of radio buttons — people hate drop downs in general. In fact many average consumers can’t figure out how to use them. Others won’t bother.
– No offer reminder. The top of the form says coldly, “Step 1 – Complete Survey Please complete ALL the information below and click continue.”
Hey guys, just because you got the click to the form doesn’t mean you sold them on filling it out. You have to keep on enticing them to get them to fill the form out all the way. I’ll bet if there was a nice headline saying “For your $3 coupon, please fill out this form!” they would have done better. With a picture of a bottle or a coupon, they would have done even better.
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