Create a Lead Capture Form in Joomla!

Capturing lead information from visitors is critical in getting the most out of your website. Instead of having someone find your website, visit it once, and then forget about it, obtaining lead information allows you to stay connected with prospective customers. This tutorial is going to look at how you can create a lead capture form specifically for Joomla websites.

You can use the information you capture to contact prospective customers over the phone, by email, social media, direct mail or any other direct marketing method you choose. Decide how you want to approach your website visitors and then include the necessary information in a lead capture form.

Step 1: Create A Plan

Before we do anything we’ll need to create a plan and determine the information we want to collect. We’ll need enough data to work with, but don’t want to demand too much in case we turn potential customers away.

We’ll also need to consider where we want to put the lead capture form and what we’ll offer to entice people to enter their contact information.

To encourage people to volunteer their information you’ll often have to offer some value in return. This could be anything like a free report, white paper, or access a special newsletter. There are many ways to offer something that people will be interested in providing their contact information for. Be creative. Here are two Joomla templates which demonstrate working lead capture forms in action:

• Marketing Plan Template
• Sales Process Template

Step 2: The Smartformer Plugin

Smartformer is a great plugin for Joomla which makes lead capture forms extremely easy to implement. Let’s download and install it.

Additional Resources

• Smartformer Plugin

Step 3: (Optional) AC File Payments

AC File Payments is another great plugin for Joomla. It enables visitors to download files from your site. If you want to provide a download for visitors after they fill out your lead capture form you will need this or an equivalent Joomla extension. To complete this installation follow the same steps as in the previous video (but apply the process the AC File Payments extension).

Additional Resources

• AC File Payments Plugin

Step 4: Create A Lead Capture Form

It’s time to get our hands dirty and actually create a lead capture form. Firstly, determine which fields you want to capture and set up the form. Smartformer is very intuitive to use, and it shouldn’t take you long to master.

Step 5: (Optional) File Download Page

If you’re looking to provide a file download in exchange for the information you are collecting from website visitors, the next step will be to create a file download page.

Step 6: (Optional) Connect Lead Capture Form

In order to provide a file download as part of your lead capture form, you’ll need to connect the download page to the submit button on your lead capture page. Let’s do that now.

Step 7: Lead Capture Results

Once you have your form created I’m sure you will want to see the leads it captures! This is the best part. Let’s now look at viewing how many leads you capture, reviewing the collected information, and downloading the information.

Conclusion

There you have it! That is how you create a lead capture form on your Joomla website in no more than seven easy steps! With the information you collect you can now perform email marketing, social media marketing, direct mail marketing or whatever direct marketing method you choose to bring more visitors back to your site and convert into customers. Thanks for following along.