Progressive profiling: How to apply it to your forms

Progressive profiling is a lead nurturing technique that gathers data in a progressive way, instead of using longer forms. Thanks to its brevity, it is a smooth and non-intrusive way of getting valuable information out of your users. Learn more about it and discover how to apply with Arengu. Keep reading!

What is progressive profiling?

Progressive profiling is a technique to obtain personal information from your leads, in order to qualify them and get useful insights. Instead of using the traditional method, this technique asks questions in a progressive way, so users don't feel overwhelmed when they fill a form.

For example, you may want to display an initial onboarding form with basic fields, such as email, name and password. Later on, when they login again, you can display three extra fields that will complement the previous data, for example role, company and location. Asking information progressively allows you to get more information with less friction.

What are the benefits of progressive profiling?

• Qualified leads. Enriching your leads information translates into better numbers for your company. The more you know about them, the better you can address them and complete a sale.
• Better conversion rates. Nurtured leads allow you to implement personalized journeys and improve your numbers.
• Better user experience. Filling in forms can be exhausting for your users. When it comes to forms, the shorter is usually the better. Separating your form's field into different stages of the user journey eliminates friction and improves the experience for your users.
• Refined database. Knowing your buyers is not only useful to complete a sale, but also to know your audience in general. Thanks to this personal inf0, you can define your user personas and user journeys and refine your company's roadmap, style guide, and much more.

How does progressive profiling work?

Many businesses need to gather different kinds of information, but presenting too many questions in a long form has been proved to be counterproductive. A good solution is to split your questions in a multistep form, but you can split it even more with a progressive profiling form.

Imagine you need to ask your users the following information: name, email, role, company, company size, phone and location. In order to boost your registration numbers, you can display a shorter and simple form with just two fields: name and email. These two data will be enough for the user to register and login.

Later on, when the user accesses your platform again, you can display additional forms with the rest of the questions. You can split your form into as many pieces as you need. For instance, you can add a second form asking for their role and company details, and a last form asking them rather personal questions.

How to implement progressive profiling

Arengu allows you to build highly personalized forms, with smart and dynamic features, so your signup or login forms perform to the fullest.

Apart from being able to implement progressive profiling, you can go one step further and set actions that identify which data you already have in your database. This allows you to avoid asking questions with dynamic answer you may already have.

To do so, you will mainly using the following actions:

• If/then condition, that allows you to implement conditional logic in your forms with your own personalized rules.
• Navigation actions, such as Jump to a form step or Go to the next step, that allow you to skip questions according to your own rules.

Let's see an example! We'll create a login form with one of the predefined templates, and personalize the details.

1. Create a login form

Choose the Login Form template and complement it with as many fields as you want. In this case, we added two different steps.

When you add fields to your forms, a menu will be displayed on the right side of your screen. There, you can set different options for your fields.

The second step will be optional, according to whether we already have that information or not. This steps includes fields asking company details.

2. Create logic for your login form

Once your form is ready, you can proceed to create the server-side logic. This template includes a flow that logs in the user, sets a cookie and submits the form if everything is correct.

Just like we did with the form, we will add our own details to personalize the behaviour of the form as well. In this case, we will add an extra If/then condition, that will add more complex conditional logic to this form.

First, you will have to configure the login details, by adding your URL and API details on the right side menu. Arengu allows user authentication with WordPress, PrestaShop and any authentication provider, such as Auth0.

It's now time to set our own rules for this branching of the form. Here, you can reference any field of your form, or even your own data, as long as you have an API you can call. This enables you to build highly flexible and personalized forms, with your own business rules and logic criteria.

In this case, we added two conditions.

• The first one makes reference to the information in the second step of the form. If it's not in your database, the user will be led to the next step, where they will be asked those questions. If you already have that information, the questions won't be asked again. We'll skip the second step of the form, and the form will be directly submitted.
• The second condition makes reference to the number of times the user has to log in in this platform. One of the reasons to opt for a progressive profiling technique is in order not to overwhelm your users. This is why we opted to ask that info, only after 4 login actions.

As you can see, you can add a progressive profiling technique with your own personalized rules. You can also complement this logic with as many branches and steps as needed.

3. Embed your form... And start qualifying your users

All there is to do now is embedding your form wherever your need. You can do so by copy pasting these two lines of code. Simply substitute formID with your own form ID, and your form will be working without regard of the programming language or stack you use.

<script async src="https://sdk.arengu.com/forms.js"></script>
<div data-arengu-form-id="formID"></div>

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Are you interested in trying out the progressive profiling technique? Try Arengu for free and start qualifying your users the smart way!

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