Lead capture pages are all over the internet. These are pages that “capture” personal information from visitors who choose to fill out a contact form. Usually these forms ask for information such as name, email address, phone and/or snail mail addresses. Some contact forms go even further, asking the visitor a series of questions regarding their likes and dislikes, shopping preferences- all sorts of things. There is no limit to the imagination of the people creating capture pages. Why are lead capture pages so valuable? Because, when used properly, they can provide an unlimited source of sales leads for the entrepreneur or business behind the contact form. A percentage of these sales leads will (at least theoretically) turn into sales. It is up to the business owner to make sure that the numbers work. In other words, there must be enough profit in a sale to justify the expense of capturing the leads. What expense, you might ask. You thought the internet was free, right? Well, sort of. In the competitive world of online commerce and lead collection, marketers are always looking for more traffic, or visitors to their web pages. The reason is simple. The more traffic you get to your page, the more people who will fill out the contact form. The more people who fill out the contact form, the more people you will ultimately sell. It’s a numbers game, as they say. This traffic is not free. The marketer is going to pay for their traffic through either pay per click advertising or through their investment of time and/or money in search engine optimization. Therefore it is important to have a certain percentage of visitors “convert” into leads. The number of people who fill out the contact form divided by the number of people who visit the capture page is called the conversion rate. This conversion rate is an important factor in justifying the expense of sending traffic to the capture page. Now, keep in mind, it is not enough to just have lots of people filling out the contact form on your lead capture page. As a business owner, you should try your best to make sure that the people “opting-in” to your form are qualified leads. If you’re selling Mercedes Benz cars and your inbox is filled with leads from people with no money, you’re not going to be successful. On the other hand, if you’ve done a good job at attracting qualified prospects to your pages, you may not need many leads to be profitable. Capture pages can provide additional value to business owners, also. These pages allow online business owners to learn about their visitors and their pay per click marketing campaigns. Which keywords are bringing the visitors that are more likely to fill out the contact form? Analytical tools such as Google Analytics can provide this information. If the marketer learns which keywords are more likely to convert, they can stop spending money for clicks on keywords that do not. Savvy marketers can use this information from their lead capture pages to lower the cost of leads which leads to lower costs in general.