I work with lead gen teams a lot and know way too much about online forms.
And I think we all know that every time you fill out a little form online, you know someone will call you (even my assistant knew this one when he had them call me!).
However, I just had the best experience for downloading a PDF.
(Disclaimer: this may have existed for a long long time, but I have yet to encounter this on my Web travels. If it has been around a while, please comment and let me know. I'm sure this isn't new - possibly just new to me - but why don't more places use it?)
These experiences are usually all the same - general form with fields, some with more fields, some with fewer. These forms are always so ridiculous for a user to complete - especially if you are emailing someone in your database for whom you already have information! I mean, users know you know them (how did you get their info? Most likely, from a form!) - why make them fill out another form!?!?
Working on these projects, I always felt like Oscar Goldman in the 6 Hundred Million Dollar man: "...We have the technology. We can make him[it] better than he was. Better, stronger, faster."
But I was always told, no! We need to have the user fill out the form because we didn't buy that technology to make it easy like that (or some other nonsense).
However, today, I have proof that this is all possible.
From Adobe's email, I went to a page that looked like it would have a form on it (see below), it refreshed for a second, and I got to download the PDF.
No form required because they (obviously) already had my information. I have an account with them, I buy from them, there is no need to collect my info yet again.
This was pure genius!
Now if more places could do this! Hmmm!
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