What Is a Lead Capture Form?
TL;DR
A lead capture form is a web form whose purpose is to collect enough contact detail to start a sales conversation, normally an email address plus one or two qualifying fields. Every extra field lowers the number of visitors who finish it, so the field list trades completion against qualification.
How many fields should a lead capture form have?
As few as the next step genuinely needs, which is usually an email address, a name and one qualifying question. Every added field is another reason to abandon the form, and that cost is paid by every visitor while the benefit only lands from the ones who finish.
Enrichment changes the arithmetic. Company size, industry and role can often be appended from the email domain after submission, so asking for them spends completions on something already derivable.
What has to happen after a submission?
Three things, none of them optional. The submission becomes a contact record rather than an email in an inbox, an owner is assigned so somebody is accountable for the follow-up, and the first reply goes out while the visitor still remembers submitting.
Routing straight into a sequence is what makes that speed survive a busy week. A submission waiting for a human to notice it is competing with everything else in that mailbox, and it usually loses.
Frequently asked questions
Only when somebody will actually call, and then keep it optional. A required phone field costs completions, and collecting numbers nobody dials trades real submissions for a column that never gets used.