How To Ask Your Visitors to Complete Your Lead Capture Form Before Downloading a File

Offering your visitors a free file download, such as a PDF file, in exchange for completing a short form is a proven way to consistently generate qualified leads for your business. Setting up a Lead Capture Form like this with Before & After Pro is easy, and takes just a few minutes.

Just follow the steps below to setup your own lead capture form:

Step 1: Create a New Form

From the Before & After menu, select New Form. Select a template to start with, or a new blank form.

Note: you can use one of the pre-made forms that comes with Before & After, or a form you’ve already made, and skip this step.

Step 2: Create a New Goal

From the Goals menu, select New Goal.

Step 3: Select Your Contact Form in the Before Meta Box

In the Before Meta Box, use the drop down menu to select the “Show a Form” option. Then select the form we created in Step 1, or any other form you’d like to use.

Step 4: In the After Meta Box, Enter Your File Details

In the After Meta Box, first select the choice for “Link to a file to download”. Then enter the URL of your file into the box labeled File URL.

You may also want to customize the text of the download link. You can do so by simply entering your own phrase in the Link Text box.

Be sure to enter an URL to send visitors to who try to download the file without first completing the form. This should usually be the page where you will display the form. Enter this URL into the text box labeled “Send users who try to download without completing the Goal to this URL.”

Finally, click the Publish button to finish creating your Goal.

Step 5: Add Your New Goal To Your Website

Congratulations! You’ve just created your first Lead Capture Form. Now we need to add it to your website. We do that by placing the Goal we just created onto any page or post.

If you’re using WordPress 5 or newer and the Gutenberg editor, simply add a new Goal block to your page. You’ll find it under the Before & After label.

If you’re using an older version of WordPress, or the Classic Editor, you will simply use a shortcode to display your new Goal. To do so, copy the [goal] shortcode from the Shortcodes Meta Box on the Edit Goal screen. Then simply paste this shortcode into the page where we want our Lead Capture Form to appear.

Note: if your form sends visitors to a separate “Thank You” page, be sure to add a Complete Goal block (for Gutenberg users) or a [complete_goal] shortcode (for Classic Editor users). This will mark the Goal as complete, and also show the links to download your file. Most users can skip this step.


That’s all! You can now share the page that contains your Goal, and start collecting leads! Your visitors will first see your form, and then once they’ve completed it, they’ll a link to download the file.

And don’t worry – once your users have completed the form, they won’t be asked to complete it again until their cookie expires. And if they share the download URL with their colleague, that person will also be asked to complete the form before they can access your file.

If you have any questions, please contact support!