Form Building
Best Practices
Now that you’re aware of a few different web forms that can help your business grow, it’s time to learn how to make sure the forms you use are up to the job.
Here are the top three best practices to help you build effective forms.
The design of your form has a significant impact on conversion rates. Here are some tips to help you with form design:
★ Make sure the appearance of your forms matches the design of your site.
★ Consider the layout of your forms and use columns and dividers to organize fields.
★ Use colors to draw attention to key components of your form, such as calls-to-action and submit buttons.
★ Use a form builder that gives you complete control over the design of your forms.
★ Choose a form builder that provides well-designed templates you can use as the foundation for your own forms.
Your forms shouldn’t just look nice; they should also be easy to use.
Here are some ways you can make your forms more user-friendly:
★ Ensure form field labels are informative and clearly convey what information is required from the user.
★ Use descriptions and placeholder text to add additional instructions to your forms.
★ Use the most appropriate input types for each field, such as date pickers, drop-down menus, and checkboxes, rather than only using free text fields.
★ Avoid overwhelming users by using conditional logic to show and hide form fields based on user input dynamically.
★ Split up long forms over multiple pages.
★ Clearly explain any field restrictions, such as maximum characters, specific date formats, and if a field is required.
★ Create custom validation error messages so that users know exactly why their input wasn’t accepted and what they need to do to fix it.
The journey doesn’t end with a form submission. Once a user has sent data via your form, there’s still lots that can happen and opportunities to improve the default workflow.
Here are some data management issues and post-form submission actions to consider:
★ Send a custom email notification to the user that contains content relevant to their form submission, such as requested information, a copy of their submission, or further steps to complete.
★ Send form data to third-party services, such as an email marketing tool or a CRM, so that users can be easily contacted again.
★ Form submission content can trigger custom workflows and integrations, such as posting a message to a Slack channel, sending an email to a team member, or forwarding the form to another user for approval.
★ Documents can be generated from a form submission, such as a PDF invoice, certificate, or other custom documents.
Creating well-designed forms will make them more appealing to your visitors. And a positive user experience makes it more likely that visitors will complete the form correctly.
Using the data management capabilities of your form builder means you can create custom workflows, integrations, and automations that reduce your workload, make your processes more efficient, and enable you to harness the power of third-party tools to grow your business further.
