How To Design Web Forms That Convert

Every day, businesses around the world anticipate new customers. Either to increase their bottom-line or simply stabilize their customer base. In either of these cases, creating effective  web forms is a great way to achieve your business objectives.

This article attempts to demystify the form creation process and spells out how to create web forms your target audience will respond to.

Give your audience a reason to fill your form – offer a reward.

While creating a web form, always spell out the reason why you want people to fill your form.

People are bound to take actions when they know there is a reward for them in return. An ebook, for example, or an exclusive access to some data or product discounts.

In some cases, simply telling your users that their submission would help you serve them better triggers higher conversion rates.

As an extension of this offer, replace the simple “Submit” button with a call-to-action like “Download e-book” or “Yes, send me updates” etc. Doing this has been proven to be give higher conversions.

Make your form stand out

Users are jaded. They see hundreds of forms on the web every day. To get their attention, break the convention of what a form is. The design of a form should be simple and most importantly the form should be easy to find. Allowing your form to blend into other content on the page should be a practice you must avoid. Use contrast colors that speak well to the emotion of your users while being intentional in your choice of font.

Design a smart form

Users fill out less forms because they take time. When you develop a smart form that preloads some user information, conversion rate spikes.

Facebook and LinkedIn lead-generation ad format is a typical demonstration of what a smart form should be.

Ensure your fields are properly tagged with terms that a browser will recognize e.g. ‘email’, ‘first name’, or ‘city’ so that it can help browsers suggest relevant information.

Use java-script to validate information swiftly and let your form communicate that to the user before submitting with a subtle styling. Implementing conditional logic which displays certain question if only the previous question has been answered in a certain way is also a great way to make your form smarter.

Keep the number of fields to a minimum

A recent study found that by decreasing the number of form fields from four to three it increased conversion by 50%. Another research shows that eliminating phone numbers increased a form submission rate by 31%. Request for only the information you need. For example; you wouldn’t need a phone number to deliver a newsletter, so why ask?

Don’t ask for email or password confirmation as it increases the number of field you have which in turn make users less comfortable.

The 3 to 5-field forms give the best conversion, according to Hubspot Start with that.

A/B Test

A rule of thumb in digital marketing, use A/B testing to test copies of web content to see which performs best after serving them to several users over time.

While it is good to follow all the best practices as mentioned above, increase your certainty of conversions by split-testing your form and changing elements – the CTA, colour, positioning, number of fields etc- one at a time. Serve them to at least 100 visitors and see which gets the highest conversion rate.

Web forms, when designed well, can help you achieve your business objectives in the shortest possible space.