You’ve probably never stopped to think about your website forms. They are simply a fill in the blank area to give you some basic info right? In actuality, a good form design can be a prospecting tool. A badly designed form can be a hindrance to a sale. By optimizing your forms you can increase your chances at making inroads with potential customers.
TMI (Too Much Information)
No doubt about it, sometimes a form needs to collect a lot of information. But is your complex form is turning visitors off? We turn to analytics to tell us. If you’re seeing a good amount traffic landing on the form, but you’re not getting an equal number of submissions, that may be an indication that your form is too complex.
A good rule of thumb is to start with basic information first, and then test by adding more fields until you can determine when your form has reached its threshold of complexity. The basic information you need should be weighted with the purpose of the form.
One Size Does Not Fit All
Depending on the purpose of the form, the user may or may not be willing to give you certain pieces information. For example, if you want people to sign up for your newsletter, all you really need is their email address — you don’t need to know their birthday or company name. If a user wants to contact you, asking them to tell the number of years they have been in business won’t make sense. Each form on your site has a different purpose. If you make sure that you’re only asking the information necessary for each type of form, you should start seeing your conversions increase.
It’s Not An Inquisition
If you’ve ever tried to contact a technology company, you’ve no doubt had to select the product you own, when you purchased it, from where you purchased it, what department you need regarding that product, etc. Forms like that need to be on a support page. However, your prospecting forms (like your contact form, estimate requests, etc.) should be as easy as possible for people to contact you.
If you have a large company, it might make sense to have the user select a department so they can be helped appropriately. But if you force the user to select too many narrowing options, you run the risk of asking things that don’t apply, and making the user feel like they are on the wrong page for a simple inquiry.
Don’t Lose Their Input (I ran out of clever subheads)
If your form requires the user to navigate away from the contact page (like needing the product ID), or if the form is exceptionally long or complicated, make sure you don’t lose all the information they have already entered. Having to do double entry is the best way to frustrate your user.
Another oops is the “Clear Form” button. I have actually pushed this instead of the submit button and was so frustrated that I didn’t bother filling the form back in again. Is there any instance that you would ever need a Clear Form button? I can’t think of one unless all of your users are using public computers and all of them change their minds about contacting you after they have filled in the form. Lose the button, keep their information.
If you have forms on your site, make sure they are working for you and not against you. Everything on a website should be tested to make sure it’s doing the best job it can, and forms are no different. Need some help? Check out our (stunningly optimized) contact form and let us know what you need. We’re glad to help.
About the author: Jeune Ortiz is VP of Marketing and Creative Director at future-ink. With more than 20 years of experience in graphic design and marketing, Jeune brings extensive knowledge and creativity to each website and internet marketing solution to grow your business.
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