Forms are often essential to sites needing to grab the information of users to send them more materials later, keep them in their funnels, or have them sign up for all sorts of things.
If you have forms and landing pages that you want people to fill out, here are 10 best practices to know:
- Fool-proof your forms: It’s better to be crystal clear when possible. Contact for what? Explain what this form is being used for or where it is going.
- Add all the hints: So there’s adding some “why” behind a contact form, but it’s also helpful to add the “how” along the way, too. Point out extra information for fields with microcopy.
- Test, test, test: As with everything involving a web experience, test your form like a visitor.
- Think before you CAPTCHA: Unless you’re getting many spam responses, CAPTCHAs can be clunky. We suggest invisible ReCAPTCHAs instead
- Don’t use a form in a pop-up window: It’s just not something users dig.
- Not every field should be required: Give your visitors some flexibility because no one likes groaning when they have to fill out every single field.
- Keep it simple: Keep it short, simple, and in context.
- Have an open-ended field: As we said, keep your forms simple, but leave one open-ended question for the thoughts, comments, ideas of your visitors.
- Be consistent: Whatever text formatting you follow (caps, size, lowercase, etc.), make sure you follow through.
- Keep it ethical: Duh, phishing is bad. Stealing passwords, credit card numbers, etc. is illegal and can cause you a lot of trouble. Use your forms for good.
Jotform is a custom form-builder that knows a thing or two about forms. Check out their full post for more examples on form how-tos.
