Forms are essential for businesses across all industries. Contact forms, email signups, and payment pages are all possible due to these handy little widgets that you can quickly and easily add to any page.
However, just because they are easy to add, that doesn’t mean that they will be effective. Designing a highly engaging, visible form is one of the biggest obstacles you’ll face when creating your website. It’s not easy to grow your business if sales and subscriptions are non-existent.
Despite this challenge, you can make changes to your existing forms or create a new one from scratch that gets a ton of conversions. We are going to show you how.
Let’s explore several tips and tricks you can use to skyrocket your form conversions for more sales, subscribers, and happy customers.
Remove Unnecessary Fields
Two of the most common reasons people abandon forms is that they are too long or ask for unnecessary information. You want to keep basic signup forms limited to the consumer’s name, email address, and an optional question for segmenting and personalization.
Your contact forms should have several fields, depending on the reason the user is getting in touch. For example, if someone decided to use your contact form because they want a refund, you would need to include additional questions to resolve this scenario.
As a general rule, try to limit your form fields down to the information you need, and nothing more — unless you make the other fields optional. Research shows that removing unnecessary fields can boost email signups by a whopping 11{429fc2506e610357e12b2a5665db82631200a2e00b3a1d8839077d76f18e2e8b}. There’s a chance that those subscribers will also become customers, so don’t forget this vital form fact.
Add a Trust Badge
If your goal is to get more people to interact with your forms, you need to build trust with your audience. Consumers are not likely to engage with companies that don’t actively show that they are trustworthy. Adding social proof, such as testimonials and on-site reviews, can get more people to engage with your site, and forms by extension.
You can show your trustworthiness directly on your form with a trust badge. Essentially, trust badges are symbols that your audience that others approve of your business. Here are some common examples you may have noticed across the web.
Adding a trust badge to your forms can have a significant impact on how many people click-through. Believe it or not, adding one of these seals can improve your conversions by as much as 42{429fc2506e610357e12b2a5665db82631200a2e00b3a1d8839077d76f18e2e8b}.
A/B Test Your Forms
A/B testing, also known as split testing, effectively improves conversions through email and on your website. When you’re A/B testing your forms, there are several factors you should keep in mind.
Placement can have a significant impact on how many people see your form. For example, if you have your form at the bottom of your blog posts, very few people will get the opportunity to see it. However, putting it on your sidebar at the top of the page will dramatically improve exposure. You may want to experiment with different placement options depending on the type of form you want to add.
The button color and verbiage of your call-to-action (CTA) play a role in how people engage with your form. Split testing these elements can help you tune your message and gradually improve conversions as you implement changes.
If you’re willing to take your time so you can test and revise, A/B testing can improve conversions by 304{429fc2506e610357e12b2a5665db82631200a2e00b3a1d8839077d76f18e2e8b}. All you have to do to get started is look for a piece of your form that you think needs changes. Create another copy of your form and make the change. Use both elements on your site for different customers and measure the results. Once you have consistent results, pick the one with the highest conversion rate and move on to the next change.
Make Errors Clear
Finally, let’s talk about the value of clearly showing errors. Have you ever tried to fill out a form that kept giving you a generic error message at the bottom? It’s a frustrating experience because sometimes it’s not easy to figure out precisely what you need to fix. Here’s a better question: have you ever abandoned a form after getting a mystery error?
Here’s the thing, plenty of people do abandon forms for this reason. When you’re creating any type of form on your website, make sure to include clear error boxes, so users know what to fix if a mistake occurs.
Not only will adding this feature to your site improve customer UX, but it will also get you plenty of new conversions, sales, and subscriptions.
