5 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About Web Forms
Web form is the key gateway for any website to collect user data and subsequently provide a more personalized user experience. They not only take the feedback and inquiries from the visitors but also collect leads and subscribers for any website. Hence, it won’t be wrong to say that the design, functionality, and usability of the web forms directly impact the conversion rate of the website. In fact, on deep thinking, it can be concluded that these forms also play a crucial role in the deciding the rate of success of overall marketing efforts and its lead generation strategies.
This calls for extra care and conscientiousness on the part of the website designers and developers while designing web forms. They need to know that a web form, which is clear, concise, and functional, encourages more conversions while a lengthy, dull, and distasteful web form would only push the visitors away. They should also understand that the web forms should work smoothly and integrate into the page, but at the same time, also stand out to draw the attention of the users towards themselves. And that’s not all. There are many other things that website designers need to know about web forms; five of these things have been discussed below. So let’s not waste time and read the 5 things every designer needs to know about web forms.
- Web Forms Are Not The Same As Paper Forms
Designers need to know that web forms are not the same as paper forms and so should be designed accordingly. Don’t get stuck in a paper mindset and translate the paper design into the screen. You should not copy all the conventions and attributes of a paper form to your web form. In order to provide a great user-experience, it is crucial that you design the online form to make it visually appealing and understanding.
Unlike paper forms, you have various options like drop-down menus for conditional fields, user-triggered contextual help, directional pointers etc. Make use of them to make your web form stand out. You can make great use of the whitespace and make the fields as long as the input required and make each of them stand out from the information provided on the page.
- The Shorter A Web Form, The Smarter It Is
It goes without saying that a shorter web form is more likely to be filled in by a user than a form that runs many pages long. Depending upon the information you require from the users, make sure to cut down all the unnecessary fields to make the form as short as possible. A long form with scores of required fields can easily scare off the users. The basic fields like name, email, message and one or two more fields can be marked as required fields while the other fields can be kept as conditional if you cannot cut them down.
According to a study conducted by Hubspot on over 40,000 web forms, the maximum conversions was generated by forms with 3-5 fields. Don’t discourage your users by asking them for a lot of personal information on the web form; keep it short and concise by adding only the right fields in it.
- Creative Web Forms Attract More Submissions
Your work as a designer does not end at designing an innovative, creative, and interactive website. All your endless efforts at designing the website would not bring in the required conversions if your web form is not appealing to the eyes. Professional web designers in India understand the importance of creativity in web forms for attracting more submissions.
Getting creative does not mean that you start using unpleasing colors or flashy graphics in the forms, but it gives you the freedom to use contrasting colors, engaging texts and innovative fields. Get even more creative with the CTA and make it pop out from the page using contrasting colors and bold typography.
- Borders & Labels Are Vital For Accessibility
Blindly following the minimalist, many designers have started ignoring the essentiality of borders and labels in a web form. Both of them are identifying attributes in the web form and vital for accessibility. A well-defined border of the field allows the user to understand the size and location of the click target. The fields need to have a clearly defined field border that can be filled or clear to ensure that the user knows where exactly to click for adding the information.
Low contrast labels are also an important attribute of the web form that tells the user what they need to enter into the field. The text in the placeholder should clearly and concisely reflect what you want to ask the users. Moreover, clear labels in the form fields also discourage any type of wrong information input.
- Minimum Mouse Usage Means Better Form Design
Everyone wants to eliminate the extra work of grabbing their mouse, again and again, to click around on various fields just to fill a single form. And the designers need to know that not all the users know that the tab key can be used to move through the fields in a web form. They might feel overwhelmed in using their mouse for clicking and simultaneously using their keyword for typing the information.
Have a simple one-column form so that the user does not have to go around clicking on all the columns in a single line. Instead of drop-down menus, incorporate radio buttons that can be navigated using the keyboard navigation keys and selected using enter. The design and UX of the form will automatically improve manifolds when you minimize the user-mouse usage.
Putting in a nutshell, your web form has an important impact on your site conversion. Whether it is about convention, size, design, creativity or user-experience, your web form must be honed to perfection so that it provides exceptional utility and functionality. The above points were the five most important things that are important aspect of a web form. Every website design development company or individual designers should keep these things in mind while designing a web form to boost conversions.