Simple and Intuitive Website Forms

by Lars Miller | Aug 11, 2020

A customer is interested in buying a new tent for an upcoming camping trip. So, he goes to two stores. The first store has a better tent, friendlier staff and even a better price. But, in an attempt to ‘wow’ the customers, the front door is a complex zipper door. The customer never makes it in and ends up buying a less quality tent at a big box store with zero help from the staff. That’s the difference in a complicated, designed form on your website versus simple and intuitive website forms.

Forms on a website need to be easy and intuitive to use.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating a form on your website:

1. Only ask for information you need to qualify a customer.
   If you only need to know an email address and first name to start a conversation, keep your form that simple. Overwhelming potential customers with unnecessary fields lowers conversion rates on your forms, which ultimately impacts your bottom line. Not sure where to start? Ask sales! They know what they need in order to pre-qualify and follow up on a lead.
2. Include field labels.
   Forms may look better without labels above each input, but quickly scanning a form after you’ve filled it out is difficult if you can’t remember what that field is. Also, labels are great for accessibility (visually impaired users) as screen readers need them.
3. Use placeholder text to cue the customer as to the format of the information.
   Placeholder text (the grayed-out text in a field before you start typing) should be used to tell the customer the format of the information to enter. For example, if you’re asking for a phone number, you might want to indicate [111-222-3333] as the placeholder text. That way, the user knows the area code is important. Some users, especially rural users, might not be used to having to include their area code anywhere.
4. If possible, have the form directly on the landing page. Don’t add extra clicks!
5. Use hidden fields.
   Hidden fields are such a powerful tool for marketers. They can let you know, for example, what page a user filled out the form on or the lead source. If sales wants to know some information and you’re programmatically able to derive the information – do it with hidden fields.

Keeping your website forms simple will help ensure you don’t drive potential customers away.