Make your web-form more compelling and user friendly

Amit_Jain
Level 8 - Community Advisor

Make your web-form more compelling and user friendly

Web-forms are being used widely to collect information of potential customers. Everyday people visit tens of websites and have fill out their information to access certain marketing content. Though it is necessary for a business to capture the information of their prospects but it can be a tedious task for your audience to fill their information again and again.

In this blog post, we are going to cover:

  • How to reduce the number of times someone has to fill the form?
  • How to limit the number of fields on the form?
  • How to ensure best user experience during the form submission?

How to reduce the number of times someone has to fill the form?

  • Add form only where it’s absolutely necessary: No one would be happy to provide their information to you until they are confident and there is a trust. First try to engage the visitors on your website with your content and in the next phase of user engagement ask for their information. If you ask their information on their first visit to your website, there are high chances that they will provide invalid/junk information.

    Follow 80%-20% rule. 80% of times, engage user with your content. Provide them information that could be useful for them. And 20% of times, ask for their information and what they are looking for.

  • Hide form from the know users: I receive may emails throughout my day with some CTA. When I click on that CTA, they ask me to fill my information again? Most of the modern marketing automation systems have this functionality to hide form from known visitors. Instead of showing completed form, only show a custom message with a CTA. There will be no impact on the activity tracking. Utilities it.

    How to hide form for Know user in Marketo?

  • Prefill the form: If you still want to show the whole form to your known audience as well, try form prefill. This way, your prospects will be able to see what information you have on them and can correct if needed. This way your prospects do not have to fill their information again.

    How to enable/disable prefill Marketo form?

    Marketo has recently made some changes in form pre-filling but you can use  Sanford Whiteman  technique to prefill the from anywhere.

How to reduce the number of fields on the form?

  • Minimize number of fields on the form: Fewer the fields, lesser the effort required resulting in more conversion rates.
  • Remove the fields that you can infer from other data set: You purpose is to know who is interested in your product or services. If you are asking for the company, avoid asking for the industry/company size/Annual revenue etc. Use data append services to append additional data set based on the company/email address domain provided by the user. You can user services like Discover Org, Data.com etc.
  • Use progressive profiling: This a technique that help to capture the additional data points over time. Instead of showing 10-15 at once, you can decide to show only 5 fields for the first time and then how another 5 fields next time the user visit your web-site. There is no sense to keep showing the same fields again and again to the same user.
  • Use conditional visibility for the form fields: You should only show relevant fields and option values the user on the form. For example: If user select United states as country, only show US states in state drop down.

How to enable progressive profiling on Marketo forms?
How to enable Conditional field visibility on Marketo forms?


How to ensure best user experience during the form submission?

If you’re following the above two things, you are already halfway through. To make sure the optimum user experience, we have to take care of a few other additional things:

  • Make sure there is no scripting error
  • Post submission user experience: Make sure your thank you page is embedded properly with the form and have proper messaging. In addition to this, you can offer some more relevant content to the user on the thank you page itself.
  • Mobile first design approach: The mobile device usage is increasing day by day. Your form should be designed with mobile first approach.
  • Use input masking: Input masking is a great way telling user in what format we need a particular information. Input masking really works for phone number field.
  • Use field tool tip: The tool tip will show up when a visitor hovers over the field.
  • Use field set: It allows to group logically relevant fields together. With field set, it’s easier for your leads to understand what it’s about and improve the user experience.
  • Local language: Use local language on the form field. This reflects that you really care for your customers and also reflect their local culture and value.
1 REPLY 1
Amit_Jain
Level 8 - Community Advisor

Re: Make your web-form more compelling and user friendly

Just found this interesting Blog you can consider to make the form look more amusing..

https://nation.marketo.com/groups/san-antonio/blog/2019/08/23/tips-tricks-converting-checkboxes-to-s...