Small businesses are always on the hunt for new customers. But before they make a purchase, consumers typically go through several key stages of learning about and interacting with your brand. One way to capitalize on your digital interactions is with sign-up forms.
Sign-up forms are crucial for business growth these days. They help you gather contact information to build a list of potential customers and nurture those relationships. While not everyone who completes your sign-up forms will become a customer, many of them will. That’s why it’s so important to make your sign-up forms as effective as possible, and customization is key.
In this article, you’ll learn the key components of successful forms and the essential steps to customize sign-up forms for your business.
Why custom sign-up forms matter
Small business owners have a lot on their plates, so it’s understandable to try to save time and effort wherever possible. However, spending a little extra time to customize sign-up forms and ditch the generic ones is a worthwhile investment.
Your sign-up form is often one of the first few touchpoints new customers have with your brand. With a customized form, you can ensure its design is consistent with your branding to make the best possible first impression on those customers. You’re building trust with the audience through the form’s professional appearance.
Customizing your form can also lead to higher conversion rates. You can add in any elements or tweaks that will suit your brand’s specific target audience to maximize the number of customers completing the form.
Along the same lines, customization gives you total control over what fields you include in your sign-up form. That way, you can make sure the forms collect data that actually serves your business needs.
Plan your form strategy
Before you jump right into creating your form, develop a strategy. Ask yourself what you’re trying to accomplish.
Start by identifying your specific goals for your sign-up form, such as email list building, lead generation, or event registration.
From there, you can figure out what information needs to be in your form and what would be nice to have. For example, if you’re trying to build an email list, you need an email address. You might also like to get the customer’s first and last name, location, and more details about what interests them about your business. These pieces of information are non-essential extras. You have to balance your desire to collect more valuable data with keeping the sign-up form simple so that as many people as possible complete it.
Another important consideration is where to place the sign-up form on your website. Common options include:
- In the header
- In the footer
- In a slide-in scroll box
- As a pop-up
Aim for a high visibility area to improve the chances that website visitors see and complete the form.
Finally, don’t forget that lots of users will be visiting your site on mobile devices. The majority of web page views now come from mobile devices, so make sure you’re optimizing your form for mobile. Focus on creating buttons that are easy to click on touchscreens, including plenty of whitespace on your website, and compressing images so your website loads quickly.
Essential elements of effective sign-up forms
Sign-up forms may seem simple, but they actually have a few moving parts that you can optimize for better results, such as:
Clear and compelling calls to action
The call to action is arguably the most important part of your sign-up form. The language you use can be the difference between pushing users to complete the form and making them lose interest, so customize sign-up forms with specific, compelling CTAs.
Spend some time thinking about how you can convince potential customers to provide their personal information. There has to be something in it for them, and it’s your job to communicate those benefits clearly in your CTA. For example, you might provide deals and discounts to customers who complete the form. In that case, your CTA could be something like “Get your exclusive offers” or “Claim your discount.”
Number of fields
Another big decision to make about your sign-up form is how many forms to include. Ideally, you should cut all the fluff and only include fields for information you absolutely need. Fewer fields mean there’s less friction in completing the form, so more people will actually submit it.
If there’s some information that you’d really like to have but isn’t essential, consider adding it as a field that isn’t required. Mark the required fields with asterisks and leave the rest optional. That way, customers who don’t want to provide those details can still submit the essential information in the form.
Visual hierarchy and design principles
Even if you’re not a designer, you can take advantage of some fundamental design principles like visual hierarchy to make your sign-up forms more effective. Visual hierarchy is when you use elements like size, color, and contrast to show viewers which parts of your design are most important.
For example, you might make your CTA button large and in a contrasting color from the rest of the sign-up form so it draws more attention. You’re directing the viewers’ eyes smoothly through your form, so it’s easy for them to understand and interact with.
Effective error handling and user feedback
Sometimes, there are issues with sign-up forms. It’s normal. Just be prepared to listen to user feedback and make changes if you get repeated remarks about the same concern.
A common complaint from users is brands bombarding them with promotions for their sign-up forms. While promoting your sign-up form in a few places on your website can boost its visibility, you don’t want to overwhelm web visitors. Limit yourself to only one pop-up maximum and keep the user experience in mind.
Step-by-step: How to build your custom form
So, you’re ready to build forms for your small business. For the best results, follow these steps.
1. Choose the right form builder tool
There are lots of online form builder tools that will help you customize sign-up forms for your website, including both free and paid options. When you’re comparing your options, check factors like:
- Pricing
- Customer reviews
- User-friendliness
- Integrations with other tools you use, such as your email marketing automation software
- Customization options
Most of the free form building tools only offer limited customization and may not integrate smoothly with your business’s other software tools. It may be worth investing in a more powerful paid tool to customize sign-up forms so you don’t have to compromise on your form design or functionality.
2. Set up your form structure
Next, you have to decide on the structure for your form. Generally, a single-column layout is easiest for users to navigate. If you use two columns, it can be trickier for users to understand which fields go with which labels, especially if things move around depending on the screen size.
The tool you choose to build forms may have some pre-designed forms to make this part of the process simpler. You can just browse the options and find a structure that best fits your needs.
3. Add and customize form fields
The next step is to customize sign-up forms with fields that collect the exact information you need from users. And you can get a little creative here.
For example, even if the only detail you’re collecting is the user’s email address, you still have several different label options. Try text like “your email address,” “your email here,” or even just “email” to label the form.
Experiment with different labels until you figure out what looks best and will be most persuasive to your target audience. Put the labels above, below, or even within the form fields as lighter text. The options are endless.
Just make sure you add all the fields you need with labels that your audience will be able to clearly understand. The more straightforward these form fields are, the more likely users are to submit the form.
4. Customize your design
Now, it’s time to customize your design. Adjust the colors, fonts, and spacing in the form to fit your design vision.
You don’t need to know exactly what you like going into the process — just play around. As you design forms, try different options until you find the combination that looks best to you. A user-friendly form-building tool should make it easy to experiment with different customized design choices.
5. Test across devices and browsers
Once you complete all your setup and customization and you’re happy with your form, there’s still one more thing to do: test it. Even when a form looks great and works well on one device, it may still have issues on another. You want all of your potential customers to get the same top-tier experience with your form.
Open the form on different devices and in different web browsers to check for any issues. Make sure you include both iOS and Android mobile devices in your testing.
Best practices for form design
Customizing sign-up forms can be intimidating when you don’t have much design experience, but just follow these best practices for a great end product.
- Keep it simple and focused: Simplicity is your friend in sign-up forms. Straightforward design and limited fields make it easier for customers to stay focused on filling out the important information.
- Use white space effectively: Adding white space into your form design will make it easier to read and digest. Your form will seem more balanced, improving the user experience.
- Create visual continuity with your brand: Try to incorporate your brand colors and other recognizable elements in your form so it’s easy for users to connect it to your business. Visual continuity makes your brand seem more trustworthy.
- Consider accessibility for all users: To make sure all users can fill out your form, use descriptive labels for each field in a high-contrast color against the background. Also, make sure your form is compatible with screen readers and includes alt-text for any images.
Optimizing forms for conversion
The goal of any sign-up form is to drive conversions, whether that’s getting users to join your email list, agree to attend an event, or watch a webinar. However, some forms are much more persuasive than others. Try these strategies to optimize your forms for conversion:
- A/B testing forms: As you customize sign-up forms, compare two versions to see which generates better results, then go ahead with the winning version.
- Writing persuasive copy and CTAs: Use strong active verbs that focus on the practical value you’re offering customers who complete your form.
- Using social proof near sign-up areas: Showing the positive experiences other customers have had can help persuade other customers to complete your form.
- Creating urgency and incentives: People are more likely to act if they think they’re going to miss out on something great, so leverage offers or incentives that expire.
Common mistakes to avoid
It’s normal to make mistakes when you’re getting the hang of something new. But you can get ahead of the curve when you build forms by avoiding these common mistakes:
- Adding too many required fields
- Using unclear instructions or not clearly stating the purpose of the form
- Not optimizing for mobile, leading to a poor mobile experience
- Not adding confirmation or next steps after submission
Step up your lead generation by customizing sign-up forms
When you customize sign-up forms, you can optimize everything from the structure and design to the wording. You’ll see higher conversion rates, meaning more leads and potential sales for your business.
The good news is that building custom forms is something anyone can do with the help of tools like Constant Contact. Constant Contact makes it easy to create and customize sign-up forms to add to your website. All you have to do is select what type of form you’d like to create, customize the form content, and adjust the design. Just like that, you’ll have a sign-up form ready to generate leads for your business. And if you’re looking for more insights into improving your small business marketing, check out the Marketing Advice Blog.
