How to Create a Popup Form in WordPress With Ninja Forms and Popup Builder

Forms are the first step in building strong customer relationships, from newsletter subscriptions to event registrations. But how can you ensure your customers see your forms and — most importantly — fill them out? Popups are an effective solution. You may be thinking: Popups are so annoying! And it’s true when popups are too big or too frequent they’re more likely to drive customers away from your site than keep them engaged.

But done well, popups are an effective marketing tool and a great way to present simple forms to your audience.

If you want to harness the power of popups for your forms, follow these steps.

How to Create a Popup Form in WordPress

You can create eye-catching, UX-friendly form popups for your WordPress website — no technical skills required — with Ninja Forms and Popup Builder.

Step 1: Download Plugins

Get started by downloading these fantastic (and free) WordPress plugins:

• Ninja Forms plugin
• Popup Builder plugin

Once you have those two plugins installed, you’re ready to create and activate your form and embed it into a popup.

Step 2: Create Your Form

Build the form you want to embed in your popup. Keep the form simple so it doesn’t become too intrusive. We recommend a maximum of two fields — for example, name and email address fields in an email subscription popup.

Ninja Forms makes it easy to build your form, either from scratch with our drag-and-drop builder or with one of our pre-made templates. Learn how to create a form here.

Step 3: Embed the Form and Customize the Popup

Once you’ve created your form, it’s time to embed it into a popup for your WordPress site. This step is where Ninja Forms and Popup Builder work together to make your website stand out.

Go to your WordPress dashboard and select Popup Builder > Add New > HTML.

Paste your form shortcode (found on your Ninja Forms dashboard) into the text body of the popup. Now, it’s time to dig into the popup’s functionality and appearance.

Display Rules

Choose how your popup is triggered. For example, your display rules may have the popup appear in the bottom-right corner of your WordPress website two seconds after a user visits the home page. Or, maybe it shows up in the middle of the page when a user clicks a “Subscribe” link.

Design

Change the look of your popup by adjusting padding, colors, background, and more.

Close Settings

How can users close your popup? While you want to ensure people fill out your form, it’s essential to make sure all popups are easy to close. Otherwise, you’ll only annoy potential customers. In this section, you can add a close button and other avenues for dismissing the popup, like pressing the “Esc” key.

Dimensions

Set dimensions for your popup, keeping it as unobtrusive as possible. Remember, it’s annoying when a pop up blocks a web page’s primary content. You can also make your popup responsive so it functions well and looks nice on any screen, from laptops to smartphones.

Preview and Publish

As you customize your popup, use the “preview” button liberally to see how the popup will appear to your site visitors. Your last step is copying the popup address to embed on your WordPress website.

Make Your WordPress Forms Pop

Popups mean your forms are impossible to miss, and when created with user experience in mind, they don’t have to be annoying. By following the above steps, you can take full advantage of Ninja Forms and Popup Builder to ensure your WordPress forms stand out to site visitors.

Get started with creating a popup form in WordPress today!