Did you know contact forms have one of the lowest conversion rates, ranging between 3-5% only? It’s surprising, right? Given that contact forms are usually one of the first things you set up on your site, ensuring their effectiveness should be your top priority.
In this blog post, we will show you some best practices for WordPress contact forms. By following these actionable suggestions, you’ll not only be getting more folks reaching out to you, but they’ll also be more likely to fill out your forms till the end and take the plunge—yep, we’re talking conversions!
Following best practices for WordPress contact forms
If we were to include all the best practices for WordPress contact forms, this article would likely be as lengthy as the magical contract between Shrek and Rumpelstiltskin. Instead, we’d like to highlight seven fantastic tips for crafting a form that not only converts but also boost user enegagement. Let’s get into it!
1. Ask only necessary questions
If you want to make your forms user-friendly and less time-consuming for your visitors, you should consider including only the essential fields. Reducing unnecessary fields minimizes the chances of user frustration and abandonment.
However, what if you require all these fields on your forms due to multiple user types needing to answer your questions? The solution lies in smart logic.
With conditional logic you can dynamically change the fields and show or hide fields based on the user’s input on the form. This not only improves the user experience but also ensures that the user is only presented with fields that are relevant to their specific situation.
2. Style your WordPress forms for better aesthetics
“Don’t judge a book by its cover” doesn’t quite apply when it comes to contact forms. In this context, it’s the appearance that matters the most. Enhancing the visual look of your forms can significantly boost your conversation rates.
The primary rule to consider when styling your form is to align it with your site’s design. The great news is Ninja Forms is designed to inherit the style of your WordPress theme to match your page aesthetically.
There are other design elements that play a role in determining your form’s success. One of them is CTA button, a key element on your form that directs users to complete the action. While the text on your submit button is essential, the color of your CTA can influence whether users click it.
Another effective way to improve the look of your form is to incorporate rounded corners for your form field boxes. Did you know they make information easier to process and they are easier on our eyes? You can easily implement this by using our styling plugin to add rounded corners to your WordPress form fields.
Want to make your forms more visually appealing? Make sure to check our guide How To Style Your WordPress Forms (Easy Examples) and learn how to design attractive forms without requiring special skills or the assistance of a developer!
3. Follow up with user after form submission
Raise your hand if you’re a fan of ghosting — probably not many takers, right? Well, the sentiment’s the same when it comes to visitors filling out your forms. No one likes to be left hanging. So, it’s essential to follow up after they’ve completed the form submission.
When you reach out after someone has engaged with your form, it shows that you value their interaction. It tells them that you care about them. It is also a key step in your sales or engagement funnel. It’s a way to keep the conversation going, or provide additional information to your form submitter.
Ninja Forms, even the free core version lets you send an email notification or confirmation to your form submitter, and even customize it to create a more personalized experience. Besides sending an email, you can also set up a Success message to display it right after the form is submitted, or you can even redirect user to another page if you like.
4. Consider multi-pages for your forms
Who likes to read long texts, or scroll through +50 plus form fields? You guessed it right. Noone. If your WordPress form has to be long because you need to collect a lot of information, do this: break your form into multiple steps.
It’s more easy for users to fill in 5 fields on one page and then 5 more on another, rather than trying to tackle them all at once. This way, you make things smoother for them and avoid overwhelming your visitors. When you force users to scroll and fill out a form with too many fields all at once, they might just give up and abandon it.
To prevent this from happening, consider breaking your forms into multiple pages using the Multi-Step Forms add-on from Ninja Forms. And if you’re looking to take your multi-step forms to the next level, don’t forget to check out our Quick Tips for Using Multi Step Forms in WordPress!
5. Navigate visitors across your forms
Your website visitors should easily know how to fill out your form and what info to put in. If it’s a simple form with just a few fields, it’s usually straightforward. But if your form is more complex, you want to keep it clean and easy on the eyes while ensuring a user-friendly experience.
One way to assist users is by incorporating tooltips (help text), offering subtle guidance without being too intrusive. Additionally, using clear descriptions beneath the form labels can help clarify the purpose of each field.
Placeholders, which provide examples or formatting cues within the input fields themselves, can also be quite handy. They serve as visual cues, showing users exactly how to format their information, such as date formats or required data. This can reduce errors and make the form-filling process even smoother for your visitors.
6. Optimize your forms for mobile devices
In 2022, the mobile internet user base in the United States witnessed significant growth, surpassing 282.5 million users. As of 2023, there are approximately 810 million websites utilizing WordPress. Given that nearly every website incorporates a contact form, prioritizing mobile optimization should be a top concern.
Ninja Forms are built to be mobile-friendly, as long as your theme has proper styling rules in place to handle responsive scaling, like reducing the number of columns on smaller screen resolutions. Many form builders will stay quite about this fact, and then you might wonder why your forms look a bit funky on mobile devices.
However, there are some rules you can stick to for having a good mobile form design. Keep the field labels at the top of the field, never to the left or right. Don’t make them scroll left to right in addition to up and down. Avoid redundant fields, or dropdowns if you have +100 fields. You don’t want users to scroll too much on a mobile screen. And rememeber, if your WordPress theme does not look good on mobile devices, your form won’t look either.
7. Track your CTA clicks to measure the effectiveness of your form
Every form features a Call to Action (CTA) button. When visitor succesfully completes your WordPress form, it means that a certain objective was achieved. If you want to measure these objectives, Ninja Forms lets you easily monitor user interactions like this.
With our free Redirect action feature, you can create a thank-you page and designate it as a goal in Google Analytics. This connection allows you to measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and we encourage you to use it. You can learn how to set up a thank you page redirect on Ninja Forms in our step-by-step-guide. We’ll also show you how to set up a goal in Google Analytics.
Implement these tips to boost contact form engagement!
Prioritizing the effectiveness of your WordPress contact forms is crucial. By incorporating our easy-to-implement tips, you can improve engagement with new potential customers and lower the prevalent issue of form abandonment. Afterall abandoned form means lost revenue, missed opportunity, and wasted time and money. Will you make sure to take all necessary actions to prevent that?
Are you new to form building? Get the Ninja Forms free core plugin and see how easy it is to create your first WordPress form! Explore our best free features every Ninja Forms user love or explore +40 integrations to superpower your forms when you are ready to take that next step. Download Ninja Forms today, and see for yourself why we have been one of the leading WordPress contact form plugins on the market since 2011!
