Guide: If you want to boost your conversion rate, optimizing your forms is definitely worth the effort!

Why should I optimize my forms? My website is getting plenty of traffic!

Your site has a great ranking, it’s getting plenty of traffic, so why is your conversion rate through the floor? No contact requests, barely any orders, and hardly anyone wants to subscribe to your newsletter or register for your free demo webinar. What might the reason be, and what can you do about it? Is what you’re offering not good enough, not affordable enough, or simply not competitive enough?

Not necessarily. In many cases, the reason is much simpler and actually very easy to put right. It isn’t necessarily an issue with your website, your offering, your marketing, your product presentation, your store, your pricing, or your appearance not being inviting enough. A glance at your abandonment rates and the number of visitors who leave your website will often tell you that the problem is your contact form or your order form.

You need to walk before you try to run: Optimizing your forms will gain customer trust

If you want to reduce your shopping cart abandonment rate during the ordering process, then it is generally wise to optimize your checkout process. In all other situations where you want your users to give you data by typing information into a form, you should definitely put your forms to the test.

• How can you design the layout of your forms to stop users from abandoning them before they fill them out?
• How can you improve user experience? In other words, how can you design your forms to make filling them out a more pleasant experience for users?
• How can you leverage the improved usability of your forms to boost your conversion rates?

We answer all these questions in our free “Guide: How to create forms with high conversion rates”, which also includes a clear and practical checklist for quickly checking your forms.

Using forms to optimize the user experience only works if you see things from the customer’s perspective

All too often, the problem is caused by a lack of awareness among webmasters, who fail to take the essential step of putting themselves in the users’ shoes and looking at the form from their perspective. Who hasn’t found themselves irritated by a confusing layout of input fields that are difficult to fill out, minimal intuitive user guidance, a lack of transparency, potentially dubious questions, or simply appallingly designed forms used in website ordering and contact processes.

As a user, how would you normally respond to that kind of situation? You would most likely abandon the process and leave the site, making a mental note never to return, and you’d possibly start looking for alternatives. If you are a website operator, the message is clear: tedious forms that have not been well thought-out – in other words, poor forms – will not win you potential contacts and customers, and will actually send them straight into the arms of your direct competitors.

Optimize forms: Make a tedious job as easy as possible!

If most people liked filling out forms, the autocomplete function would never have been invented – or at least it wouldn’t have spread so quickly and extensively to every corner of the world. If you are a webmaster designing forms to generate conversion rates, you should always keep in mind that very few people feel fulfilled by having to fill out an online form to buy something, access a service, or subscribe to a newsletter.

Your goal is not to make every user see filling out your form as inspiring and enjoyable, but to make a thankless, lengthy, and boring task as quick and stress-free as possible. If you can overcome that hurdle, then you can rightly feel a sense of satisfaction, as you will have made a significant contribution to improving the user experience.

Free guide: Optimize forms and boost conversion rates

You have to offer your users an incentive so they want to complete the order, and then achieve your mutual goal as quickly as possible. Your goal is to convert users, who generally want the same thing – once they get as far as the contact form. So, your task is to lower the hurdle as much as possible for them. Creating an attractive form is the first and also a giant step on the journey towards the end goal.

Our free “Guide: How to create forms with high conversion rates” includes not only a compact checklist for quickly checking your forms, but also specific tips on how to optimize your online forms to stop users from abandoning them before they finish filling them out. You will learn how to create an improved user experience and boost your conversion rate. Download the guide now here!