3 Popular Types of Online Forms Businesses Should Try Utilizing
As you’re probably aware, online forms are a great way to gather data – and there are lots of ways that your business could benefit from that. But what types of online forms should you be utilizing, and how should they be structured?
That’s the million dollar question really – and unfortunately, there is no easy answer. However, a good place to start is by looking at some of the more popular types of online forms, as their popularity largely stems from the fact that they have proven to be effective:
- Newsletter sign-ups
Arguably the most popular way for businesses to use online forms to capture leads is with newsletter sign-ups. Essentially these forms are used to capture information and subsequently send the leads newsletters with valuable content and marketing material.
As a rule newsletter, sign-ups are best if they are simple and with just a few fields. Typically the best option is for two fields, i.e. name and email address – though in some cases a first name, last name, and email address structure are fine as well.
- Contact us
For most websites ‘contact us’ forms are a helpful addition. While there are many benefits to using contact forms, for the most part, they are generally more convenient and can be structured to make the data easier to process.
In most cases ‘contact us’ forms gather a range of contact information in case the business needs to get in touch with the user, such as the first name, last name, email address, and at times the phone number as well. On top of that including a subject, the list can help to streamline responses and make sorting through them easier.
Of course, every contacts us form needs to have a general content field so users can type out the details of their message.
- Customer feedback or surveys
Gathering feedback from customers or conducting surveys is a great way to learn more about your target market – which is vital for any business. Online forms can go a long way towards enabling that and can be used in a wide range of shapes and sizes.
The structure of the forms that you use for surveys or customer feedback will vary depending on the questions that you want to ask. Multiple-choice answers, lists, or general content fields can all be useful.
As you can see you will need to be able to create and customize online forms to fully take advantage of them in the ways listed above. The good news is that nowadays there are tools that can help with that so you won’t need to handle the technical details, and you can try AidaForm (https://aidaform.com/) for example.
Make no mistake there are lots of other ways that businesses can use online forms, such as to process orders and payments, create membership platforms, and more. The options listed above are definitely the most popular, however, and will provide you with solid ways to generate leads, gather market research, and engage customers.