Looking for ways to increase sign-ups to your registration forms? This post teaches you the registration form best practices to boost your conversion rates!
Approximate read time: 7.5 minutes
Are you looking to create a high-converting registration form or signup form?
Nothing sends visitors running away like Godzilla is coming like a terrible registration form. But you've come to the right place to bring visitors in, not send them running away.
In this post, we'll cover some simple tips to create an event registration form that gets more people to sign up for your event or website.
Let's dive in.
7 best practices for registration forms that convert
There are a few key things to remember when designing a registration form.
Whether it’s for conference registration or a simple subscription, following these best practices will help you increase conversions today:
Let's look at each of these in more detail.
1. Make your registration form easy to find
If your registration form is harder to find than Waldo, you've got problems.
You don't want potential visitors to have to search for it. The moment they land on your page, they should see your form.
Put it in a prominent place on your home page, and make it stand out. You want your form to catch people's eyes immediately. That includes:
- Use contrasting colors
- Have a clear CTA (more on this in a bit)
- Make your form responsive for mobile devices
Website visitors don't go to websites hoping to fill out a form. But, by making it obvious, they're more likely than if they have to dig.
Think of your registration form like the milk in your fridge. If you put it somewhere where no one sees it, it will waste away.
This is one of the simplest best practices for online registration forms to fix.
2. Limit the number of fields
Form exhaustion is a real thing.
You're midway through a form and don't feel like filling it out anymore. So, you stop. And that website never gets a form completion.
People's attention online is limited. If your registration process takes too long, people just don't register.
So, limit the number of required fields you put in your form. Or, try using a multi-page form to make it easier for website visitors to fill out. As a general rule, keep your form fields limited to 1-2 per page.
And keep it to the essentials: phone number, password, email, etc.
If it's a registration form, here are a few tips to keep things simple:
- Use emails, not usernames. Coming up with another username is annoying. Keep it simple, and allow users to sign up using their email addresses.
- If you have many necessary fields, use multi-step forms. Limit each page to no more than 2 form fields, then add a new page.
- Only ask people for what you need to collect. A user’s birthday, address, and other personal information may not be necessary. Choose wisely and think of what you really need to ask.
You can also group related input fields or provide default values for common fields to limit what you’re asking.
Dropdown menus and radio button fields are also great for simplifying your form's look.
Another reason this is important is for mobile registration form best practices. Too many fields clutter up the smaller screen of a phone.
So, keep things limited.
3. Make your registration form directions clear
No one likes confusing directions, but we've all received them.
Don't make your website visitors hunt for the next step or re-read directions multiple times.
State your directions clearly and concisely, including how to move to the next step, and limit it to the essential details. If you have a complex form, break your form into multiple steps so users don't get overwhelmed and exit.
These things may sound small, but they make a HUGE difference.
The ultimate goal is to make your form as short as possible.
But you need to include a clear value proposition. What is the visitor getting out of filling out your form? A few sentences to let the user know can go a long way.
Also, design forms with clear error messages to let your visitor know they made a mistake.
If your website visitor fills out your form wrong but needs help finding what to fix, they'll just leave.
Obvious error messages are the easiest way to fix that.
4. Write a clear call to action
Your call to action should be clearer than the night sky in the middle of the desert.
Visitors should know what to do next when they arrive at your form. If they don't, optimize your form design until they do.
Like everything else, there are a few tips to follow to increase your subscribers:
- Make it stand out. Make the background a bright color and different from everything else. Make the text big. Make it stand out from the rest of your form in whatever way you can.
- Use actionable words. Everyone uses "Submit" or "Next," but that's boring. Use action words like "Book your spot" or "Count me in" to make it more lifelike and exciting.
- Use a CTA button. A bright shiny button turns everyone into newborn babies when they see it. Your visitors are no different. A button (with actionable words) is an easy way to immediately increase your conversions and lead generation.
- Create a sense of urgency. Make your visitor feel like they're in a burning building, and the only way to get out is by clicking your button. Only kidding. But, create a sense of urgency, so the visitor feels like they need to act now.
The best marketers know a great call-to-action is crucial to conversion rates. So invest your time into making this shine.
5. Make your spam protection easy to use
"Click all the images with stoplights."
Well, are you counting the stoplight poles or just the stoplights? And this picture has the corner of the stoplight. Does it count?
People have a love/hate relationship with spam protection. When it works well, it's beautiful. When it's unclear or confusing, we want to throw our computers out the window.
Simplifying your CAPTCHA and spam protection can yield tremendous results for your event form. As we mentioned above, website visitors are impatient. They won't wait for your online registration form like it's the next iPhone.
So, make your spam protection as easy as possible, or delete it.
You'll be amazed how many more people complete the signup process.
6. Create a landing page specifically for your form
Remember how we mentioned you have to make your form easy to find?
Well, what's easier to find than landing pages or registration pages?
Sign up pages specifically for your forms reduce unwanted traffic and increases your visitors' chances to sign up. Plus, you can optimize the page for the best possible user experience.
Make it responsive, write your best copy, and have one form that converts well waiting for them.
Plus, it gives you an easy place to direct all traffic from social media. It's a win-win!
7. Make your form shareable on social media platforms
Okay, you may be unable to make it easy for your form to be shared on social media.
But you can make your landing page easy to share on social media. The best way to do this is by improving your user experience (UX) optimization. It sounds a bit technical, but it just means making your UX design as engaging as possible.
Best of all, you already know how to do this by simply using the tips we listed above!
Clear and actionable words, limited text, and few form fields — you already know how to make a viral form!
Now, you just have to do the work of letting people know on social media yourself to get it started.
The importance of a good registration form
A good registration form is essential for several reasons.
First, you must ensure you get all the required information from the user!
That's obvious. So, meeting that balance is important. Limit your fields to essentials, like names, contact info, and other information you need.
Second, your registration form is your introduction to your website/business and your introduction to your visitor.
A solid registration form gives the visitor an excellent experience and streamlines the process. That way, when you need any required information at a glance, it's right where you need it.
Last, a good registration form is fun!
The best type is a form that makes visitors forget they're filling out a form. People hate forms.
So, if you can get the user to give you the information you need like the fields are on auto-fill, then it's the perfect form.
How to create a registration form that drives conversions
If you need a quick registration form, it’s best to use Formidable Forms to make a form that increases the conversion rate on your WordPress website.
Its simple drag-and-drop builder helps you create a registration form in minutes. And the design is just as simple.
So getting the important fields to your form quickly makes it easy. Just drag a field to the next spot, and you're done.
Plus, it looks great for mobile users. So you don't have to worry about having any viewing issues. Desktop, tablet, mobile — Formidable handles it all.
Best of all, you can try out the form builder for free to see what we mean.
And no, it's not a free trial. It's a free plugin, period.
If you use it and feel like you want more power, our premium plans have all this waiting for you:
- Email service integration for easy email service setup
- Formidable Views to build the application of your dreams
- 150+ form templates to get you started quicker
- User Flow to track and optimize your visitor path
Are you ready use these form best practices for your online registration form?
These are just a few of the things to keep in mind when designing your registration form.
As you see, you don’t need event registration software. You can do it all yourself by following these registration and sign-up form best practices to create a form that converts.
In summary, this post showed you the best practices to increase conversions on your registration or sign up form. Also, you learned what should be included in a registration form on your website.
With these tips, you can create high-converting event registration forms, subscription forms, or a simple user registration form!
Every website type can benefit from following these simple tips to drive conversions.
Now that you’ve got a registration form handled, you should learn how to create a login page for your login form. That way, visitors can sign up and sign simply.
Last, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for more WordPress tips!
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Excellent work Jessica, I agree with everything you mentioned above. People often make these mistakes and face a great loss. Registration is the core of any business and if your website is not able to convince people to register themselves, I must say you should work really hard to get this on track. And for that your tips are really worthy to consider.
Hi Megan! Thanks for your note. Glad you found this helpful! 🙂
Hey Jessica,
Great article, and while I knew most of these tips there are a still a few I didn’t know about. One thing I see on some new (and maybe even older) WordPress site is people don’t disable/remove the meta admin widget from their sidebar. No reader/viewer/client/customer, etc needs to see a link for you to log into your WordPress dashboard when they got to your site. That tab is completely useless (just go to yoursite.com/wp-admin) and should be removed as soon as your site is active.