Conditional Form Redirect on Submit: Seize the Moment

Are you waiting for visitors to respond to promotional offers in autoresponder emails? Don't wait any longer. Make the most of the moment of engagement and redirect after form submit.

One study shows that the average online shopper will visit a website 9 times before completing a purchase. Between visits, shoppers will typically check out your competition. Therefore, maximizing conversions while your visitor is on your site has never been more important.

In addition to utilizing your forms for marketing automation, immediately show your website visitor a product or offer that aligns with their interests. They're already on your website expressing interest, so what better time is there?

Formidable's conditional form redirect will connect visitors who submit your forms to content tailored to them. Deliver a promotion or coupon code customized to your users' interests with a redirect after form submit.

Two ways to implement a form redirect

There are two main ways to redirect visitors to a product, promotion, or special offer.

1. Simple form redirect to a confirmation page for every form submission. When the form is submitted, your website visitor is sent to a confirmation page that contains a special offer. Freshen this up by updating it weekly or monthly. Customize the confirmation page to give it a more personal feel.
2. Conditional form redirect to an offer that is tailored to your visitor's query. Visitors will be sent to a different page depending on the options they select in your form. This means you can send them to the promotion that best suits their interests.

This article will show you one idea for adding conditional redirects into your forms. We'll use the scenario of an online clothing store utilizing WooCommerce for the following three-step example. However, this method will work for almost any kind of business.

Step 1: Build/Edit the form to use for your form redirect

Ultimately, we need to know what type of promotion would best suit our visitor. To effect this, add a "My Query Relates To..." dropdown field to the form.

This new dropdown will have six basic options:

• Baby clothes
• Boy's clothing
• Girl's clothing
• Men's clothing
• Women's clothing
• Shoes & Accessories

Separate saved values in this field will allow the simpler form redirect option. Add these values for the "saved value" for each option.

• baby
• boys
• girls
• mens
• womens
• accessories

Add a checkbox to the form labeled "I am an existing customer." This will help personalize our promotion with a free shipping offer for new customers, and discounts on the next order for returning customers. You can customize your offers endlessly.

Step 2: Set up promotional pages

Now it's time to think about the promotions. We have six query types, and each promotion will be different for existing versus returning customers. A page template will simplify this process.

Easy conditional redirect page template

First, at the top of the page don't forget to thank the visitor for their query, and assure them that it will be handled as soon as possible. We could use the [frm-field-value field_id=x user_id=current] shortcode to customize the thank you message. This way we can use the customer's name to make it more friendly and personal.

Use a WooCommerce Shortcode

Next, show the coupon code. In this example, we'll use a WooCommerce shortcode from our online store. This shortcode displays sale items from a specific category. (You need a third party Woocommerce extension for this).

Add a "call to action" and take care to optimize your page design to maximize conversions. Time-limited coupon codes are also a very effective way to increase immediate conversions.

Once the page template is perfected, copy this template to twelve new promotion pages. In effect, we'll have six for a free shipping code (new customers) and six with a discount code (returning customers).

Then set up the WooCommerce shortcode to display the right product category on each page.

Consider your redirect page slugs carefully

Consider the page slugs carefully before saving these new pages. This will avoid confusion and simplify conditional IF statements. In this case, we'll set up the six pages for non-customers with "contacted-" in the URL. Returning customers redirect pages will have the additional prefix "returning-" in the URL. After the prefix, the two pages for baby clothes should have identical links. Further, the two pages for men's clothes have identical links, etc. etc. So the page URLS will look like this:

mysite.com/contacted-baby/
mysite.com/contacted-boys/
mysite.com/contacted-girls/
mysite.com/contacted-mens/
mysite.com/contacted-womens/
mysite.com/contacted-accessories/
mysite.com/contacted-returning-baby/
mysite.com/contacted-returning-boys/
mysite.com/contacted-returning-girls/
mysite.com/contacted-returning-mens/
mysite.com/contacted-returning-womens/
mysite.com/contacted-returning-accessories/

Step 3: Configure your form to redirect after submit

In this example, the "My Query Relates To..." dropdown is field ID 218, and the "I am an existing customer" checkbox is field ID 262. Make the checkbox conditional with the six conditionals for the dropdown choices. Use inline conditional IF statements in the redirect URL.

The first section of the redirect URL uses the [if 262] tag to conditionally add "returning-" into the URL if the checkbox is selected:
mysite.com/contacted-[if 262 equals="I am an existing customer"]returning-[/if 262]

The second part of the redirect URL contains the six different [if 218] conditionals from the dropdown options:
[if 218 equals="Baby Clothes"]baby/[/if 218][if 218 equals="Boys Clothing"]boys/[/if 218][if 218 equals="Girl's Clothing"]girls/[/if 218][if 218 equals="Men's Clothing"]mens/[/if 218][if 218 equals="Women's Clothing"]womens/[/if 218][if 218 equals="Shoes & Accessories"]accessories/[/if 218]

Combined, the redirect is quite long and bulky. (Read on to see how it can be made shorter):
mysite.com/contacted-[if 262 equals="I am an existing customer"]returning-[/if 262][if 218 equals="Baby Clothes"]baby/[/if 218][if 218 equals="Boys Clothing"]boys/[/if 218][if 218 equals="Girls Clothing"]girls/[/if 218][if 218 equals="Mens Clothing"]mens/[/if 218][if 218 equals="Women's Clothing"]womens/[/if 218][if 218 equals="Shoes & Accessories"]accessories/[/if 218]

A simpler conditional IF statement for the redirect URL

Long redirects work. However, if you ever make changes to your form, it will take time to adjust the redirect. This is where advance planning with your redirect page slugs and the names of your separate values will help.

In this instance, our URLs are identical to the separate values in our dropdown, so we can use a simpler solution. Note that this ONLY works when your field options match the page slug exactly.

mysite.com/contacted-[if 262 equals="I am an existing customer"]returning-[/if 262][218 show="value"]

Conclusion

There is potential for engagement the moment a website visitor submits your form. A form redirect to a tailored promotional page can increase your site's credibility and generate revenue.

Try out conditional redirects on your website today to see how it benefits your business.

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