How to Create a Popup Form in WordPress

Want to create a WordPress popup form? You can easily create your popup with a form builder and a WordPress popup plugin!

If you are hoping to create a popup form for your WordPress site, you aren't alone. WordPress popup forms are becoming very popular.

And they’re a key piece of email marketing. Some research shows that it can increase engagement by over 1,000%!

Whether you like popups or not, they’re effective.

But, creating one in WordPress can be confusing. But we’re here to help.

So let’s get to it. To start, you'll need two tools:

Popup form WordPress plugin
WordPress form builder plugin

Using these tools, it's actually very easy to install any type of popup on your WordPress website. This step-by-step tutorial will show you how to create contact form popups.

Formidable Forms is the best WordPress Form Builder plugin. Get it for free!

There are three major steps to getting this done:

Create a contact form using Formidable Forms
Build a popup using OptinMonster
Publish the popup on your site

The tools to make popup form in WordPress

To follow this tutorial, you'll need a WordPress forms plugin & a popup maker plugin. There are many form-building options out there, but we'll show you using Formidable Forms.

So, what about a WordPress plugin for popup contact forms?

A great popup plugin can display any type of form you want and do it in a stylish way. Surveys and registration forms make a great pairing with popup forms, especially if you’re using MailerLite or Mailchimp.

If done correctly, a popup form increases conversion rates and email addresses in your contact list.

So, in this guide, we’re going with one of the best: OptinMonster. It's one of the top popup plugins with almost 1 million users.

Many other form builders offer their own workarounds, like Ninja Forms. And even WP Forms pop up in the search results.

But none offer the functionality of a Formidable Forms and OptinMonster duo.

Are there free popup form maker plugins?

To be clear, some free popup plugins work well. If you only need one popup form for your site, this tutorial could work using a different plugin.

But most of the other popup makers don't offer advanced features, like free A/B testing or exit intent popups.

You should also consider the support you get from a paid plugin compared to a free version. Most free popup plugins have a confusing user interface and are full of advertising.

With a paid plugin, both of those problems are solved.

How to make a popup form in WordPress

To get started, let's install these two plugins. Here are the links:

Once those plugins are installed and activated, we can move on to the next steps.

1. Create a contact form using Formidable Forms

The first thing we'll do is create a simple contact form to use for your popup.

From your WordPress admin, look at the sidebar on the left side of your screen. Go to Formidable → Forms and click Add New at the top of the page.

From there, click Create Form under 'Blank Form'. Give your new form a name and click Create to start building the form.

Now that we've created our contact form, we should add a few form fields. In Formidable, this is quickly done using our drag and drop form builder.

For a contact form, at least you'd want to include a Text field, an Email field, and a Paragraph text field. If you wish, add another text field to allow users to add a subject to their contact request.

Feel free to experiment here, then click the Update button to save your form. Now, all we need is the shortcode for your newly created form. Click on the Settings tab above the drag and drop form builder.

Keep that open in a separate tab in your browser for now. We'll need that in a couple of minutes!

Here’s some help creating a form in WordPress if you’re unfamiliar.

2. Build a WordPress popup using OptinMonster

Now it's time to create our popup using OptinMonster.

To get started, go to your OptinMonster dashboard in WordPress. Find Popup and click Create New. This will take you to the OptinMonster popup builder on their website.

Build the popup form campaign

Next, search for the Canvas popup. OptinMonster has many fantastic templates, but we want to work with a blank canvas for our purposes today. Click Use Template and give your campaign a name.

On the canvas, we first want to delete all the elements. Find the trash can in the top right corner of the block and click it.

Then, you’ll see a screen that says, “Click to start adding column blocks.” Click the Columns block and drag it to the canvas.

Next, in the Blocks tab. We need to add an HTML block. This is where we will place the shortcode from the form you just created.

Don’t worry; this won’t be the final look of your form. You'll see the beautiful final product when you preview or publish your form.

Configure popup form display rules

Click on the Display Rules tab at the top of the page, where we'll configure our trigger options. These are the options to decide when your popup shows to a visitor.

To set this up, click on the Popular tab, then Time on Page. If you want it displayed beyond a specific page, you can select Time on Site under the Trigger (When) tab.

There’s also the option for Scroll Distance if you’d prefer to let visitors scroll your site for a bit. Search for it within the Display Rules.

After you’ve adjusted your settings, click Next Step twice. You’ll see a screen reviewing your settings. Click Save in the top-right corner.

You can publish it now or head to the next step to preview it first 👇.

3. Publish the popup on your site

Before we publish our popup form, let's try previewing it to see if it looks like what we expect. Next to your domain URL, you’ll see the Preview button.

This will give you an idea of what your site will look like with the popup when you have website visitors.

Here's a benefit to going with a paid popup plugin, though - they have 24/7 support for troubleshooting! So, if your form isn’t displaying correctly, OptinMonster's support team can help you fix it.

Here's what it might look like for you at this point:

Last, you can change the status to Publish, and the form will be displayed on your website!

And that’s it! That’s how to create a popup on WordPress.

Wrapping up

And you’ve learned something new today! No more wondering, “How do I create a contact form popup in WordPress?” Now, you can provide the answer to that question.

A popup form is a stylish way to make your website look better. Why clutter your footer or sidebar with an extended contact form when you can easily use WordPress to create popup forms?

Of course, there are a lot of design tweaks you can add to your popup form. In Formidable, you can use our visual form styler to match the look of your forms to your website.

But, our forms aren’t limited to popups. Check out our full list of features to see what you can truly do with Formidable Forms.