Want your forms to be more accessible? Optimizing for mobile is an essential step for any modern business website. We'll show you how to create a mobile WordPress form.
Building forms in WordPress can be really simple, with a tool like Formidable Forms. However, if you want the best for your WordPress site, there's a little more to it than downloading a WordPress forms plugin and throwing up a form.
Why should WordPress forms be mobile-friendly?
Placing a simple form on your website isn’t enough these days. Not if you want to boost conversions and really make your forms effective in growing your business.
Whether you rely on simple contact forms, email newsletter signup forms, order forms, online registration forms or job application forms, you can't be too careful. Form conversion rates are often directly tied to your business success so you need to think carefully about how well they function.
More and more people use their smartphones to browse the web and many of them will buy from or sign up to websites through this method. While most people still fill in forms on desktop computers, there is a growing market for mobile users and it makes sense to cater for them as well.
If your forms don’t work well on mobile, you can’t count on those mobile users to move over to a desktop computer to finish what they started. Some may, but a lot won’t and that means you miss out on those people. It could mean fewer customers, fewer results in a survey or lower email signup numbers.
Can you really afford to miss out on all that?
Probably not, but the good news is you don’t have to. Creating a mobile WordPress form is really simple and we’re here to help you get started with it.
How can I make my mobile forms look great and work beautifully?
The great thing about using Formidable Forms is that all our forms are designed to be mobile-friendly and to shrink down to any sized device.
We know that there’s no such thing as one size fits all these days, and never wanted our forms to become difficult to adapt.
Whether you build a form from scratch or use one of our templates, our handy drag and drop interface makes building web forms easier than you think.
However, we do have some pointers on how to get the best out of your forms to encourage full form submissions and higher conversions. Take a look at our top tips below:
Tip 1: Divide long forms or avoid them altogether
When you’re on a smartphone there are lots of little distractions, which can all lead to form abandonment.
One way to solve this is to have a long form split into multiple pages (often called a multi-step form). Ideally, you can then save your progress and pick the rest of the form up later. A progress bar is also really useful for long forms. This will show the user how far into the form they are.
That’s only if you really need a long form. Ideally, they should be avoided unless necessary. Try to get your form onto a single page if you can.
Learn More: Formidable's Multi-Step Form Feature
Tip 2: Avoid hover-over functionality
Having information available through hover functionality can be a nice way to keep your forms neat and tidy. However, this functionality doesn’t usually translate well to mobile devices. Without a mouse, it’s not always possible to see hover content.
You could remedy this by offering a way to click on the content, so it expands and shows the information you need. Alternatively, you could just have the additional information present on the screen already.
Tip 3: Make the next steps simple
If you end your mobile WordPress form with a Call to Action (CTA) in the form of a link or a button, make sure the next step you’re asking them to complete is simple. The more friction in between submitting your form and the next step, the more chances you’ll lose users along the way.
Tip 4: Choose form fields that are easy to use on mobile
If you use a lot of checkboxes, consider how easy or difficult they are to use on mobile. Is there danger that users could frequently click the wrong one? That frustration can lead to them abandoning the form pretty quickly. It's always best to check things like this on mobile devices to see if there are any problems you've missed when designing your form.
Instead, make sure checkboxes are easy to select or even play around with toggle or slider fields. These different types of fields give the form more variety and might be an easier way to get responses from mobile users.
Build easy-to-use, mobile-friendly, responsive WordPress forms
Overall, it's important to try and walk through the customer experience, both on desktop and mobile. Imagine you are a user. Ask yourself:
- Could this section be shortened?
- Could this be made easier?
- Does this look just as professional and functional for mobile as it is on desktop?
If you follow the above tips and carefully consider how your mobile forms operate, you could definitely see more conversions from mobile users.
If you really want to impress mobile users, you could send an automatic SMS response after a form is filled in. This might be better than sending an email to confirm registrations or appointments. This saves the user from having to open their email app. They get the notification right there and then on their mobile device.
We hope you've found these tips on creating a mobile WordPress form helpful. If you're not already a Formidable Forms user, there are plenty more intuitive form builder features to go alongside our mobile-friendly WordPress forms.
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