Little Things 2 ' Form Functionality

Welcome to the first edition of 'Little Things', a weekly blog series covering the small changes that you can make to improve marketing performance.

Last week's topic was updating the look of your web forms.

This week's tip:

Make Your Web Forms Easier to Use

The easier your forms are to fill out, the more likely it is that someone will fill them out. It's that simple. And if we make the same assumption as last week and say that your web forms are there to be filled out (if someone fills it out it's a good thing for your company), than you'll want to take advantage every opportunity you can to make them easier.

Here are some quick tips that will take your web forms from good to great:

1. Eliminate extra fields ' only ask for what you need, the longer a form takes to fill out, the less likely it is that the form will be completed.
2. Use tab ability ' I should be able to fill out the form without taking my hands off the keyboard, hitting tab between fields and using directional keys for dropdowns.
3. Mark required fields ' make it easy for me to see what information is required and what is not before I start to fill out the form.
4. Allow for flexible inputs ' if you're asking for a phone number, for instance, allow me to enter it in with spaces, dashes, or none of the above (ie. 555-555-5555 or 5555555555).
5. Use in-line validation ' let me know right away if the information entered into each field is valid so that I don't have to go back and change it later.
6. Make it easy to read ' no one ever complains when a font is too big or easy to see, so make sure I can tell what the form is asking for with just a quick scan.

Making your web forms easy to use makes it more likely that people will fill them out. It's a quick way to add a boost to the conversion rates of your web forms and can start you on the path to improving your business.