Online forms are powerful tools that enable businesses and individuals to collect valuable information from their users. Whether you’re gathering customer feedback, processing orders, or capturing leads, a well-designed online form can significantly impact your conversion rates and user experience. 

In this guide, we will walk you through the process of building outstanding, converting, and aesthetically pleasing online forms using Jitt’s Online Form Builder, a user-friendly platform that streamlines the form creation process.

Understanding the Basics of Online Forms

What are Online Forms?

Online forms are digital tools used to collect information from users over the internet. They serve as a bridge between website visitors or online users and the data or services they seek to access. 

These forms can be found on various websites, landing pages, and mobile applications and are widely used for a myriad of purposes, including lead generation, customer feedback, order processing, registration, surveys, job applications, and more.

Online forms typically consist of fields or sections where users input their data, such as names, email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, preferences, comments, and other relevant details. The collected data is then submitted to the website owner or administrator for processing, analysis, or further action.

Key characteristics of online forms include:

1. Input Fields: These are spaces where users type or select their information. Input fields can be of different types, such as text boxes, radio buttons, checkboxes, drop-down menus, and date pickers. 

Learn more about what form fields you can add on Jitt.

2. Form Validation: To ensure data accuracy, online forms often include validation rules. These rules check the user’s input for errors, such as incorrect email formats or missing required fields, and prompt the user to correct any mistakes before submitting the form. 

Learn more about this feature here.

3. Submit Button: The submit button is the final element of an online form. When users have completed filling in the necessary information, they click this button to send their data to the website or application’s server.

Data Storage and Processing

Once submitted, the form data is usually stored in a database or processed by the website’s backend systems. Website administrators can access this data and use it for various purposes, such as customer service, marketing, or analytics.

In our case, we handle everything from maintaining, hosting and running all the backend and its software while you focus on creating online forms. No hassle and you don’t even need to care about coding and server maintenance knowledge. 

Everything is securely hosted on our cloud, powered by Amazon Web Services and DigitalOcean.

Integration with Third-Party Tools

Online forms often integrate with other software tools and services. For example, forms built with Jitt can have their form submission data be automatically sent to email marketing platforms, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, or payment gateways. 

Learn more about supported integrations here.

Mobile Responsiveness

Modern online forms are designed to be mobile-friendly, meaning they adapt to different screen sizes and devices. This ensures a smooth user experience, regardless of whether users access the form from a desktop, smartphone, or tablet.

Online forms play a crucial role in businesses and organizations as they facilitate data collection and interaction with their audience. They help streamline processes, enhance user engagement, and provide valuable insights that drive decision-making and improvements in products or services. 

With advancements in form builders and technology, creating and managing online forms has become increasingly accessible to individuals and businesses of all sizes.

Why Use Jitt?

Learn about how Jitt can help you build, manage and create unique form experiences for your website or business.

Intuitive Interface

Jitt’s form builder offers an intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it accessible to both technical and non-technical users. With a drag-and-drop functionality, creating forms becomes a seamless and straightforward process, allowing users to design and customize forms without the need for any coding expertise. This intuitive interface ensures a smooth and efficient form-building experience.

Extensive Customization Options

Jitt’s form builder provides a wide array of customization options, allowing users to tailor their forms to align perfectly with their brand identity and website design. Users can select from pre-designed templates or create custom designs by adjusting colors, fonts, and layout elements. This level of customization ensures that the forms blend seamlessly with the overall aesthetics of the website, fostering a professional and cohesive user experience.

Seamless Integration Capabilities

A standout feature of Jitt’s form builder is its ability to seamlessly integrate with various third-party platforms. With integrations available for popular CRM systems like Salesforces, Microsoft Dynamics 365, HubSpot, Insightly, and Zoho CRM, users can effortlessly manage customer relationships and sales leads. Additionally, Jitt’s form builder offers integration options for leading email marketing services like MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, Aweber, and others, streamlining email campaigns and communication. The platform’s integration capabilities extend further to SMS notification providers such as Twilio, Nexmo, and Plivo, enhancing user communication channels.

Advanced Form Types

Jitt’s form builder caters to a diverse range of needs with its support for various form types. Whether it’s contact forms, registration forms, surveys, feedback forms, or order processing forms, the platform covers all essential aspects of data collection and lead generation. This versatility allows users to adapt their forms to specific purposes, ensuring a seamless user experience.

Data Security and Compliance

Jitt prioritizes data security and compliance with industry standards. Users can rest assured that sensitive information collected through the forms is protected through secure data encryption and storage practices. Additionally, Jitt’s form builder adheres to relevant data protection regulations, such as GDPR, safeguarding both user and customer data.

Real-time Analytics and Reporting

The form builder is equipped with real-time analytics and reporting features, providing users with valuable insights into form performance, user behavior, and response rates. These analytics enable users to make data-driven decisions, identify areas for improvement, and optimize their forms for better engagement and conversions.

Jitt’s form builder stands out with its intuitive interface, extensive customization options, seamless integrations, and support for various form types. Its commitment to data security and compliance, coupled with real-time analytics, ensures that users can create powerful and efficient forms to enhance their websites’ functionality and user experience significantly.

Planning Your Online Form

Define Your Form’s Purpose

Identify the specific goals and objectives of your online form. Determine the information you want to collect and how you plan to use it. Understanding your target audience and their needs will help you design a more effective form.

Organize and Prioritize Fields

Discuss the importance of a clear and logical flow in your form. Arrange the fields in a way that guides users through the process naturally, reducing form abandonment rates.

Keep It Concise

Emphasize the significance of brevity in form fields. Avoid asking for unnecessary information that might deter users from completing the form. Shorter forms typically yield higher conversion rates.

Designing Your Online Form

Branding and Customization

With Jitt’s advanced form builder, users have the exceptional advantage of creating custom templates for their forms, affording them the ability to infuse a distinct and personalized touch. 

By incorporating a few CSS lines, users can seamlessly align their form designs with their website’s overall aesthetic or brand identity.

The process of crafting custom templates on Jitt’s platform is both simple and efficient, thanks to the user-friendly interface that prioritizes ease of use. Users are not required to possess extensive coding knowledge or expertise in web design. Instead, the intuitive drag-and-drop functionality allows them to effortlessly add, modify, and arrange various form elements according to their preferences.

Moreover, Jitt offers a wide range of customizable options that enable users to tailor the appearance of their forms with precision. From selecting specific color schemes to adjusting font styles and layout elements, each aspect of the form’s design can be easily adapted to reflect the website’s visual aesthetics.

By integrating custom templates, website owners and businesses can ensure brand consistency throughout their online presence. This seamless alignment between the form design and the brand identity reinforces the website’s professional image, instills trust among visitors, and strengthens the overall brand recognition.

Furthermore, the ability to create custom templates also contributes to enhancing the user experience. A cohesive and visually appealing form design not only attracts user attention but also guides them through the form-filling process with clarity and ease. This, in turn, leads to higher completion rates and improved user satisfaction.

Jitt’s form builder empowers users to customize form templates effortlessly through a user-friendly interface, offering the opportunity to create bespoke designs that harmonize with their website’s overall theme and brand identity. By leveraging this feature, businesses can establish a strong visual presence, elevate user experience, and foster a deeper connection with their audience.

Mobile Responsiveness

With Jitt, users benefit from the automatic responsiveness of their forms. This crucial feature ensures that the form layout seamlessly adapts to the screen size of the visitors’ devices, regardless of how they are browsing the website.

Jitt’s platform employs cutting-edge responsive design principles, which optimize the form’s presentation and functionality across various devices, such as desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Whether visitors access the website using a large desktop monitor or a small mobile screen, Jitt guarantees a consistent and user-friendly experience.

The automatic responsiveness eliminates the need for users to manually adjust or create separate versions of their forms for different devices. This not only saves time and effort but also ensures that the form’s integrity remains intact regardless of the viewing platform.

By prioritizing responsiveness, Jitt enables businesses and website owners to reach a broader audience and cater to the diverse preferences of their visitors. This adaptability to various screen sizes fosters an optimal user experience, reducing the risk of user frustration due to poorly rendered forms or difficult form interactions which in return increase conversion rate.

Furthermore, in today’s mobile-centric world, responsive design has become a critical factor for search engine rankings. Google and other search engines favor mobile-friendly websites, and with Jitt’s automatic responsiveness, users can rest assured that their forms contribute positively to their website’s overall search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.

Jitt’s form builder helps you to worry less with its automatic responsiveness, ensuring that forms maintain their optimal layout and functionality across all devices. By seamlessly scaling the form to fit various screen sizes, businesses and website owners can enhance user experience, improve SEO rankings, and effectively engage with their visitors, regardless of the browsing platform they choose.

Building High-Converting Online Forms

Clear and Compelling Call-to-Action (CTA)

The Role of a Persuasive CTA in Encouraging Form Submissions:

A persuasive Call-to-Action (CTA) plays a crucial role in encouraging form submissions on a website. The CTA serves as the final step in the conversion process, guiding users to take the desired action, which in this case, is completing and submitting the form. A well-crafted CTA not only grabs the user’s attention but also entices and motivates them to take immediate action. It serves as the driving force that compels visitors to conv

Tips for Creating Actionable and Engaging CTAs

A persuasive CTA (also known as Call-to-action) is a powerful tool in driving form submissions and converting website visitors into leads or customers. By being clear, specific, action-oriented, and benefit-driven, CTAs entice users to take immediate action. 

Strategic placement, engaging design, and trust-building elements further enhance the effectiveness of CTAs. Regular testing and analysis enable website owners to optimize CTAs continuously, ensuring their website’s success in achieving its conversion goals.

Be Clear and Specific

The CTA should clearly communicate the benefit or value proposition of completing the form. Avoid ambiguous language and be specific about what users can expect after submitting the form. For example, instead of a generic “Submit,” use a more specific and compelling CTA such as “Get Your Free Ebook Now” or “Claim Your Exclusive Discount.”

Use Action-Oriented Language

Create a sense of urgency and action by using action-oriented verbs in your CTA. Verbs like “Download,” “Register,” “Subscribe,” “Get Started,” and “Join Now” prompt users to take immediate action, increasing the likelihood of form submissions.

Highlight the Benefit

Clearly state the benefits users will receive upon completing the form. Whether it’s access to valuable content, a special offer, or exclusive updates, the CTA should convey the value users will gain from submitting the form.

Consider Placement and Design

Ensure the CTA stands out visually from the rest of the content on the page. Use contrasting colors and an eye-catching design to draw attention to the CTA button. Additionally, place the CTA strategically, making it easily accessible and visible without requiring users to scroll excessively.

Create a Sense of Exclusivity

Make users feel special by using words like “Exclusive,” “Limited Time,” or “Members Only.” This creates a sense of urgency and entices users to act quickly to access the exclusive offer or content.

Establish Trust

Include trust-building elements such as security seals, customer testimonials, or privacy assurances near the CTA. Addressing potential concerns about data security or privacy can help reassure users, increasing their confidence in completing the form.

A/B Test CTAs

Perform A/B testing to identify the most effective CTA for your audience. Test different wording, colors, designs, and placements to determine which version performs best in encouraging form submissions.

Optimize for Mobile

Ensure the CTA is mobile-responsive and easily clickable on various mobile devices. Mobile users are a significant portion of website traffic nowadays, so it’s crucial to provide a smooth user experience across all platforms.

Analyze and Improve

Regularly analyze the performance of your CTAs using analytics tools (e.g. Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics). Track click-through rates, conversion rates, and user behavior to gain insights into what works best for your audience. Use this data to continually refine and improve your CTAs over time.

Error Prevention and Validation

With our advanced and powerful form builder, we prioritize accuracy and data integrity by assisting you in collecting precise information with minimal errors. Jitt’s form builder offers a range of advanced field validation settings that can be tailored to suit your specific data validation requirements for each form.

Field validation is an essential process that ensures the data entered by users in the form fields meets the specified criteria and conforms to the desired format. By implementing appropriate validation rules, you can significantly reduce the risk of receiving inaccurate or incomplete data submissions. This, in turn, leads to enhanced data quality and empowers you to make informed decisions based on reliable information.

Jitt’s form builder equips you with the flexibility to customize various aspects of data validation, allowing you to set specific rules for each form field. You can define mandatory fields, ensuring that essential information is not overlooked during submission. Additionally, you can specify the expected data format for fields such as email addresses, phone numbers, dates, and numerical values, enforcing consistency and accuracy.

Beyond basic validations, Jitt’s advanced settings enable you to create custom validation patterns using Regular Expressions, offering unparalleled control over data validation rules. 

This empowers you to accommodate complex data requirements and unique formats tailored to your business needs.

The form builder also allows you to provide users with meaningful and customizable error messages (available as a form add-on) when they attempt to submit data that does not meet the specified validation criteria. These user-friendly error messages guide users in correcting their entries, enhancing the overall user experience and reducing frustration.

By leveraging Jitt’s form builder and its comprehensive field validation settings, you can ensure that the data collected through your forms is accurate, reliable, and aligned with your specific data standards. This not only streamlines your data management processes but also fosters trust and confidence in the data-driven decisions you make based on the information gathered from your audience. 

Learn more about Jitt’s field validation feature here.

Form Optimization

In order to optimize your form along the way to your journey to capture information through your form, we recommend the A/B testing method. Many analytics platforms provide A/B testing features such as HotJar.

A/B testing is a powerful technique that can significantly enhance form performance and user engagement. By comparing two or more variations of a form, businesses can identify which design, content, or layout resonates best with their audience. Jitt’s Online Form Builder is a valuable tool that offers built-in analytics and insights, and reporting to enable users to track form submissions. To enhance your experience, we recommend using A/B testing from a dedicated analytics platform.

Follow these recommendations to ensure the best results when running an A/B split testing.

Identify Key Elements to Test

Start by selecting the elements you want to test in your forms. These could include the wording and placement of the CTA button, the layout of the form fields, the use of images, or the length of the form itself. Make sure the elements you choose to test align with the specific goals and objectives of the form.

Create Variations

Using Jitt’s Online Form Builder, create two or more variations of the form, each with different elements you wish to test. For instance, if you’re testing the CTA button’s text, create versions with different wording like “Submit,” “Get Started,” or “Download Now.”

Implement A/B Testing

Use a dedicated analytics platform such as HotJar to set up A/B testing by directing traffic to different variations of the form. Half of the visitors could see version A, while the other half sees version B. Jitt’s built-in analytics will track form submissions and provide insights into the performance of each variation.

Monitor Results

Let the A/B test run for a sufficient period to gather statistically significant data. Monitor the performance of each form variation using Jitt’s analytics and insights. Analyze metrics such as conversion rates, bounce rates, and completion rates to determine which variation performs better.

Draw Conclusions

Based on the results, identify which form variation performs best in terms of achieving your goals. Use this information to draw conclusions about what elements are most effective in encouraging form submissions. The insights gained can guide future form design decisions and help optimize form performance.

Iterative Testing and Improvement

A/B testing is an iterative process. Based on the initial results, make necessary adjustments to the winning variation or test new elements. Continue to refine and improve your forms through ongoing A/B testing to optimize their performance continuously.

Incorporating A/B testing into your form creation process with Jitt’s Online Form Builder can lead to data-driven decisions, ensuring your forms are designed to maximize conversions and user engagement. By using built-in analytics and insights, Jitt provides users with a comprehensive platform to track form performance, identify areas for improvement, and fine-tune their forms to achieve optimal results.

Integrating and Embedding Your Form

Integration with Third-Party Tools

Explain how Jitt’s form builder allows users to connect their forms with popular tools like email marketing services, CRM systems, and payment gateways. This integration streamlines data collection and processing.

Learn more about integrations here.

Embedding Forms on Websites

The process of installing your completed form onto your website or landing page through Jitt’s Online Form Builder is remarkably straightforward and user-friendly. Upon finalizing your form, you will be able to grab an HTML code that can be easily integrated into your website code or Content Management System (CMS) such as WordPress, Joomla, Shopify, Squarespaces, Wix or any software to manage your website front-end.

For WordPress users, we have published a dedicated article that provides a step-by-step guide on effortlessly installing your form. Although the article primarily focuses on WordPress, the general installation process remains largely consistent for any website or platform.

Regardless of your website’s platform, you can follow the provided instructions to seamlessly incorporate the form onto your desired web page. The step-by-step guidelines are designed to ensure a hassle-free installation experience, enabling you to leverage the form’s functionalities to their fullest extent.

For WordPress users, we recommend referring to the article for specific instructions. However, for users working with other platforms, you can still benefit from the comprehensive installation steps, as they encompass all the necessary information to successfully integrate the form.

With Jitt’s user-friendly approach and clear instructions, the process of installing your form becomes a seamless and efficient endeavor. This simplicity allows you to quickly deploy the form on your website or landing page, making it readily accessible to your audience for improved engagement and data collection.

Conclusion

Building great, converting, and well-designed online forms is essential for any business or individual seeking to collect information and engage with their audience effectively. 

By utilizing Jitt’s Online Form Builder, users can create visually appealing, user-friendly and powerful forms that enhance conversion rates and overall user satisfaction. Remember to keep the form concise, focus on clear CTAs, run some A/B testing in the early phase of your form to identify what works and optimize it. 

With this guide, you’re now well-equipped to create successful online forms that achieve your objectives and enhance your online presence. Happy form building!