A well-crafted form is a desirable way of enhancing communication with the visitors or customers. In this manner, there is the likelihood that visitors will prefer to share their information and feedback with the websites. At times, it becomes difficult to develop and maintain user-friendly form in the desired manner. There is need of understanding from a different perspective that user could become annoyed, disturbed and frustrated and this situation needs to be assumed as the opportunity. This opportunity could be greatly utilized for the purpose of developing the unique and appealing design of forms.
Steps to Follow
There are different kinds of forms that can be produced or compiled such as donation forms, contact forms, and registration forms as well. These all sorts of various forms should be crafted considering the requirements and demands of users in the desired manner. Therefore, there are certain steps that should be followed for the sake of creating effective user-friendly forms. These steps are
- Audience
- Wording
- Layout
The audience could be related with the objective of website owner as the goal of the website does support in order to produce attractive user-friendly forms. At the same time, every section of the website should be evaluated and examined so that it could correlate with the objective to a large extent. The users actually are the main beneficiaries of these forms so it is better to always prefer their likes or dislikes so that they feel comfortable and relaxed every time they visit the website. In order to attract users and their responses, the forms should be designed in such a manner that the website content style and its layout should be matched and associated with the forms.
These forms could improve the levels of interaction between the website and its users. Therefore, forms should also provide opportunities to users so that they could share their ideas and feedbacks in the desired way. The forms should be understandable and simple to fill out so that users find this activity interesting and informative. The website should also provide the reasons of attaining these kinds of information from the users so that positive image about the website could be developed. The contact information should also be included in these forms in order to give support or help to respondents if they want to discuss something about the forms.
The wording of these forms should be clear, attractive and provide awareness to the respondents. The wording should also reflect the voice of the website to a considerable level and it should provide a new look and clean and bright feelings to the users. The layout of the form also plays a crucial role in improving the effectiveness of forms; the layout should be helpful in making forms attractive and appealing to the eyes of users. The layout could be enhanced through the help of increasing white space and at the same time clutters should be removed. The length of the forms should also be reduced and one large form could be divided into small different pages.
Reasons of Forms Abandoned
This is a famous saying that suggests the first impression is the last impression; therefore users should feel good and excited after seeing the form of a website. Considering these attributes, forms outlook should be appealing and these should not be disorganized at all so that users feel comfortable in filling out the form. The forms should be simple and easy to comprehend because in this way users will like to see and fill the forms and as a result, the conversion rates will be increased.
Features of User-friendly forms
As far as the features of user-friendly forms are concerned, these features are provided as follows:
1. Title
This is the first and foremost requirement of any form because in this way users will know what the page is all about. The title makes a significant difference because it provides a clear, concise and specific image that is created in the minds of visitors or users.
2. Left Alignment
The importance of left alignment should not be undervalued because a simple left alignment of different fields can really change the appearance and accessibility of the form to a large extent.
3. Field Labeling
The field labeling should be placed or below the fields of the form so that users or respondents will know what they are responding. The field labeling should not be done on the left and right side of the form otherwise users will be confused.
4. Spacing
In all kinds of forms, proper spacing is must and highly desirable in both directions such as horizontal and vertical.
5. Styling
Styling also provides a new and innovative look to the form as the style of the form needs to be simple but attractive. The styling of the form should also be associated with the style of the website, email campaigns, and newsletters. In this way, users will be motivated enough to share his or her information quite easily.
6. Sections
The forms can easily be divided into more sections in order to make things easy and understandable for the users. At the same time, different sorts of questions that are related to the website can be easily comprehended by the users.
7. Question Phrasing
The forms become so much valuable and result-oriented when the questions are phrased in an appropriate way in the form. The way of asking the question could make a significant difference when it comes to answering the required fields in the form from users’ point of view.
8. Pages
The pages can also be distributed in the desired way for the purpose of providing convenience and comfort to all the users. This is the way through which users can see and perceive the whole progression of the form. As a result, users can effectively allocate enough time to complete the form.
9. Mobile Friendly Layout
The forms should be viewed on both computers and mobiles as well, in this way the visibility of the form increases and, as a result, users can fill the forms. The left alignment of all fields could help the form that could be easily filled on smaller screens as well.
Additional ways for improving designs of forms
There can be many ways applied for the purpose of enhancing the quality and designs of the forms and these are applying conditional question, and repeated fields. The other options are also significant to consider and these are prefilling, question selection, required fields, and color choices. The labels along with hint and multiple choice fields can also improve the outlook or appearance of the form to the desired level.
Conclusion
These all are interesting yet productive ways through which efficient and influential user-friendly forms could be developed. It is the responsibility of web developers to make full use and attain maximum benefits from the above mentioned approaches.
Author Bio : Jennifer Sean is an experienced web developer who loves to share creative ideas and notions with others on different social media platforms and also Essay writers. Her blogs and articles provide valuable information to different readers of all ages. She also likes to provide suggestions and recommendations to newcomers and learners of web designing.