Sign up forms are one of the keys to building your contact list. They gather important information about your customers and potential customers. Sign up forms also let you offer newsletters and emails to your subscribers. But if you make your contact forms lengthy and hard to navigate people will give up on them before they complete them. Use these ten steps to create effective sign up forms on your website.
- Make your sign up forms attractive. Use an attractive but readable font, and make use of color. Include your logo on your sign up form.
- List the benefits of signing up right on the form. Tell the why they should sign up for your offer, also give them links to connect with you on social media.
- Offer subscribers something free for signing up. If what you’re offering is of interest to the reader, they may sign up for your newsletters or emails just to receive the free offer. People like free gifts. These can be a percentage off their first purchase, a free ebook, or any other small token of gratitude.
- Place your sign up forms where your visitors will find them. On your landing page, in the sidebar, or as a pop up are all good examples of effective placement.
- If you place your sign up forms in the sidebar, use the upper right corner. Marketing studies have shown this is the optimum placement.
- For pop up sign up forms, have the main page fade out so that the pop up is the main focus.
- Ask for the minimum amount of information. Their name and email address may be enough to start out with. You can collect more information later on in your relationship. If you are doing a target marketing effort you could ask for their zip code, but don’t ask for too much at once.
- Make the fields large. This will help with mobile access. Customers using mobile devices use their fingers to navigate and small fields will be hard for them to use. Also don’t have text in the fields users have to delete. This can be frustrating and cause them to click off of the sign up form.
- Don’t use a submit button. Instead use text such as “start my subscription” or something similar. People may not associate the word submit with signing up for what you are offering. You want to make the last step of signing up as easy as possible.
- Don’t place a large cancel button right next to the sign up button. This opens up the possibility of clicking the wrong button and your subscriber having to start over, or abandoning the sign up process altogether. If you must include a cancel button position it far away from the sign up button, and make it significantly smaller.