Filling out a form can elicit all sorts of feelings, ranging from sheer boredom to outright frustration. Of course, when it’s our form for our website, we don’t want visitors to feel bored or frustrated.
However, we still need the form to fulfill its function, like collecting important user data, converting a lead, and providing potential customers with company information.
The solution to all this? An interactive form.
What is an interactive form?
If you’ve had even a base level of exposure to websites, chances are you’ve had the option to fill out (or at least look at and disregard) a digital form.
And if you filled out one of these forms, you probably felt they were pretty one-sided, in that you input answers, clicked submit, and moved on.
But what about when the form fill is dynamic? An interactive form is exactly that: dynamic. It reacts to the user’s input and adjusts in real-time, creating an engaging, personalized experience that feels more like a dialogue.
Why are interactive forms important?
Interactive forms change how visitors feel about a website and the company behind it. Compared to standard forms, these form types are more fun, convenient, and encourage more conversions.
Interactive forms give companies a chance to show their creative side, while also ensuring visitors have more options throughout the process.
They give more options for visitors to communicate while allowing companies to collect more valuable information about potential customers.
Tips to create interactive forms that maximize visitor engagement
Having interactive forms in the right place is only part of what makes for a successful campaign or website. You’ll also need some unique ideas to change the way a visitor perceives your brand. Here are some of the most powerful ways to utilize interactive forms.
Add a quiz to spice things up
An interactive quiz can work in so many different ways. First, it helps you get a better understanding of your visitors and collect some important information about them. Secondly, the quiz itself can be a unique, entertaining and rewarding experience for prospects.
That’s why it’s so important to make sure your quiz looks inviting, covering not just its aesthetic appeal but also the content – questions, theme, rewards, and more. Rewards, by the way, are a great way to entice visitors to complete a quiz.
Make the visuals pop
Consider all the visual elements that can go into an interactive form. Then take some time to focus on the following:
Do the visuals work from a brand perspective?
Does everything within the form stay true to your brand? Are the color schemes aligned?
Are the used visuals consistent with one another?
If you used dropdown menus in one place on the form, continue using them for similar questions, unless you have good reason to switch to something else.
Do the icons fit your brand?
Are the icon boxes sharp or circular? What color should they be? Things like these should be settled ahead of time to stay consistent throughout.
Give them (interactive) options
Consider how a visitor feels when going through a form. Are they able to provide the input they desire without restrictions? Will they feel like they weren’t able to get their questions or point across to your company?
It’s important to collect information like name, email, and phone number, but if you think a visitor might want to interact further, add some further field options to help them out.
Here are some options to consider adding to your forms:
A large field for comments.
Sometimes it’s not enough to select an issue from a pre-filled dropdown option menu. Giving visitors a field within the form to actually type out their concern is helpful and shows you appreciate more input from them.
File uploads.
Having the ability to upload a document within a form is a lifesaver for visitors with a unique problem or question. Whether it’s a PDF with important charts and data they need to relay to you, or a picture that demonstrates a problem they might be having and screenshotted, the file upload area could be crucial.
Allow for questions.
This goes hand-in-hand with an overarching concept to be open with potential customers. Sometimes, a form can feel a bit one-sided, and the user can feel boxed in, as if they can only input a few, predetermined variables and answers. When you give them a chance to ask further questions in the form, they’ll realize the thoughtful convenience you put into creating the form, and also feel you’re more open as a brand. After all, who doesn’t like to be heard?
Now, an important question is, how can you implement all of those functions in your form? What about teams that aren't so technically-inclined and lack developers? Are there ways for them to easily create and implement customized interactive forms?
Interactive form software
Here are four software systems to help create interactive forms efficiently without coding it yourself.
1. Heyflow
Go beyond interactive forms with interactive flows. Heyflow is the leading no-code platform for creating interactive flows that convert twice what traditional forms do. It allows you to build personalized, on-brand interactive landing pages and flows to keep your visitors and customers engaged. Sign up for a free trial and start generating more leads – no credit card required.
2. Typeform
Typeform is all about simplicity, giving companies a way to maximize their data collection while minimizing the effort it takes to set up and create interactive forms. Typeform is best known for how easy it is to embed their forms in the places a company might want them without any technical issues. However, it doesn’t allow for advanced personalization and doesn’t offer e.g. the option to upload custom fonts, or adding your own custom code.
3. Jotform
Jotform offers users a chance to create their own interactive forms using the bare minimum technological know-how. They have already-created templates to choose from, and have a no-code form creator. Jotform also houses a wide variety of different logo, color and font options. On the downside, they have limited to no options for design customization or additional visuals (e.g. icons). Moreover, the data in the analytics tab is relatively basic, not showing any bounce reporting or question by question drop-off data for actionable insights.
4. Google Forms
Google Forms is an easy way to build interactive online forms. One of our favorite features from Google Forms is the ability for immediate review and analysis of responses. Another perk of Google Forms is the fact that a Google account is easy to create, and most people already have one they can access, so the signup process for Forms is seamless. On the other hand, many users don’t find forms built with Google Forms particularly aesthetically pleasing. Furthermore, setting up conditional logic is a bit tiresome here, and not as straightforward as in other form builders. The user needs to do it through the “Sections” feature and then use the "Go to section based on answer" option to specify the conditions for each question.
5. Outgrow
Outgrow is a no-code tool for creating interactive content such as forms, quizzes, calculators, and the like. What’s great about Outgrow apart from its versatility, is that it provides you with pre-written quizzes, forms and surveys based on your answers to their questions in the onboarding process about your use case, desired content, etc. Something a lot of users are complaining about, though, are the hidden costs, because some crucial features are available only against additional costs of several hundreds of USD per month.
Closing thoughts
At the end of the day, it’s not enough to build it and hope they will come. Take the next step in your campaign and website optimization by implementing interactive forms to make sure they’re easier to fill out, more fun, and collect the right data.