Forms are a great way of capturing information from your website visitors and with Charity Edit you are able to create as many customised forms as you like, which means that you can capture anything that is relevant in helping your charity to grow or to move in the right direction.
You can use forms for capturing details of visitors, those expressing an interest for more information, for registering volunteers, feedback or for anything else, anything that is going to help your charity. Forms can be placed on any page you like too, so add as many as you like.
However, whilst forms are great for providing you with the information that you need, remember to keep them simple because whilst you may want a lot of details, the person filling out the form may be too overwhelmed by all the questions and not fill it out at all.
It is tempting when you are creating a website form, to ask for as many details as you need, however think about how your website is going to look from a user's perspective, if there is too much information being asked for in one place, it is going to be too overwhelming. Often when someone visits a website, they are busy and have limited time in which to browse the website and answer any questions that you are asking for.
It is far better to use multiple forms across the website for the purpose of gaining specific information than it is to create one long form. For example, on your ‘contact us' page, keep your form to just asking for details to contact them back, such as a phone number or email address and then give them a space in which to ask their question. If you are wanting to capture a physical address from new Volunteers in order to send out further information, then create a specific form for this on the ‘about Volunteering’ page. Another tactic you can use is to create a form with multiple questions but then provide starred questions that require answering, the rest may or may not be filled out at the user's discretion, but even in this, be aware of creating overloaded forms, just ask for what you need.
Remember that your website visitors are more likely to leave if they have to take too long to find what they are looking for, or if they are asked to fill in a lot of questions, so make it as easy and as simple as you can for them and provide a variety of ways for them to contact you.
If you need any help, advice or suggestions on using forms, our team are here waiting to help so please give us a call on 021 651 1120, or email us on hello@charityedit.co.uk