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15 Interesting Ways to Use WordPress Forms

  • Category : WordPress
  • Posted on : Sep 22, 2018
  • Views : 2,969
  • By : Icarus M.

Are you stuck trying to implement something new on your WordPress website? Chances are there are items on this list you’ve never imagined WordPress forms are perfect for!

Can’t find the right tool for the job? Not even sure what the right tool is? When was the last time you took a close look at what you can do with your WordPress forms? You may just have the tool you need already installed!

There’s a million and one uses we put our WordPress websites to every day. From qualifying new leads to accepting job applications to selling products and accepting donations, there are literally tens of thousands of WordPress plugins to tackle the task.

For many of those tasks, there may well be a single plugin that can handle them all. WordPress forms are far more flexible than most people realize. With that in mind, read with us for a few minutes as we explore 15 interesting ways you can use WordPress forms!

1. Contact Forms (That Do More than You Think They Can)

Sure, contact forms are most definitely the #1 most generic use case for a forms plugin. Practically everyone has one, but are you using yours to their fullest potential? Many don’t!

Sometimes when your guests reach out it can wait, but it’s bad for business to keep them waiting long. Any decent contact form plugin should offer automated email notifications that let you know when someone’s submitted your contact form. Use these to make sure you stay on top of your guests’ needs.

Other submissions are more urgent and can require immediate action. Can your WordPress forms solution send SMS/text notifications, or alert you through company channels like Slack or Trello? Find one that can, pronto!

2. Grow Your Subscriber Lists with Creative Placement and CTA

Virtually every newsletter subscription service from MailChimp to Constant Contact has stock forms to use for subscribing visitors. They work, but the fact is that they’re limited. Design, placement, aesthetic, function, they’re sort of ‘locked’ in and inflexible.

A dedicated form plugin can do much more than replicate the functionality of any of these service’s stock sign up forms. Go above and beyond with creative techniques that will get your subscription forms noticed and skyrocket growth for all your lists.

Here’s a sampling of what you can add with a dedicated forms solution:

  • Images
  • Header text w/ a call to action
  • Custom styling and layout of fields
  • The ability to ‘popup’ when a user makes specific interactions with the page

3. Integrate with Your Favorite CRM Service

As businesses grow their customer bases, customer relationship management becomes a practical necessity. There’s a large pool of fantastic CRM services out there, but getting customer data from a website to service is a pain point for many people.

Eliminate that pain entirely by adopting a WordPress forms solution with a stable, reliable integration to the CRM service of your choice. Working inside your CRM itself can often be complicated enough… there’s no reason to increase that burden by having to maintain a custom integration or moving data over by hand.

Many WordPress forms solutions natively integrate with almost all of the most popular CRM services out there. From Salesforce to Zoho and Capsule to ConvertKit, what you need is out there. Go find it! Make sure to also check out these popular WordPress CRM solutions.

4. Get Customer Feedback on Your Product or Service

User feedback is one of the best metrics for understanding how to improve your product or service. Word of mouth is going to trickle back to you one way or the other, but you’re missing big opportunities for growth if you’re not actively listening to your customers.

Encourage regular customer feedback to inform the direction of your offering into the future. What’s more, simply keeping your finger on the pulse of your paying customers is a huge advantage in any marketplace.

Using a form for collecting customer feedback is cut, dry, and simple… but powerful. Your form can be linked to via follow up emails or placed anywhere on your site. Notifications keep you up to speed on when new feedback submissions come in. Even apply a bit of conditional logic to your feedback form to alert you immediately via SMS/text when you have an unhappy user!

5. Booking and Event Registrations

Managing large numbers of people when coordinating an event or scheduling time slots can be a real pain. Eliminate a lot of the inherent chaos of these situations by starting off organized!

WordPress forms make the perfect tool for allowing users to register and schedule for appointments and events. Limit the number of submissions, block off time frames, even automatically populate data into spreadsheets or your favorite organizational tool. Send registrant confirmations, trigger custom notifications that go to specific event planners, even collect fees directly from the form.

Better yet, give your guests a way to communicate their needs without overloading them with irrelevant options. Smart forms can ask a registrant about the basics and conditionally present options from what you offer based on those needs. Never ask a vegetarian if they want prime rib again ;)

Obviously, there are a lot of WordPress plugins to manage bookings through your site.

6. Accept Job Applications and Related Documents

Just as mobile device usage overtook the desktop years ago, the majority of job seekers hit the internet to look for potential employers before they go canvassing paper applications. If you’re not tapping into this, you’re missing out on a good chunk of the employable workforce and maybe your next star employee.

Forms offer you a way to easily accept uploaded files if you’re looking to collect a resume, C.V., and other related employment documentation. You can even use the form itself as the application. Have users register if desired, fill out an application, and collect the necessary documentation… all using WordPress forms.

A bonus to this method? Using a combination of form calculations and conditional logic (that sounds complicated but is super easy with the right form builder), you can score applicants behind the scenes as the form is filled out, and ping the right people when a particularly qualified applicant submits!

7. Accept Media Files like Photographs, Audio, and Video Recordings

From education to entertainment to documenting, there are a ton of reasons why you might want to allow users to upload media files to your website. WordPress forms not only make this really simple, but secure as well.

A solid form builder plugin should allow you to drag and drop in a media file using a single field. They should also let you limit file submissions by extension, type, and other factors to minimize junk submissions. An added feature to look for is the ability to upload these files straight to a storage service of your choice like Dropbox or Amazon S3 so you don’t start to eat up storage space on your server!

8. Let Customers Leave Reviews and Submit Testimonials

Social proof is a powerful tool. The majority of purchasers read product reviews before they buy, and seeing others leave positive opinions about a product is a sure way to tip the hesitant towards buying.

The right form building tool will have the features you need to allow users to leave reviews right on your product page. A star rating field is a must for these, and the right form builder should have one as a stock option. You can also moderate these, and use a combination of conditional logic and noti