10 Questions to Ask When Creating Your Next Web Form

Posted by Justin Premick

Plenty of otherwise extraordinary email marketing campaigns have yielded only ordinary results because they didn’t focus enough on acquiring quality subscribers.

To get the most out of your list-building efforts, look at your web forms and ask yourself:

Have you covered the basics of a good web form?
How do you ensure you get a valid email address from subscribers?
Is your signup form hard to understand? Can you make it easier to use?
Can you use social proof to get more subscribers?
What about a popup or popover/hover form?
After subscribers fill out your form, do you tell them how to activate their subscription? Is your confirm rate the best it could be? Can you improve it by being creative?
Do you really need to ask for all of that information?
If you give away a free download to subscribers, do you protect it from people putting in bogus subscriber details?
Can you relieve privacy and spam fears by adding a footer to your form?
Can you learn more by attending a free webinar on web forms?

What else do you ask yourself when you create web forms?

Tags list building, web forms

Harjit Irani

I have gone through the ten questions and must say that all are correct. You guys rock when it comes to training the members of Aweber, Thanks.
3/10/2009 2:13 pm
Paul Richardson

All great items to review when building a form from your form tools area. I have now made myself a mindmap so I can pull the mindmap up during the opt-in form creation process and at glance review the checklist.

I have also started using the same construction strategy when creating forms which appear in my pdf files I use to distribute my products.

The pdf form strategy is working well and I hope to soon report my stats. Because this pdf application strategy is an emerging technology, I am very excited to now have a way to track ebook, articles, special report and white paper distribution and sign up statistics.

Thank you so much for a great service and the tools which make it all work so well.
3/11/2009 3:15 pm
Tak

You know what’s been successful in my campaign? I write two things: "This Newsletter Supports Secure Aweber Subscription" or "Sign Up Securely with Aweber".

Those two sentences really help me reach better conversion rate. Just write those promises either below or above the web forms, and see greater sign ups.
3/14/2009 1:56 am
Karl Foxley

After using Aweber for a while now I wouldn’t use anything else. What’s more, the training materials you have inside the members area plus the great content you share on your blog… your users have the ‘complete’ email marketing solution and training and their fingertips.

Great informative information as usual.
3/14/2009 7:40 am
Pedro

This is a material that I"ll been use in my campaign thank you for allwhat you do .
3/15/2009 5:21 pm
David Siecker

I would add one more.

Have your grandma go through the entire process.

If she can understand the terms and directions and actually do it, you will have an even better user experience and conversion rate.
3/17/2009 11:35 am
Yee Shun Jian

Thanks for this… I just added the subscriber count chicklet… Let’s see how well that works =)
3/21/2009 4:13 pm
Jason Rossi

Great post, we have used these questions to ensure our forms covered the basis. It is especially important to have a highly visible easy to use opt in form. This is the key to your list building.
3/22/2009 7:08 pm
angelo panettieri

Thank you Justin all of your education has been a big help!

" I am learning all the time.
The tombstone will be my diploma…"

- Eartha Kitt -
3/24/2009 10:29 am
Kevin Ramsey

Hi. I’m getting great results from your webforms.
I’ve noticed a certain % of subscribers remain unverified.
What is the accepted method of following up these leads to try to get them to sign up?
4/15/2009 3:43 am
Justin Premick

Kevin,

We don’t advocate or condone contacting subscribers who haven’t confirmed:

http://www.aweber.com/blog/email-deliverability/learning-to-let-go.htm
4/15/2009 8:20 am | Follow me on Twitter
Tom Noon

I found a hole in the Aweber generally great product offering.

My offer is not a subscription but a FREE Whitepaper on how to buy designer diamond jewelry like an indsider. Bigger/Better for Less kind of thing.

However the thank you page after prospect gives name and email address has wording talking about subscriptions and a voice message re the same.

BUT – this message is not changeable- how hard would it be to add this part of the process to content managmeent system and let us clients handle what we say to our prosepcts??
5/7/2009 7:59 am