15 Creative Ways to Utilize WordPress Forms

Dec 1, 2022
WordPress forms

Are you stumped trying to incorporate something completely new onto your WordPress site? There's a good chance that there's something that you've not thought of. WordPress forms are perfect for!

Not finding the proper device for the job? Not even sure what you need? When was the last time you took a close look at the possibilities through your WordPress forms? There's a good chance you've got the tool you need already in place!

To handle a lot of these tasks, there may well be a single software that handles them each and every one. WordPress forms are much more adaptable than people think. With that in mind take about a minute as we go over 15 methods to use WordPress forms!

1. Contact Formulas (That Are More Than you think they can)

Contact forms are definitely the #1 most generic use case for a forms plugin. Nearly everybody has one, but are you using them fully? Many don't!

Contact us form example
Contact us form sample

When your visitors are waiting to be served, it could take a while however it's not good for businesses to let them sit all day. A good contact form plugin is one that sends automated email alerts which notify you that someone has filled out your contact form. Use these to make sure you're on top of what your customers want from you.

2. Increase the number of subscribers you have with Creative Placement and CTA

The right form plugin will provide more than just the functionality of any of these services' stock sign up forms. Do more than that with inventive methods to ensure your form forms are noticed and increase the growth of all your lists.

CTA newsletter form
CTA newsletter form

Here's a sampling of the features you could add by using a specific form software:

  • Pictures
  • Header text w/ a call to action
  • Layout and styling of custom fields
  • It is possible to pop-up when a user makes specific interactions with the page

3. Integrate with Your Favorite CRM Service

As businesses grow their client base, customer relationship management becomes a practical necessity. There's an abundance of excellent CRM solutions that are available, however, getting customer data from websites to a services is an issue for a lot of people.

Eliminate that pain entirely by adopting an WordPress forms solution with a stable, reliable integration to the CRM platform that you choose. The CRM system itself can be a bit complicated... there's no excuse to make it more difficult through the need to manage a custom integration or moving data manually.

4. Receive feedback from customers about your Product or Service

Feedback from customers is among the most effective metrics to understand how you can improve your product or service. It's likely return towards you in one direction or another, however there are huge opportunities to development if you'ren't actively paying attention to the feedback of your customers.

Encourage regular customer feedback to help guide the direction of your service into the future. What's more, simply keeping your finger on the pulse of your customers who are paying you can be a major benefit in any market.

Forms for gathering feedback from customers is clean, simple, and simple... yet powerful. Forms could be connected to follow up emails or placed anywhere on your site. Alerts will keep you up to the minute when new feedback feedback is received. You can even apply conditional logic to your feedback form , so that it alerts to you via text or SMS immediately if there's a dissatisfied customer!

5. Reservations and Event Registrations

Managing large numbers of people when coordinating the event or scheduling time slots is a major hassle. Get rid of the inherent chaos of these situations by starting off with a plan!

WordPress forms make the perfect tool for allowing users to register and schedule for appointments and events. Limit the amount of entries, block off time frames or even have them automatically fill in the data in spreadsheets or other favorite organizational tool. Confirm registrations for registrants, issue specific notifications to individual event planners, even collect fees directly via the registration submission form.

You should also give your guests a way to convey their requirements without overloading them with unrelated choices. The smart forms will ask the registrant about the basics and then present alternatives from the options you have available according to their needs. Never ask a vegetarian if they would like prime rib once more ;)

As mobile phone utilization has outpaced desktop use a couple of some time ago, the vast majority of job applicants use the internet to look for potential employers before they go applying for jobs on paper. If you're not taking advantage of this, you're missing out on an enormous portion of the workforce that is employed and possibly your next great employee.

Formulas allow you to easily accept uploaded files if you're looking to collect a resume, C.V., and other related employment documentation. The form as an application. Invite users to sign up or fill out an application, and collect all the required documentation... All using WordPress forms.

Career form
Career Form

An added benefit to this approach? Utilizing a mix of formula calculations along with conditional logic (that sounds complicated but is very simple with the proper tool for building forms) It is possible to evaluate applicants in the background as the form is filled out, and send a message to the appropriate people whenever the form is submitted by a qualified candidate!

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

From entertainment and education to documenting, there's a ton of reasons why it is a good idea to permit users to upload media files on your site. WordPress forms are not just making the process easy but also safe.

A solid form builder plugin should allow you to drag and drop in a media file using a single field. It should also allow you to limit file submissions by extension, type, and other aspects to limit the number of spam submissions. A further feature you should look for is the option to directly upload the files to the storage provider that you like, such as Dropbox as well as Amazon S3 so you don't start to eat up the storage space of your server!

8. Let Customers Leave Reviews and submit Testimonials

Social proof can be an effective instrument. Most buyers will look through product reviews prior to making a decide to purchase. Seeing other customers leave positive opinions about a product is an effective way of influencing those who are hesitant to buy.

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The best form-building tool has the capabilities you need to allow users to write reviews directly on the product's page. A star rating field is a must for these forms, and the best tool for building forms should include one as a stock option. It is also possible to moderate them by using a mix of notification and conditional logic that alert you to negative reviews, so that you can keep up!

User testimonial demo
User testimonial demo

Testimonials tend to be higher-risk than standard reviews, but you can create them easily using an online form. Allow users to upload an image to accompany the text to give it more credibility, select the area on the site you want the testimonials to be displayed then moderate or approve them prior to when they are made live. You can set up the mechanics at once and then do not forget!

9. Accept Donations

Like a contact form offers the benefit of collecting details regarding the person who submitted it over an email contact Donation forms can do the same. You can even set regular fixed donation schedules through integration with subscriptions such as Recurly and Stripe.

We also recommend checking out Give form integrations.

10. Make a Sale or Receive the payment for your service

If you're looking for an option to accept orders and take payments, WordPress forms are a perfect way to get set in a way that isn't as complicated as a full-on commercial plugin. You don't sacrifice flexibility, but! The power to build out gorgeous product pages, complete with photos and a broad range of products is always at hand. Connect your site to a payment gateway service like Stripe and PayPal and go!

11. Populate Physical or Digital documents from a form

Do you have papers that are specifically formatted PDFs, Word documents, etc. which must be filled out in that particular format? Are you thinking you're not able to manage it using a web-based form? Don't be fooled!

Using a form that integrates with webMerge WebMerge solution it is possible to fill in any formatted file and then forward it to an individual or save it for your records. All it takes is scanning or uploading the document to Webmerge by mapping fields on the form to specific sections of the document that have to be filled out the form, then making it accessible to users of your.

End outcome? Your meticulously formatted document will be filled in automatically by the application form, and you're ready to go. It's a specific use-case, however it will be very useful to any person having very specific recording requirements!

12. Permit Users to Upload Their Own Content to WordPress without having to access the Dashboard

Normally in order to create posts in WordPress users need to sign in to their account as well as have the appropriate rights for the user role. That's not always ideal. Allowing high school students to access your site and upload their own research projects as an example, could go hilariously wrong really fast!

Fortunately, if you have this need, you can pull it from the ground with ease using your WordPress forms. As long as you are using a form builder that has front-end publishing capability, you are able to create articles using a web form. These posts will be classified and tagged as you have defined, then sent to you for moderation if you desire. Once you approve them they're live on your site exactly as they would if created in the post editor.

Front-end post creation
Front-end post creation

A bonus use-case for this one: front-end posting is great for user-generated testimonials!

13. Quizzes!

Which Star Wars character are you? Which character would you play if you were a character in Friends? Don't act like you've never taken any of them before ( :) ... truth is, they're an effective little marketing gimmick if you want them to be, or just a simple, fun way to get people to engage with you at least.

Star Wars quiz
Star Wars quiz (Img src: Zimbio)

It is easy to create using any WordPress forms application that includes an ability to calculate. Calculate the values for different responses, then display a message of success in accordance with their score at the conclusion of the test.

There are many different ways to apply this approach than forms, and many software builders let you to construct quizzes in various ways, too. Do you want a more robust application? Look up #14!

14. Lead Qualification

All leads are not made to be the same! The new leads you receive can provide an array of benefits to the business. It's vital for every sales staff to be able to get an exact estimate of lead's value right from the initial contact, in order to determine priorities. This is done using the use of a questionnaire.

Like our tests from #13, a mix of conditional logic and calculations applied within the form can be used to create. Answer the most important questions as well as assigning values to each question, determine a total and you have a qualification score with each new submission.

Utilize that score for qualification to conditionally notify the right individuals about leads with high quality. Create custom success messages or emails to send out notifications. Your imagination is yours to play with!

15. Register and Manage Users in WordPress

WordPress' own user registration process is pretty barebones. Numerous dedicated registration plugins are pretty darn complicated and can take some time to master. How to strike a happy middle?

By using the correct form creator allows you to register and control users through the ease of your form. Allow them to sign up, log in, even update their own profile with images, bio text, and more!

Bonus: Choose Your Own Adventure Stories!

So yes this is incredibly niche, but it's a perfect example of the way your imagination truly is the ceiling for the things you could use to create a form.

We recently in our Support team was able to assist a client who had used a combination of conditional logic, multi-part forms, and liberal use of drop-down fields to create the 'choose-your-own adventure' story with a form. The user was making use of text fields to tell an engaging story for each part of the form, after which she was asking students what they wanted to do next via drop-down fields. Based on the choice of the student, they'd be sent to a different form part for the next chapter of the story.

How neat is that? The question is...

What can't your WordPress Forms Do?

There's plenty you're just not going to be able to do with an online form. But there's a heck of a lot that you can achieve that you've not even thought possible. This post doesn't even begin to list them all!

Be creative! Forms are the business of WordPress and believe us, even we're awestruck by how clever applications our users come up with on a regular basis. Before you go we'd be happy to suggest you take a look at Ninja Forms which is the top most popular WordPress forms solution on WordPress.org Check out how many clever applications you can make use of your brand new forms builder to. The above list of features is just the beginning of the of the iceberg!

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