How to Create a Simple or Advanced Contact Form?

Now that you are reading this post, it’s highly likely that you want to know the process of adding a contact form to your website. It makes sense because a contact form allows your readers to contact you easily and quickly. However, it’s difficult to decide the most effective way without leaving your visitors confused. Don’t fret!

In this article, we are going to share with you a few simple steps that will help you create a contact form on your site. Since WordPress is the most popular platform in the world, we are going to discuss the process in detail using the platform. Before we share the steps, here are a few reasons why you should create a WordPress contact form.

Benefits of creating a WordPress contact form

As you build your website, you might be wondering whether you’ll use your email address instead of putting more hours to create a contact form. However, it’s a fact that contact forms offer visitors more flexibility when it comes to communicating with you. And that’s one of the things you can’t do with an email address. Here are a few more benefits of creating a powerful contact form:

• Control of information: Once you’ve created contact forms, you’ll have more control over the information that you’ve gathered on your site. This will help in limiting the number of emails you’ll be required to reply to.
• Simplified communication: Including contact forms on your site allows users to get in touch with you easily. You can get great ideas that can transform your business through their questions and comments.
• Organizing messages: The majority of contact forms have a subject line that helps you know the person who’s sending messages easily.
• Spam protection: Contact forms usually hide your email address. This makes it harder for spammers to send unwanted or inappropriate messages.

As you’ve seen, creating a contact form is way better than including your email address. With these facts in mind, let’s talk about creating a contact form on your website.

Creating your first website contact form

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll use the contact form plugin (WPForms) on WordPress to create our contact form. At the moment, the WPForms drag and drop builder is the best tool to use when creating a contact form. And it’s easy to setup. Unlike other plugins like Contact Form 7 and Jetpack, it has lots of amazing features to improve your forms.

You can also find a free and paid version. While the Lite version has everything you need to start this process, we’ll focus on the paid version since it has extra functionality. Here are a few extra options that you’ll get when you move to the paid version:

• WPForms Pro allows you to use the plugin on different websites. This will ease your work if you have lots of sites.
• You can build different types of form including payment forms, multiple-page forms, subscription forms, and more
• You’ll easily view submissions in your admin and get new message notifications
• The polls and surveys offer a simple solution and come with real-time WordPress star ratings, polls, and scales. This means taking extra subscriptions if you need include a survey to your site.
• You can easily create a form page with no distractions in WordPress using the landing page solution
• Different types of forms work popularly with payment platforms and email marketing services like PayPal, Mail Chimp, and Stripe.
• You can reduce the number of spam submissions by including Google ReCAPTCHA. Back in the day, you had to install the Captcha plugin to access this functionality.

Today, more than three million websites use this plugin. Plus, a loyal following exists in this community. Here’s the first step to creating a contact form on your website:

Download the WordPress Plugin

To start using WPForms on your website, you need to download the plugin to your machine. After creating a WPForms account, visit the login page. Once you are here, you can easily access the dashboard by clicking on “View License Key, Details and Downloads”

You’ll then be directed to the page that has the license key details and the download link to the plugin. Click on “Download WPForms” and save your license key because you’ll use it later. Now add the plugin and activate it in your WordPress dashboard. If you don’t know the installation process of a plugin on WordPress, here are a few tips.

Installing the Plugin

Once you’ve installed WordPress, the next essential thing that you need to learn is installing a plugin. These plugins are similar in many ways to apps. You can add lots of great things to WordPress such as slideshow, contact form, shopping cart, and more. There are thousands of free and paid plugins that you can use.

Before you learn the process, you need to keep in mind that plugins cannot be installed on WordPress.com because it has its limitations. You need to upgrade to business plan read AssignmentMasters to save time and install plugins easily. Upgrading to business plan is a simple process.

Install using Search bar

One of the simplest ways to achieve this is to search for the plugin. One huge disadvantage of this alternative is the limitations imposed on the WordPress plugin directory to free plugins. In our search, we are going to be looking for WPForms because it’s the best contact form plugin. Once you’ve found the plugin, click the “Install Now” button next to it. The download and installation process will happen automatically.

Create a contact form

After installing and activating WPForms on your website, you need to create the contact form. To achieve this goal, you need to go to WPForms Plugins >> Add New.

On the screen that will follow, enter your name and click the template Simple Contact Form. WPForms creates a simple contact form for you automatically. And it has the following form fields in default:

• Name: The names of visitors who submit the form
• Email: Email addresses of visitors are required
• Message or comment: Some space for visitors to input their queries
• Submit: The submit button that sends you the message

From here, you can add an extra form field by dragging it from the left side to the panel on the right. For example, if you want to allow users to submit a document, you can drag the file upload field and drop it on the form. You can also make any field of your choice a requirement.

Apart from this, you can on the fields available to edit the name or description. You can also drag fields organize the order of your contact form. Under the heading Advanced Options, you can edit the following:

• Field Size: Set the ideal size of your fields. You can go for either large, medium, or small
• Placeholder: The first and last name fields should have a placeholder text
• Hide label: Hide the labels and sub-labels from the user
• Layouts: Choose your form’s custom layout without using a code

You should head to dissertation writing services uk to learn more on article publishing and inclusion of a custom CSS class if you want more customizations. If you are satisfied with the customizations, click Save.

Define the settings of your form

To define the settings of your form, you need to go Settings >> General. In this section, you’ll need to configure these settings:

• Form name: You can rename the form if you want it to be something different
• Form description: Give the form a short and clear description to help you remember what it’s about
• Submit button text: Change the submit button label
• Spam prevention: Prevent spam submissions by enabling the anti-spam feature
• GDPR compliance: In WordPress, you can disable the storing entry info for you to comply with GDPR.

If you are happy with your preferred settings, click on Save.

Look at the notification settings

Setting notifications for your contact form is one of the best ways to get alerts when users submit a form on your website. However, if you don’t disable this feature on your menu, you’ll get notified every time a user submits a form.

The use of smart tags in WPForms will alert your site visitors when they complete filling the form. That allows them to know that you’ve received the form and guarantees them that their message has been successfully sent. After setting your notifications, you need to configure you’re the confirmations on your form.

Configure your confirmation message

A confirmation message is a short message displayed to visitors after they’ve sent the form to your contact page. It is a good way to let them know that their message has been sent successfully. It also allows you to tell them about the next steps that they need to follow. There are three confirmation message types in WPForms that you should choose from:

• Message: This confirmation type is a default option that allows you to notify your visitors that the form was submitted.
• Show page: The Show Page takes visitors to a particular page on your site after submitting the form. This could be something like a thank you page.
• Go to URL: This is the ideal option if you want to direct your visitors to another site.

Setting your confirmation message is easy. Go to Settings >> Confirmation. And then choose the type of confirmation that you want. Input the message that you’d like users to see and save. The next section involves publishing the form on your site.

Add the contact form to your site

After creating a contact form, it’s time to add it to your site. You can add forms on any section of your site with WPForms. This includes WordPress blog posts, contact pages, and a widget on the sidebar. Most people choose to embed the contact form on a page or post. You can use a content block or shortcode which we’ll discuss later.

Start by creating a page or blog post and click on the add icon on the page or post editor to add a new block on your site. Then type WPForms on the search bar and click to include it in your post. The block will show up on your screen for you to find the contact form from the menu. The form will then appear on your WordPress post. Now, what you need to do is publish the page or post to see the form on your website live.

Including the contact form in your sidebar

WPForms make it easy to include a contact form into the website’s sidebar. The plugin comes with a widget that you can drag and drop in any widget-ready area on your site. To do this, go to Appearance >> Widgets from your admin area. Here, you’ll see the widget that you can drag and drop to the sidebar. You can also click on the widget and choose the sidebar from the options available.

Once you’ve done this, give the widget a good title and choose a form from the dropdown menu and save. With WPForms, you get the option of adding a contact form thanks to the WordPress shortcode. The contact form shortcode can be found by visiting WPForms >> All Forms and copy the shortcode.

Tracking the conversations

After adding the contact form to your site, you need to track its performance. By tracking your forms in WordPress, you’ll easily see the number of conversions and views your forms are getting as well as the conversion rates. You’ll also see the form that’s getting the highest number of views and conversions. You can easily track the conversions using Google Analytics plugin. The tool has a powerful tracking add-on that tracks your conversions automatically. It is easy to set up and requires a few clicks only. It’s also compatible with WPForms and other forms of plugins for your site.

Conclusion

Now that you’ve reached this point, you should reward yourself for developing a new skill. You’ve learned how to create the contact form of your choice with ease. When users upload their messages, you’ll never miss out on them. Communicating with users frequently is one of the best ways to boost your productivity and performance. We hope this guide has given you several brilliant ideas that you can use to achieve your goals easily. Finally, don’t forget to track the performance of your contact forms to figure out the areas that you need to improve on today. If you found this article helpful, please leave a comment and follow us.

Author Bio:

Thomas Lanigan has work experience for 4 years as a marketing specialist, social media manager, writer, journalist, and editor at professional essay writers, essay writing service uk and essay writing service. Also, he is a professional content writer in such topics as blogging, marketing features, progressive education programs, business.