How to Set Up Registration Forms
With examples of registration forms for new development
Registration forms are a straightforward part of your marketing campaign, but there are still some considerations for what type of form to use. Will you embed the form, or use a standalone link? Should the form look like part of the website? How often will you be making updates?
The amount of branding and customization you want to make to the look and performance of the form will impact your decision around the type of form that will work best for the new development project.
Our manager of Customer Success, Richard, and his team, are always prepared to help our clients discuss the type of form that will work best for their next project. Read on to see what types of forms are available in Spark, the best practices for choosing the registration form to use on your next project, and examples of how they’ve been used in new development!
Types of Registration Forms
Spark has 3 types of registration forms, which essentially cover 95% of potential use cases for gathering buyer data, lead generation, and other elements of lead capture for real estate. For the remaining 5%, our customer success team works together with our client’s web developers in order to build out an API or custom solution.
1. The Basic Form
Built into Spark’s platform, our very simple form designer allows your team to make an endless variety of registration forms by mixing, matching, and customizing different elements. Though we call it our ‘basic’ for, we’ve built out the form designer so that clients can easily make and access all the main functionalities of a registration form.
Most commonly, our clients use these on-site at the sales center, or otherwise in person. There is the option of embedding this registration form on the project website (see #2) or use it in lead generation campaigns, but because it’s so portable, most clients add the URL onto an iPad and use it as a quick and easy way to collect interested contacts in person.
2. The iframe Form
Technically, this is an extension of the first basic form, but it bears repetition because the way it’s used is somewhat different.
The sales or marketing team (whoever is handling your lead generation) still builds the form right out of Spark. Set up the form with the fields that you need, design it with the right elements, and then copy the iframe code right from the same window. Simply send this to your web developer, or whoever manages the website, and they can pop it into an iframe to embed the form directly into the website.
To help it blend in, make sure to adjust the colours of the form so that the background colours and font colours match. This is a great tip whether or not you embed the form — branding it will help it fit seamlessly into your company identity.
One major benefit to embedding the form this way is that it creates a more seamless process for contacts who want to fill out a registration. Instead of clicking away to another page with the form, they can simply scroll to the part of the website with the form, and fill it out there directly. Plus, the form will automatically update on your website, without needing you to manually update. Make the changes on Spark, save it, and refresh the webpage to see the edits immediately.
3. Custom Coded Form
For total control and customization, you can manipulate the actual code behind the Spark registration forms. Make the form as you would for the other options, choosing your questions, setting up the source tracking, and so on. This is a good point to insert the data that you want collected on the form, without having to worry about the final look.
After you’re done building the framework, export the code and send it to your web developer. From there, they will be able to change the form so it looks and behaves exactly as you want. You and your web developer can get very creative here. Manipulating the code directly, while more difficult, means you can do essentially anything you want.
This is perfect for achieving the perfect look and branding that you need. It’s the most flexible of the form options, but make sure to have buffer time between design and launching the webpage! Because there’s production time, and coordination involved between the web designer and Spark, this can be a more lengthy process — and it’ll take a bit longer to make updates and changes, too.
Spark’s forms can do pretty much anything that your team requires — and look any variety of ways. There are pros and cons for each method. If you’re not certain what you need, be sure to reach out to your Customer Success representative! They’ll be able to help figure out what type of form works best for your team and your new development project.
Best Practices: Setting up Registration Forms for New Development
When you manage your new development sales through Spark, our customer success team is there every step of the way, making sure that you’re getting what you need out of the platform. That includes our registration forms!
To get started on the right foot, here are some best practices to keep in mind for your next new development.
1. Create Q&As for the project
Each project can have its own custom set of questions. An administrator on the account can set them up, allowing the team to capture the relevant information on the project from the get go. You can set up many questions for the team, and then the marketing or sales team can pick and choose the questions on each form.
Questions we often see are around budget, which helps the agents understand what area they have to work in, as well as how they heard about the project itself. While this isn’t necessarily the most accurate way to track your registration sources, it can tell you what was the most memorable campaign that the contact came across.
2. Adjust Form Settings
As soon as you create a new form on Spark, the platform will prompt you to establish a few backend things, which help with organization as well as automation. Make sure to set these up, either right from the start or just before you implement the registration form.
- Unique Source
While many of our clients opt to have a question like “Where did you hear about this project?” on the form, it’s not the best way to track the actual answer. Create a unique source name for every registration form, so that whenever a contact enters the system, they get tagged with the source of the registration form that they signed up on. - Lead Distribution
Spark is optimized for new home sales teams, which is why we have automatic lead distribution built into the forms. From the settings page, you can set the form to notify the relevant team member when a contact is assigned to them. There’s also an option where you can add people who should get an email whenever the form is completed — useful if you have a manager or administrative level staff member who wants to keep on top of all incoming leads. - Auto-response
An automatically sent email is a very good idea for registration forms. It gives new contacts an immediate touch point, as well as providing something for their inbox to keep you top of mind. You can set up the emails right in Spark, and the platform will automatically send out the selected email to the new contact whenever the form is completed.
Your Customer Success Manager will talk you through this process to make sure that your registration forms are correctly set up for the project.
We’ve seen a lot of great examples of registration forms used uniquely to suit different processes. For example, many of our US brokerage clients have a team of sales agents who each have their own websites and forms. These clients skip the ‘round robin’ style of lead distribution by having each agent responsible for their own lead generation, with individual registration forms for each agent. Leads all go into the same project database in Spark, but are assigned correctly to the agent who brought them in.
3. Design & Implement
When making the form, be sure to design it with its end use and positioning in mind. Will it be a portable iPad form for the showroom? Used in social media campaigns for lead generation? Or a general interest form on the project website?
This will change how much and what kinds of information you add, what fields you include in the form, and even how long the end form is.
Check out some of these resources for design tips, or reach out to your Customer Success Manager for ideas!
Once your form is completed, based on what type of form you’re planning to use, you can either copy the URL link to use directly, or send the code to your website developer to either embed or adjust accordingly.
4. Test Test Test!
Arguably the most vital step, it’s best practice to never start circulating a registration form before you and your team have tested it!
Take the URL of the form, open it in a new window, and fill it out as if you are a new contact finding the page for the first time. Take note of:
- How long the form is to complete
- Any unnecessary redundancies in the questions, text, or imagery
- Whether the submission button works
- If you get the automatic email promptly (or at all)
- Any errors or typos in the email
- Whether the right people get the notification that a contact has filled out the form
Essentially, at this point you’re looking for any signs that the process is going wrong, or if any mistakes have been made along the way. Especially if you’ve chosen the custom route for the form, it’s important to make sure that your web developer’s changes haven’t clashed with the original code!
Spark software was designed to be robust, and still flexible enough to meet your company’s unique needs. To make sure that they’re working the way you need for your upcoming project, be sure to reach out to your Customer Success Manager.
If you’re not on Spark yet, why not? Send us a note at hello@spark.re to get more information, or check out our website.
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