Setting Up Your Form

Changing form settings around is a great idea for better interaction with your audience. While the default options might get the job done, it’s worth going the extra mile to create a more pleasant experience for all of your users. Let’s take a look at the different options you’ve got, and some tips on how to optimize them properly.

Notifications. What are they? Whenever someone submits a form, two messages are sent out — one to the user, and one to yourself, which are called notifications. Through this tab you can change how notifications behave, and how they look on both ends.

• Add the email address you wish to receive notifications. Multiple emails can be inserted.
• Change the message and header to easily recognize the message in your inbox
• The footer can show the entry ID and the IP which sent it, in order to have more info about your respondents
• You can also opt to have responses sent as PDF attachments.

Thank You Page. After the form has been submitted, the user will see a Thank You message. There is a handful of tweaks that you can apply to your Thank You page to customize your forms flow.

• Change the message shown for a more personalized interaction with the user.
• Send the user to a specific website through the redirect to web page option.
• Depending on your forms and needs, charts can be a fun way to show the user how he compared to the other people that completed the form. Check the show report option for this.

Themes. We all like a little color in our life, so take a moment to design your form’s theme. This comes in really handy in case you want the form to blend in on the webpage you’re adding it to. Read more in our documentation about form themes.

Applications. Have some apps which you use for your work? Then integrate them using the 30+ integrations on this page. It’s a real time saver for registering leads for your marketing & sales efforts, save files on a cloud platform or sign people to your event.

Payments. Having an online store highly increases the reach of your business, so consider adding a payment form to collect payments directly through your website. You’ve got a lot of stuff here, such as price calculation, choosing payment processors and getting notifications, so we’ve made a dedicated guide for using payments.

Rules. Cluttered forms are no fun, so consider showing/hiding certain questions based on your respondents answers on the form. Rules help you change the visibility of certain fields based on answers checked in the previous questions.

What can you do with rules?

• Hide certain fields if they don’t apply to the user. For example, if the user checked is not married, then consider not showing the question date of marriage.
• Show more questions related to a specific topic, when it’s applicable. For example, if the user checked he has attended a particular event in the past, consider asking only then more details about it to learn about his past experience.
• Choose what autoresponder template to send based on the form submitted.
• Redirect respondents to a specific page based on their answers.

Security. Through this tab you can change permissions and add filters to your form in order to keep unwanted visitors away.

• If you only want only unique entries, then check the limit submissions from same IP option.
• You can block certain countries’ IPs from submitting the form. It’s useful for order forms which have shipping details, or market research for a specific location.
• Keep uploads private by checking the only visible with a password option.

Translations. If you’re expecting users from different countries to submit your form, then add a different language from the list. This makes the respondent’s life easier by not struggling with a language they do not manage quite well.

Advanced. Here you can find miscellaneous options.

• You can let respondents save and continue a form by checking save submissions for later. Comes in handy if the form is really long.
• Keep unwanted responses from popping up by adding submission approval.
• Add custom JS for more advanced customization.
• Make the form printable by adding a print button to your form.

You’ve now covered the most important settings you can find under the Settings tab. Make sure you know everything about how to create and how to publish your form. If some are still not clear, then don’t hesitate to contact our dedicated support team with any questions you might have. Leave us your comments below! What do you think about your form’s Settings?

Originally published at www.123contactform.com on March 24, 2017.