Registration Forms: Best Practices For Creating Effective Registration Forms

Registration Forms: Best Practices For Creating Effective Online Registration Forms

Introduction

Data is critical for your company's growth. The online registration form allows you to register a company and also to collect vital information from visitors to your website or potential clients. These forms will make it easy to collect data from your clients, members, or participants for your business and will help you to discover the essential information.

Registration forms make it simple to collect data from your clients, members, or participants for your business and assist you in locating important information.

Gathering registration information and having people contact you is not only a very practical method, but it is also a very effective one. Most individuals find it difficult to create an online form. The procedure is actually rather straightforward. To make the process easier, we will discuss what a registration form is, how to create your own form using LeadGen App form builder and how to use ready-made registration form templates in this blog article.

What are Registration Forms?

Registration forms are used by businesses to enroll customers in subscriptions, services, or other programs or plans.

A registration form is a document that has a series of fields that a person fills out and delivers to a company or individual in order to register for an event, program, membership, list, and so on.

 You may collect contact information and encourage people to communicate with you by using the online registration form. Businesses use registration forms to enroll clients in subscriptions, services, or other programs or plans.

Both you and your clients will find it simple to utilize an online registration form. You may rapidly create a form and find out more information about the individuals that fill it out. You can choose from different types of forms for your business, school, neighborhood, on LeadGen App. You may quickly design your own online forms using LeadGen App's free templates.

Lets check out some of the most popular registration forms.

A) Patient Registration Forms- Medical practitioners utilize a hospital patient registration form to collect patient information prior to their stay in the hospital. This might contain a medical history overview, health insurance details, and a list of drugs and allergies. It is critical to collect this information during a patient's hospital stay in order to avoid medication mistakes and adverse reactions. You may gather all relevant data about your patient's health-related information such as their name, birthday, health history, family doctor, emergency contact information, and more with the Hospital Patient Intake Form while being confidential and HIPAA compliant.

B) Hotel Guest Registration Forms- Hotel Guest Registration Forms are used to collect information from guests in order to make hotel reservations. These forms have become an integral part of receiving visitor reservations, whether online or at the front desk. For verification reasons, hotel guest registration forms gather information such as name, contact information, and date of birth. The most significant portion of the form is the reservation information, such as the kind of room and departure and arrival dates.

C) Student Registration Forms- Students utilize student registration forms to sign up for classes, tutoring, extracurricular activities, and numerous school groups. Our Student Registration Forms may help your school, whether K-12 or higher education, keep better track of students. Students can enter personal information, upload files, and make payments online.

D) Business Registration Forms- A business registration form is used by a government office, union, or other organization to collect information for the registration of new firms. Use a free Company Registration Form of your choosing to collect contact information from business owners, learn more about their firms, and optimize your workflow by minimizing unnecessary paperwork.

E) Membership Registration Forms- Membership registration forms are used to enroll new members in a private organization. With our free Membership Registration Forms, you can streamline your registration process and increase signups whether you manage membership for a club, church, gym, or health insurance business. Applicants may fill out your form with their personal and contact information, add files, and even make payments.

Benefits of Online Registration Forms

Some event organizers and business houses do have different perspectives on online registration platforms. When holding an event, however, online registration may be extremely beneficial to both the organizers and the participants. Let's take a look at the advantages that an online registration system may provide.

A) Immediate Confirmation

The traditional paper form technique takes a significant amount of time, and users/consumers must wait for a confirmation letter.

Registration forms get you immediate confirmation from your users

In the case of online registration systems, the users/consumers will get a confirmation email immediately after completing the prerequisites (including the payment, if any). Furthermore, the organizers will be able to alert attendees of any missing information. This digital registration makes the procedure easier.

B) Convenience and speed

When opposed to the "old-school" paper registration approach, the most obvious advantages of a complete online registration system are convenience and speed. An online registration method eliminates the need to physically fill out paper forms and mail them to a registration office.

The most apparent benefits of an all-inclusive online registration system are ease and speed.

Participants can register at their leisure and submit their information instantly when using online registration tools. The participant may make changes as needed without having to worry about erasing or cutting. The data sent by the user is immediately put into a database.

C) Real-Time Update about the Statistics

When using the traditional paper form technique, organizers rarely get a reasonable estimate of the number of attendees until the very last minute. After all, keeping a handwritten record of the number of forms they get each day might be tough.

When it comes to an online registration system, the database immediately refreshes, providing organizers with real-time data. This gives the organizers a significant edge in planning the stages ahead of time.

D) Online Registration Systems are Secure

Online registration systems are quite safe.

Form submission takes place on a secure platform. The database gathered by event organizers/business houses will also be housed on a highly secure server, leaving no opportunity for third-party access. The form submission and payment information will be transmitted in an encrypted format.

On the contrary, information provided on paper forms is susceptible to multiple parties. Paper forms must be safely destroyed to avoid unauthorized information access.

E) Easy to distribute to the audience

Online registration forms are easy to distribute compared to the old paper forms as they reach the audience within a fraction of a second. And these online registration forms help you get instant confirmation from your clients compared to the traditional paper forms, which might take much longer and sometimes have no response at all.

F) Promotion

Depending on the solution, you may incorporate it inside your website or redirect customers who have already registered to a landing page on your website. This increases both traffic, which is beneficial for SEO, and the likelihood that users will visit other portions of your website, learn more about your company, and take more activities (for example, make a donation, subscribe to your newsletter, recommend you to others).

Best UX Tips for Designing more Effective Registration Forms

The web is cluttered with UI solutions that we inherited from the past, yet continue to use because "everyone else does." It is a pastime to review all of them, particularly the registration forms. Keep in mind that registration forms are for the user, and the easier the registration procedure, the happier your consumers will be.

Here are some pointers to help you make the most of your registration forms.

1. Highlight Required Tips

It is preferable to have no optional fields from the standpoint of user experience, believing that if a piece of information is not necessary, there is no purpose in wasting a user's time. However, for many businesses, marketing, and gathering client data is critical to their success.

If a registration form has optional information, make sure to clearly highlight mandatory fields. A modest mark, such as an asterisk (*), is usually sufficient. It might be aggravating for users to discover after submission that they have not completed a mandatory field.

2. Don’t make the user fill in the same field twice

Almost everyone has encountered a registration form that needs you to input an email address or password twice. Historically, this was intended to prevent typos. Have you ever entered your email or password incorrectly during the signup process? Have you ever NOT copied-pasted the required information whenever the webpage permitted?

Even if a typo is made in the registration form, the user can still recover it by email. The user may have to spend more time recovering from his or her account, but this is little in comparison to the time we will save for hundreds of people who complete the form correctly.

3. Keep users Signed-In when they register

Another typical problem with registration UX is expecting users to sign in right away. Many email confirmation links have the same issue. Is this for safety reasons? Users frequently write down passwords only to forget them later and have to retrieve them via email. In many cases, this extra step merely serves to irritate the user. Design the user experience such that new users remain logged in immediately after registration, improving the overall user experience.

4. Don’t make the users confirm via email before using the service

Most digital products and services demand us to authenticate an account by an email link before we can use them. Why? How does my email help in service delivery? These are questions that consumers may not consider, but they should disturb you as a UX designer.

Why not allow the user to browse the site after registering? If certain functionalities need email, deactivate them and provide a simple reminder for the user to confirm an email address later. It is preferable to provide a modest operational service right away rather than none at all. This will aid in making a positive first impression. By requesting email confirmation, you force a new user to leave your website, perhaps resulting in traffic loss.

5. Provide guidance but don’t push

"For security purposes, your password must be greater than 8 characters and no shorter than 12 characters long, and it must include at least one capital letter, a number, and a symbol." This is a common password requirement, however the length of the password reset emails does not ensure security. A five-character password can be as powerful as A#c2d, while an eight-character password can be as basic as a "password." Demanding that users evaluate all of the field requirements and create a fresh and unique password isn't how a host would greet a visitor, is it?

To save time and eliminate guessing, show users the right input format. Take it a step further by giving more user-friendly and detailed error messages. Notifications such as "You must fill out all of the required forms" are ineffective when consumers are unsure which field was inaccurate.

Real-time data validation is an excellent answer to this challenge. This immediately informs users of errors and, if executed on the client side, can even minimize the amount of work for your servers.

How to Design Effective Registration Forms?

Even though user registration is quite widespread, it is also one of the most difficult aspects of web design. Follow these recommendations for developing a better registration process to ensure that your sign-up page isn't an impediment for your users.

A) Do not use “Sign-In” and “Sign-Up” together

The issue is that 'Sign In' and 'Sign Up' are quite similar. Users are often confused when buttons seem too similar and utilize the same word in their labels.

Users may select one over the other. Typically, this problem upsets people who attempt to log in since they make the most mistakes. This occurs because consumers quickly scan the page and think that the first call to action that captures their attention is the correct one. Even if users did not commit the error, they will take extra time to identify between the two buttons.

Avoid using 'sign up' and 'sign in' together if you want to give a decent user experience. Instead, differentiate the buttons by using various verbs in labels and varied visual appearances (colors and styles) to emphasize the difference.

B) Login forms vs Registration forms

Many websites and applications utilize almost the same amount of input fields (email, username, and password) for login and registration forms, and display them side by side. However, it is critical to clearly distinguish the registration form from the login form in order to reduce the possibility of people unintentionally attempting to log in using the registration form.

Twitter's login and signup forms, for example, not only appear different, but they also use distinct colors for CTA buttons and suitable assistance text.

C) User-friendly error messages

"For security purposes, your password must be at least 6 characters long and no more than 10 characters long, and it must include at least one capital letter, a number, and a symbol."

This is a common password need, but expecting people to consider all the field requirements isn't the right approach to communicating the issue. Take a lead from Mailchimp and utilize a "password strength" display to highlight user progress.

D) Let users see their Password

Mistyping a password is a typical issue during login and registration. And it's really simple to accomplish because the password box is frequently disguised (because of security reasons). Passwords can be mistyped, especially on mobile devices. Many sign-up forms include the "confirm password" area when establishing a password to attempt to prevent mistyping mistakes.

While the confirm password area appears to be a good idea, it does not totally fix the problem. When users can't see what they're typing while filling out a form, they make more mistakes.

Do not require the user to fill out the same field repeatedly! Implementing a show password option is a good method to avoid typos. A checkbox can be placed near the password field. When users click it, their input will be shown unmasked.

E) Make password recovery painless

It's critical that if users forget their password (and they will), the login procedure handles it properly.

Allow users to easily reset their passwords so that they do not quit your service. As a starting point, always include a clear 'Forgot your password?' link on your login form, and this link should be available at all times (not just after the incorrectly entered password).

F) Real-Time data validation

Real-time validation tells consumers instantly about the accuracy of the submitted data.

This method helps users to repair problems more quickly by not having to wait until they touch the submit button to view the errors. Form validation, on the other hand, should not only inform users what they did wrong, but also what they did correctly. This increases user trust in completing the registration form.

Real-time validation is particularly useful for less apparent responses, such as selecting a unique login or a strong password. Twitter is a prime illustration of this. The form notifies me that this email is already in use and offers me various choices on the screen below (either to login or recover my password).

G) Allow users to login via Facebook, Google, Twitter

Why compel consumers to generate a new set of login credentials when they may utilize an external account such as Facebook, Google, or Twitter? This function can help with registration issues.

When compared to traditional email registration, it offers both advantages and disadvantages:

Pros: Users don't have to fill out a registration form, establish another set of usernames/passwords, or verify their emails, so they can sign up in 10 seconds instead of 10 minutes. Most importantly, users do not need to memorize new usernames/passwords.

Cons: Because the information about the user is automatically loaded, it creates serious privacy concerns, and not everyone is going to be willing to contribute their personal data. In such instances, you should have a standard login mechanism operating in the background.

H) The Challenge of Usernames

If you need users to generate a username upon registration, you will most likely encounter the following issues:

I) Because usernames must be unique, users may need to spend a few minutes before they find an appropriate name because preferred usernames have already been claimed by other users.

II) Users wind up enrolling with a whole new username that they quickly forget.

I) Use the 'Try Before You Buy' strategy

Users will quit an app/online service that requests personal information up front unless there is an instant payback (e.g. ordering a taxi). When asking users to register at the outset of the experience, services with poor brand awareness must cross a greater hurdle since pushing registration too early might lead more than 85% of customers to quit the product.

It is preferable to give a restricted set of functionality right away rather than none at all. As a result, adopt a "try before you purchase" policy. The try-before-you-buy technique entails providing new users with the opportunity to test your product in order for them to be personally interested in signing up. People are more inclined to sign up and offer accurate personal information if they know what kind of product and experience they will receive.

A "try before you purchase" pattern does not exclude you from asking a user to register an account. It simply implies that you request it after providing value to the user.

Steps to Create Registration Forms without Coding

Step 1: Sign Up for free at LeadGen App

Go to LeadGen App and click the Sign Up Free or Free Trial option if you don't already have an account. You'll begin with a 14-day free trial of our Pro 1 service. You can construct forms and have access to all integrations with high limitations.

Step 2: Create your Registration Form

Choose a registration form template or build it from scratch. Hundreds of online form templates are available in our template section, which is arranged by industry and kind. Look through them for samples of questions or techniques that will work for you. When you're ready to begin, either pick an existing form template or a blank form to create your own.

Step 3: Customize your form

Once you have clicked on the Create option, use the Design pages to customize the design of your registration form to match your brand. Use Themes to apply quick predefined settings, and customize to customize every aspect of the form's design. Change the fonts, colors, and sizes, and then check the form's preview section for immediate feedback.

Step 4: Test your form

Once the registration form is completed, test it to ensure that everything works as expected. Fill out the form as if you were a user by clicking the Preview Form button. Once you've completed all the forms, click the submit button at the bottom. To view the answers in each form result, click the Results link.

To view the answers, click the view link for each result. Did you collect all of the necessary information to finish the registration? Did the rules work as expected? Return to the form editor to make any necessary changes to your form.

Step 5: Embed your form

Once your form is built & designed, easily embed it into your landing page with a simple embed code.

Concluding Thoughts

When you remove every barrier to joining up, you get a lot of sign-ups. And a large number of sign-ups does not imply a large number of customers. Customers are the outcome of a chain of events. Making the registration procedure more efficient is only the first step in this approach.

Furthermore, adopting an online registration system demonstrates the individual event organizer's legitimacy and forward-thinking attitude. Because of all of these positive factors, online registration methods are becoming the standard in society.

A strong form is beneficial to every organization, event, career, school, and so on. It enables members of your target audience to join up and monitor and collect critical information about individuals during the epidemic. A nice and simple registration form makes a strong first impression on potential attendees and pulls more people to your event. LeadGen App, which has several templates and is free to use, would be quite beneficial for creating such a form. Login up or sign in to LeadGen App to see registration form samples.