A great sign-up form makes it easy for your site visitors to offer their information to you. With a new avenue of communication between you and customers, it can be easier to keep their engagement and interest in your product. But a sign-up form is only as effective as its conversion rate. When you take steps to maximize the conversion rate, you increase the number of sign-ups and that means more customers and a bigger bottom-line. There are 5 main things to think about when you’re designing your contact forms to drive conversion:

1. Your Forms Should Pop

Before visitors to your site fill out your form they need to notice it. It’s very common in modern web design to have a site look smooth and homogeneous, but if your design is too uniform you run the risk of your visitor easily missing your sign-up form. What you need to do is catch their eye through visual cues. One easy way to do this is to add a border or encapsulate your form somehow with a contrasting color and make it visually separate from the rest of the page it’s on. You can also add a directional cue like an arrow that points to your form. Simply, making your form shout its presence can nearly double your conversion. If a dramatically contrasting color is a little too-much for your design, there are plenty of other ways to subtly set your form apart. Experiment with different ways of implementing your form. A/B test your designs to see what works best for you.

2. Focus Your Forms

When your sign-up forms let your visitors tell you exactly what they’re looking for, your conversion rate increases. It’s as simple as that. You can easily sour a relationship with a potential customer by providing them with newsletters and resources that have no importance to them. They might even start to view your marketing as spam, and at that point it can be very difficult to salvage the lead. Give them information that they’ll pay attention to and stay engaged with. For example: If you run a business that sells aftermarket car-parts for a few different makes and models, let your customer choose their specific car and then send them targeted newsletters with information about new items and articles for that specific model.

3. Make it Effortless

This is probably the most important item on this list. When is the last time you went to a website, clicked a link to a form and then saw a full page of empty fields? Did you have second thoughts? Or, have you ever finished one of those forms with 20 empty boxes, clicked Submit and then been taken back to the top because you did something wrong? Yeah, it’s happened to all of us, and I bet at least a few of you bailed on the form at that point. No matter the value of what you’re offering in exchange for their information, if it becomes too difficult, your visitor will look for any opportunity to leave the page.

First, reduce the quantity of form fields that you’re asking for. The magic number here is between 3 and 5 fields. Ask for the absolute basics like name, email, etc. Remember, as long as you have some contact info you can always ask for more info later. Don’t think that marking not required fields in a longer form is okay. A visitor still sees the large form and is immediately turned off. The one place where it does work is with an optional comment field in a shorter form. It gives the visitor the opportunity to improve the quality of the leads generated by the form while still keeping it easy to fill out.

The other way you make the sign-up process easier is by being less restrictive. When the format of a field becomes so specific that it isn’t that easy to get it right on the first try, the customer can become frustrated through repeated failed attempts. If you really need a specific format, consider using ghost text to suggest that. Otherwise, don’t make your customer’s work harder just to make your work easier on the backend. While we’re at it, don’t use Captcha’s for simple sign-up forms. They’re effective in stopping spam because only a human can figure out what they say, but making your customer work to answer a visual riddle is a big turn off.

4. Project Value and Trust

Tell people what they’re getting in return when they give you their information. Would you be willing to submit your email address if you didn’t know what was going to be showing up in your mailbox or how often it would be there? Add some quick facts about your newsletter in bullet points in the header of the form. Also, tell them how often you’ll be sending them out. Another aspect of this is social value: People like following the crowd, and if you can provide some social proof like the number of subscribers, you’ll see a higher conversion rate. People will have their fears about sharing personal information alleviated by knowing that other people trust you as well. Finally, have a link to your privacy policy at the bottom of the form; it’s just another demonstration of trust.

5. Make it Look Good

This one is a given. First, make sure that the fields and button align correctly. Nothing looks more amateur than misaligned fields. Place labels above the fields and display any errors inline and not at the top of the form. Also make sure your submit button fits the alignment of the form, too, and make sure that it stands out. If you’ve done everything you can to shrink your form but it still ends up too long, think about breaking it up into multiple steps and give the visitor a narrative they can follow. It’s an easy way to keep visitors engaged, just don’t overdo it or you run the risk of tiring them out.

In conclusion, these are the biggest ways to improve the conversion rates of your sign-up and contact forms. Not everything here will be perfect for every site. Experiment with different configurations of your form and A/B test the versions. That way, you can measure the difference and home in on the best possible combination that makes your business grow!