'Net Features : forms

Mobile-Optimized Sign-Up Forms Come to Constant Contact

Allison Howen — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 15:30:00 GMT

Creating mobile-optimized sign-up forms just got a whole lot easier.

A new integration from Torsion Mobile has made its way to the Constant Contact Marketplace. The Mojaba integration enables users to create mobile-formatted mailing list sign-up forms with no programming knowledge required.

"The addition of Constant Contact to the Mojaba tool set was a clear choice and Constant Contact made it simple to collaborate and integrate with Mojaba," says Christian Gurney, co-founder and president of Torsion Mobile. "With over 50 percent of American mobile subscribers owning smartphones, it’s important to make joining a Constant Contact mailing list simple for them."

With the Mojaba integration, a Constant Contact “Join My Mailing List” form is automatically created, formatted and made accessible for any mobile device with a Web browser. This enables Constant Contact users to share sign-up forms across desktop, tablet and smartphone platforms.

“These tools are all proven to help small businesses win customers and build successful relationships with them,” said Rick Jensen, senior vice president and chief sales and marketing officer at Constant Contact. “We are pleased that Torsion Mobile chose to integrate with Constant Contact to provide its clients with our online marketing tools, and we look forward to working together to be an even bigger factor in their customers’ success.”

To get started, users must sign up for a Constant Contact account and a Mojaba account. Additionally, it is important to note that both Constant Contact and Mojaba offer trial versions of their products, which enables potential customers to experience the integration for free.

Optimize Web Forms for Mobile Devices

Allison Howen — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 18:30:00 GMT

Creating a form that engages consumers can be a difficult task – especially when it comes to optimizing those forms for mobile devices.

However, a new integration between mobile website service provider Mojaba and web application Wufoo offers a simple way for Web workers to not only add forms onto their sites, but also create forms that are accessible over a variety of devices.

In order to leverage the integration, web workers must sign up for an account on both services (which, by the way, both offer free trials), and then enter their Wufoo acount information into Mojaba in order to link the accounts. Once the forms are placed on a Mojaba site, consumers will be able to access the optimized forms from computers, tablets and smartphone devices. It is also important to note that Web workers are not required to know HTML in order to use Wufooo or Mojaba.

"Wufoo made it simple to access form data and bring it into Mojaba," says Christian Gurney, co-founder and president of Torsion Mobile. "We are now able to provide smartphones users with a seamless forms experience with all the elements and convenience features they expect."

8 Ways to Improve Your Site Over the Weekend

Michael Garrity — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 14:00:00 GMT

Everybody may be working for the weekend, but if you run a website, you already know that you’re almost always working on the weekend, as well.

In fact, most of the work of the everyday Web professional has to do with tweaking, analyzing, and generally optimizing the performance of their site(s), which can take up a lot of time.

So, if you don't want to spend your whole weekend working, here are eight quick ways to refine your website in two days, and still have time to go see the new Batman movie.

Offer social proof on your website.

While peer pressure is typically seen as negative, that is not the case in the marketing world. Web workers can display customer testimonials or case studies on their website to increase engagement and conversions. By doing this, your audience will be able to relate to other customers, and therefore learn how effective your services or products are from a trusted opinion. So, find some of the nicest things that consumers out there have said about you (and don't forget, you can encourage them) and share it with the world.

Test email subject lines.

Email marketing campaigns won’t be successful if emails aren’t delivered or opened, which is why it is always important to use best practices, such as testing, when creating email subject lines. One way that marketers can quickly test email subject lines is with subjectline.com. This free subject line scoring tool evaluates subject lines and provides users with scores, as well as deliverability and marketing tips and advice. Take some time - 15 minutes or so - to sit down and brainstorm great subject lines.

Generate a Fivesecondtest for your site to assess its usability/readability.

When you don’t have the time to conduct user tests, this handy Web-based tool lets Web workers upload a screenshot of their Web page and then creates two different five-second user tests, one for memory and one for descriptive feedback. And, you know, it only takes five seconds.

Insert dynamic meta descriptions into your HTML.

One of the easiest ways to improve your search marketing efforts is to include useful, compelling meta descriptions on your Web pages. Just be sure that they are relevant to the page’s content and are captivating enough inspire a user to click on the search result.

Monitor keywords on Twitter.

It is important to keep an eye on discussions that are relevant to your brand, because it can help social media managers better connect with their audience, as well as help publishers discover possible content ideas. While there are many tools that can be leveraged for monitoring social media mentions, two free Twitter-specific tools worth checking out are Monitter and Twitterfall. Take a few minutes every hour or so to see who is using your keywords in the Twitterverse.

Assess your forms.

Does your email subscription form ask for unnecessary information? If the answer is "yes," you may be scaring off potential subscribers. This is why removing unnecessary or less important information from your forms can prove to be beneficial in the long run. In fact, it is important to note that the only information really needed on a newsletter subscription form is a name and email address, especially because more targeted information can always be obtained at a later time. Should you have some time to spare, why not give one (or all?) of your forms a review to make sure they're not asking superfluous questions.

Fix up and customize your 404 page.

Obviously you never want your visitors to land on one of these, but it happens, and in those situations, it’s good to have a custom 404 page that will not only provide them with information, but also offers additional useful content and encourages them to continue exploring your awesome website. If your 404 page is uninformative and boring, why not take a few hours to create one that will be a little more meaningful to your site's visitors?

Adjust white space to improve readability.

Finding the right balance between too much and too little space around text is one of the essential aspects of a readable website. Remember that your chunks of text content need room to breathe so that your visitors can view them more easily, and they shouldn’t be adhered to other elements, particularly images. Spend a few minutes during your morning coffee looking over your website to make sure it's optimized for readability, and if you see any problems, try increasing your padding and margins.

The Email Signup Showdown

Allison Howen — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Visitor traffic may be the most important data regarding a website's success. After all, a business can't sell products or offer services when no one is there to view them.

One of the best vehicles for driving traffic is email, but the size and quality of your email list have a lot to do with its effectiveness. Clearly, a list with only 100 subscribers won’t result in a surge of quality traffic.

One of the most important factors in obtaining more subscribers is the signup form because the form itself can turn customers away. Creating an effective and enticing email signup form is best done by keeping it simple. This includes not asking too many questions, providing content choice options, promoting incentives and linking to your privacy policy so that customers can be assured that they won’t be spammed.

Below are some examples of effective email signup forms from a variety of industries:

Curves

This fitness company prominently features its signup form on the upper-right corner of its landing page. Once an email address is entered, site visitors are taken to the email signup form that only requires basic information for signup. The form is easy to read, direct, and, most importantly, easy to find.

The Melting Pot

This restaurant invites consumers to become part of Club Fondue (and join The Melting Pot’s email list) at the bottom of the landing page. The signup form is simple and additionally asks only for customers' anniversary and birth dates -- useful questions that enable the restaurant to send out coupons as these dates approach.

Nordstrom

The first line of text on this landing page provides customers with a link to receive email updates. When clicked on, a new window appears with the signup form, which is a smart strategy because it keeps customers on the main site. The email signup form tells customers what they can expect once they sign up, and only requires one basic question to be filled out (the email address). Additionally, the company links to its privacy policy, which eases the consumer's fear that signing up will result in an inbox filled with spam.

Smashbox

This site makes it very easy for consumers to receive emails. The signup link is located, in bright white text against a black background, on the very top of the landing page. Once the link is scrolled over with the mouse, a very simple form appears that only requires customers to enter their email address and hit submit. This simple form also uses a promotion to entice consumers to sign up, with text that says “Sign up for our newsletter and save $15!” -- a great incentive to push consumers over the edge for signups, as well as a nice conversion tool.

The Onion

The Onion invites site visitors to subscribe to its newsletters under a social tab on the top of the website’s landing page. Once the link is clicked on, it takes visitors to the email signup form, which is simple and direct. The signup form allows visitors to choose the newsletters they wish to receive, and only requires an email address. Forms can’t get much simpler than that.

Wufoo Gets JavaScript Embeds

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:36:00 GMT

Online form management service Wufoo has released a round of new features and updates, including a JavaScript Embed Snippet and field charts in addition to some much needed redesigned forms and report managers.

The addition of the JavaScript version of the Embed form code is a dramatic improvement over the static iframe to which Wufoo customers have previously had access. The new version allows for auto-resizing (with easier access to other features, like forcing a specific height), loads faster, and sets the foundation for paging (creating forms with multiple pages, which looks likely to be coming in the future).

The other important change to Wufoo is the addition of Field Charts, static tables designed to show the breakdown of the choices selected by certain fields.

These are both great improvements to an already very reliable and effective Web-based form tool.

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