Web forms are a crucial tool for businesses to obtain the information they need from their potential customers. They can collect data, evaluate products or services, start a conversation, sell products, get feedback from offers, and allow visitors to comment.

Web forms can have a powerful impact on a business. According to Venture Harbor, a well-designed multi-step form converted 53% of site visitors to leads. Marketers use web forms for several reasons — to complete an order, keep track of a customer’s personal information, or collect lead information. 28% of marketers say the proper form fields help improve lead scoring, which means more qualified leads.

Web forms also make it easy for your leads to share their information and allow you to collect and report on it quickly and easily. Once a lead completes a form on your website, their information should feed into a CRM for additional workflows like follow-ups and Opportunity creation. A typical example is a quote request form that not only harvests leads and schedules follow-ups, but also populates the CRM pipeline.

Here are the top seven reasons businesses use web forms:

1. Communication with Visitors: Webforms allow businesses to interact with their customers and potential clients1. They can be used for inquiries, surveys, subscriptions, or registrations1. All the information collected through these forms is recorded in your database, helping to boost awareness, build connections, relationships, and initiate communication between you and your customers or leads.

2. Increase Conversion:  Webforms are a great source of gathering information from your leads. Once the form is filled out and data is collected, the sales team can use this information to send campaigns, send more information about the product, and inform the leads about the offers or discounts.

3. Anytime Access: When your forms are cloud-based, you can access them from anywhere with an internet connection. This can also come in handy if you have long-distance customers who need to submit forms, or if your business operates out of multiple locations.

4. Less Paper: Going paperless offers numerous benefits for minimizing the costs of your back-office processes. By reducing paper usage on forms, you spend less on materials like ink and paper.

5. Easy to Route: Web forms allow for easy updates by multiple users without the need to print or scan. This process is entirely electronic and can be automated with workflow software.

6. Quality Control: Creating web forms allows you to control the quality of the data you’re collecting. By setting up controls to ensure that invalid details cannot be submitted (including their email address, phone number, etc.) your team can ensure accurate data capture upfront.

7. Workflow Automation: If your web form software includes workflow automation, you can embed forms into your business processes. Research indicates that 50% of organizations leverage automation to minimize human errors.

There are several tools available to create web forms but for Act! users the simplest and most cost-effective is Link2forms.  Link2forms offers a variety of features, such as drag-and-drop builders, customizable templates, conditional logic, and easy integrations with WordPress and Joomla. And Link2forms not only helps defend against spam with Captcha automatically inserted in all forms by default, but it also provides the following useful features: 

• create both web form link or embedded HTML for iFrames instantly for use inside the website or email communications
• create new contacts in your CRM or update existing ones with submission data
• provide instant notification of all submissions
• update data fields in your CRM based on data provided in the form
• create dependent questions where different questions get presented based on how previous questions are answered
• trigger nurture campaigns based on form submissions to optimize conversion rates

If you're an Act! user looking to generate more leads from your website and improve your business workflow, you owe it to yourself to try Link2forms. Start your 2-week free trial HERE today.