Around 2 billion people access the internet only from their smartphones and mobile devices, so you can no longer assume that the people filling out your online forms are on a desktop computer.
This means it’s extremely important to ensure all of your online forms are mobile-friendly, or else people won’t fill them out. Instead, they’ll exit out of your survey or webpage and head over to a competitor with a more mobile-friendly form and sign up process.
Let’s go over a few features that are essential to designing forms for mobile devices so you can continue to serve those two billion people.
1. Keep the number of form fields to a minimum.
If someone is on their phone filling out a form, they don’t want to have to fill out 50 different fields on several different pages.
In order to make forms mobile-friendly, you need to minimize the number of form fields you include.
Take a look at your current paper forms and determine which fields aren’t absolutely necessary. If a field isn’t required for the submission, go ahead and omit it. It’s important to focus on the essentials and gathering the most substantial information.
2. Use a single-column form layout.
Anything that is optimized for mobile devices should be scrollable in a single-column format. No one wants to be stuck pinching their screen to zoom in and scrolling all around to make sure they’ve filled out every single form field.
Don’t place form fields side-by-side. Instead, add them in one-by-one, one on top of the next. This makes it easiest to fill out on smartphones and other mobile devices.
3. Add in automation when possible.
Automation is always, always, always a good thing. It helps make processes more efficient, and can even make the form submission easier for your audience.
Give your forms the ability to allow auto-fill. Many people type in their information in various forms, and phones and computers save that information. Allow a dropdown for people to tap once and have all of their contact or credit card information complete the fields automatically.
4. Minimize typing.
Typing on a smartphone is simply not the same as typing on a computer. There’s a reason that we’ve developed tons of abbreviations and text message shorthands for common phrases – it’s much, much faster to type “LOL” than “laugh out loud” on a mobile device.
This also means that none of your form recipients wants to type out a short answer for every single field.
Instead, you should incorporate radio buttons and dropdowns whenever possible. Make it as easy as can be to fill out your form so that it’s a quick process that doesn’t cause your audience to take a second thought about any of the questions.
Start incorporating these easy adjustments into your forms so you can optimize them for mobile viewing and submission. You don’t want to alienate the entire portion of your audience that accesses the internet exclusively from their mobile device.
If you’re struggling to find a method that helps you to create mobile-friendly forms, contact us! We’re happy to discuss how PerfectApps’ form software creates visually appealing and easily accessible forms for both desktop and mobile usage.
