Blog
Notes on forms
Mostly about why forms don't get finished, and what to do about it. No news and no roundups. One idea per piece, argued properly.
Latest
How to Make an HTML Form Send Email Without a Backend
Static sites have nowhere to POST a form. The options, what each one costs, and how to pick between a form backend and a form builder.
· 5 min read
Read it21 Free Form Templates for Almost Any Job
A working list of form templates by what you are trying to do, with the question that matters most in each one.
· 6 min read
How to Create an Online Form That People Finish
A practical walkthrough: deciding what to ask, building it, testing it properly, and the mistakes that cost the most completions.
· 6 min read
15 Google Forms Alternatives, and When Each One Makes Sense
What Google Forms is genuinely good at, where it stops, and which kind of tool to move to depending on what broke.
· 6 min read
Letting an AI assistant work with your forms
Connecting a form tool to Claude or ChatGPT sounds like a gimmick until the third time you ask a question you would never have run a report for.
· 9 min read
Contact Form Best Practices: 14 Things That Actually Matter
What to ask, what to leave out, how to handle spam without a captcha nobody can read, and what to put on the page after submit.
· 5 min read
Describe the form and let the machine build it
Generating a form from a sentence is genuinely useful and genuinely limited. Where the line sits, and how to work on the right side of it.
· 9 min read
30 Customer Feedback Questions That Get Real Answers
Questions grouped by what you are trying to learn, and the wording changes that stop people giving you polite nothing.
· 5 min read
The question that loses you half your responses
Completion rates don't decay evenly. Almost always, one question is doing the damage. It is rarely the one you would guess.
· 5 min read
25 Job Application Form Questions Worth Asking
The questions that sort an inbox, the ones that waste everybody's time, and how to handle salary, right to work and equal opportunities.
· 5 min read
Moving off Google Forms without rebuilding anything
The reason most people stay on a form tool they have outgrown is the fear of retyping forty questions. That fear is now out of date.
· 9 min read
18 Survey Question Types, and When Each One Earns Its Place
Multiple choice, scales, matrices, rankings and open text, with the specific failure mode of each and how to avoid it.
· 5 min read
One question at a time, or all at once?
The honest answer is that it depends on your audience. You can find out in a fortnight rather than arguing about it.
· 5 min read
12 Event Registration Form Examples, and What Each Gets Right
Registration forms for conferences, workshops, webinars, fundraisers and more, with the one question each type must not skip.
· 4 min read
Take the deposit while they are still interested
The gap between an enquiry and a payment is where most small-business revenue quietly leaks away. Closing it is mostly a form decision.
· 9 min read
How to Take Payments on a Form
Fixed prices, calculated totals and deposits, which provider to use, and the compliance questions people discover too late.
· 5 min read
You probably don't need a cookie banner on your form
Most form analytics use cookies out of habit rather than necessity. Here's what you can measure without them, and what you genuinely lose.
· 5 min read
How to Make a Quiz That Marks Itself
Scoring, branching results and the structural decisions that separate a quiz people finish from one they abandon at question four.
· 4 min read
What to do with two hundred open text answers
The most valuable question on most forms is the one nobody reads, because reading it properly takes an afternoon nobody has.
· 9 min read
How to Embed a Form on Your Website
Inline, popup or full page, what each does to conversion, and the embedding problems that are genuinely hard to debug.
· 5 min read
How to score a quiz so the result means something
Points are easy. Deciding what a score of 7 out of 10 should tell someone is the part people get wrong.
· 5 min read
How to Collect Files and Documents Through a Form
CVs, photographs, certificates and signed documents: size limits, file types, security, and why a required upload loses people.
· 5 min read
Show the price before they ask for it
Contact us for a quote filters for patience rather than intent. What happens when you let people work the number out themselves.
· 9 min read
Verifying webhook signatures without getting it subtly wrong
Five mistakes that make signature verification look like it is working when it isn't, and why the last one is the one that will hurt you.
· 5 min read
Your first question decides everything
More people abandon a form at question one than anywhere else. The fix is almost never making the form shorter.
· 9 min read
The five accessibility fixes that matter most on a form
Not a WCAG checklist. The handful of things that decide whether somebody using a screen reader or a keyboard can actually finish.
· 5 min read
Stop asking for phone numbers
The most expensive field on most forms, measured in people who leave rather than fill it in. When it earns its place and when it does not.
· 9 min read
What your drop-off chart is actually telling you
Per-question analytics point at a field and say people leave here. Turning that into a fix means knowing which of four things is going wrong.
· 9 min read
The most wasted page on your website
Thanks, we will be in touch. Twelve words at the moment of maximum attention, and almost nobody has ever rewritten them.
· 9 min read
Qualifying leads without running an interrogation
Every question that filters out a bad lead also loses a few good ones. Where that trade is worth making, and where it quietly is not.
· 9 min read
Your mobile completion rate is not a mystery
Most forms lose twice as many people on a phone as on a desktop, and the causes are the same handful of things every time.
· 9 min read
Conditional logic without the spaghetti
Branching makes a long form feel short. Done carelessly it makes a form nobody can edit six months later, including you.
· 9 min read
The quiz that earns the email address
Quiz funnels work when the result is genuinely worth having. Most of them are a form wearing a costume, and people can tell.
· 9 min read
One form or several
The universal contact form is easy to maintain and hard to act on. The alternative creates its own problems. How to decide which you have.
· 9 min read
Writing questions people answer honestly
Half of bad form data is not carelessness. It is people giving the answer the question seemed to want.
· 9 min read
Webhooks, explained for people who do not write code
The feature that sits in every form tool's settings, unused, because the documentation assumes you already know what it is for.
· 9 min read
What the rules actually ask of a small business form
Most compliance advice is written for companies with legal departments. Here is the short version for a form that collects names and email addresses.
· 9 min read
The form nobody told you they could not fill in
People who cannot complete your form do not email to say so. Here is how to find the ones you are losing without knowing it.
· 9 min read
The forms your team needs and nobody built
Most small businesses run half their internal processes through email threads and memory. A form is usually a better answer than a system.
· 9 min read