One drawback of the digital age is how we rely more on bots to help us, which is something Fluent Forms’ conversational forms look to mitigate. A formal, robotic tone of voice will tend to turn people off, and could even negatively impact your business. Instead, you can turn up the informal voice and connect with visitors as a human would.
In this post, we’re going to look at how to improve your lead funnel for greater engagement and completions. Fluent Forms’ conversational forms could also see your overall completion rate get a boost!
What Conversational Forms Are
Unlike a typical form, a conversational form uses an engaging, informal tone to collect better and more relevant data. They’re interactive, accessible, and can adapt to the responses they receive.
In our opinion, there are a couple of key traits of a conversational form:
- You should meet the customer where they are. This means being able to access forms through social media, and other ‘off-site’ channels.
- Every question you ask should build on the previous answers. You might even reference them later in the form. Also, those answers should make upcoming questions smarter and more relevant.
- ‘Asynchronous’ operation is important to a conversational form. This means the conversation happens on the user’s time, and they will lead its completion.
However, one vital element of conversational forms is conditional logic. Both of these work together to offer a complete User Experience (UX).
The Link Between Conditional Logic and Conversational Forms
Conditional logic establishes a direct link between the user’s input and a static formβs behavior to make it dynamic and conversational. This ensures each interaction is relevant and personalized to the current conversation and resembles a natural, human conversation.
Using previous answers to dictate future questions is an ideal use case for conditional logic. For instance, a form could skip over a set of questions based on the answer a user gives. This is not only a time-saver but makes the completion process less tedious and more engaging.
As such, conditional logic in a conversational form can net you better-quality data in general. Part of this is down to the potential rise in your form’s completion rates.
Why Using Conversational Forms Can Jack Up Your Engagement and Conversion Rates
The key goal of a conversational form is to increase engagement and completion rates. Typical static forms can often feel impersonal and overwhelming, especially if they contain a lot of fields.
In fact, there are plenty of ways conversational forms can improve your engagement and metrics:
- Conversational forms often ask one question at a time. This format makes the form feel more like a chat, which means users are more likely to stay engaged.
- The dynamic, personal, and relevant nature of conversational forms ensures users feel valued. In turn, this should maintain their interest, which leads to a higher completion rate.
- Conversational forms can use personalization to improve the quality of data you collect. The form should encourage users to respond in greater detail and with more thought. Also, the interaction and real-time validation ensure you collect accurate and relevant data.
There’s hard data on how a conversational approach is something users want. As such, respondents will be less likely to abandon a form. This means choosing and using the right plugin for your WordPress website is crucial.
How to Ignite Your Lead Funnel with the Power of Fluent Forms’ Conversational Forms
We’re now going to look at how to use conversational forms to increase the effectiveness of your lead funnel, improve your conversion rates, and give you greater levels of engagement in general. However, we’re going to focus on using Fluent Forms here rather than showcase lots of different solutions.
Our full review of Fluent Forms gives you the full lowdown on why we love this WordPress form builder plugin. As such, we recommend you give that a read to understand more about what you can achieve. Once you’re up to speed, you can look to improve your lead funnel using Fluent Forms’ conversational forms.
Your first task should be to set up a new form. We look at the entire general process in our review, but there are some specific steps for conversational forms. For instance, once you navigate to the Create a New Form screen you can select the Create Conversational Form option:
This will bring you to the Fluent Forms builder, with a selection of fields already in place. On first glance, it looks like a typical form. However, if you preview it on the front end, you’ll spot how the form applies one conversational form guideline β asking one question at a time:
However, there’s plenty more you can do here to make this even more engaging. Let’s look at a few of them quickly.
Consider Ways to Keep the Form as Short as Possible
Asking one question at a time is a good start here, but there are other implementations you can make. For instance, you’ll use the Form Step and Section Break fields to create ‘pages’ within your form. Once you do this, also check out the completion progress bar at the bottom of the screen:
This helps to give the respondents an idea of the progress they’re making in the form. It’s yet another way to reduce form abandonment rates.
Use Conditional Logic to Plan the Flow of Your Form
We could write a whole article (or several!) on your form’s conditional logic. However, let’s give you a quick run-through of what you should consider. First up is using given answers later in the form. An example of this is asking for the user’s name, and then repeating it throughout the form:
You can achieve this using dynamic input values and the Custom HTML field:
Listening and reacting to respondents uses branching logic. In Fluent Forms, you can achieve this through the Input Customization > Advanced Options section in the form editor:
It uses drop-down fields instead of the ‘mathematical’ IF, AND, OR, and THEN statements, and they can take you far. They’re the building blocks of branching within Fluent Forms’ conversational forms. However, you’ll want to spend time with more advanced logic functions, as this can help you reduce errors and dead ends in your form.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
To cap off this post, let’s tackle some of the key questions it raises. However, while we can’t cover every question here, you can always drop yours in the comments section at the end of the article!
Why Should I Use Fluent Forms’ Conversational Forms?
When it comes to creating gorgeous, powerful forms for your WordPress website, Fluent Forms is the real deal. It gives you a drag-and-drop builder, plenty of form fields, and a way to implement complex calculations and actions. In addition, you have lots of customization options and integrations with third-party services.
What Are the Key Elements of a Conversational Form?
In a nutshell, you want to make sure you use an informal tone of voice that feels like a conversation. This means reacting to your respondent as a human would. Also, personalizing your forms will help to make them conversational. You could do this by using the respondent’s name and using given answers later in the form.
Are There Any Restrictions for Premium Users on Using Fluent Forms’ Conversational Forms Functionality?
No! Regardless of the premium pricing tier you choose, you get Fluent Forms’ full functionality!
What Other Features of Fluent Forms Can I Use to Enhance My Conversational Forms?
We recommend you learn all about conditional logic, as this goes hand-in-hand with a conversational approach. Also, elements such as the ability to save and resume a form, scheduling, and more can all help skyrocket your UX β essential if you want to further increase your form success rates.
That’s a Wrap!
There’s no doubt that we all respond better to an informal, conversational tone of voice than something formal and scripted. This is where Fluent Forms’ conversational forms can work wonders on your lead generation, and sending potential converts through your funnels.
With the WordPress form builder’s functionality, you can match your forms’ tone to that of the rest of your branding. Even better, you can perform complex calculations and other actions behind the scenes to bring a touch of AI-like interaction to your site’s forms. A single-site license costs $79 per year (without discounts) and comes with Fluent Forms’ full feature set.
Do you have any questions about building and using Fluent Forms’ conversational forms? Ask us in the comments section below!